Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Arthur Herman & Mayor Don McLaughlin ｜ 6⧸20⧸19
Episode Stats
Summary
AOC's Holocaust analogy, Meghan McCain getting yelled at by Joy Behar, a mayor in Texas who needs help dealing with the surge of illegal immigrants crossing the border, and Chuck Todd's defense of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Transcript
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Welcome to the podcast. Today, Glenn is still in Idaho at the ranch and he's got a little bit to
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say about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is blabbing on about the Holocaust and or excuse me
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concentration camps that definitely were not from the Holocaust. I'm sorry my mistake.
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We also have kind of a controversial clip from The View where Meghan McCain is being yelled at by
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Joy Behar. Finally, we also, I mean, it's really kind of a lot of the same stuff today. Everyone's
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yelling at each other and we try to sift through the mess here to get to the truth when it comes
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to reparations and our history. Arthur Herman, historian, joins us to kind of go through what
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are the things that we need to preserve from our history and also what are the conflicts of our
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history when it comes to slavery all the way till today? What is the actual truth? We also talked to
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a mayor in Texas whose town of I think 17,000 is being overrun by illegal immigrant drop-offs
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from the border because no longer do we have any facilities to hold people on the border.
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He's looking for help from Texas. And Chuck Todd, who comes out and actually seems to call out
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats for not criticizing her. It's an interesting day
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and we will get to that today on the podcast. You know, it's amazing to me.
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Um, Chuck Todd is going after AOC and you have to give him credit. I mean, when somebody does
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something brave, no matter if you agree or disagree with them, you should, uh, you should
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come out and say, Hey, Chuck Todd don't normally agree with you, but you're being brave. And that
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is good. Here's what Chuck Todd said about AOC calling these, uh, these, uh, holding facilities,
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concentration camps on our border. Listen, if you want to criticize the shameful treatment of people
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at our Southern border, fine, you'll have plenty of company, but be careful comparing them to Nazi
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concentration camps because they're not at all comparable in the slightest. But here's where
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it's, uh, upsetting as her comment. Some Democrats have been reluctant to condemn her remarks.
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They don't want to get criticized on Twitter. Fellow New York Congressman Jerry Nadler tweeted
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in response, one of the lessons from the Holocaust is never again. We fail to learn that lesson
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when we don't call out such inhumanity right in front of us. Jerry Nadler surely knows migrant
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detainment camps are not the same as concentration camps. So why didn't he just say that? Why are we
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so sheepish calling out people we agree with politically these days? Obviously this isn't a
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Democratic party thing. It's an even bigger problem on the Republican side of the aisle when it comes to
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President Trump and the reluctance there. Are we really so ensconced in our political bubbles,
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liberal versus conservative, that we cannot talk about right versus wrong anymore? Some things are
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bigger than partisanship, or at least they used to be. That is, that is amazing to hear from him.
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Now, I, I, I disagree that the problem is even bigger. I mean, you have people now saying,
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I want to dismantle the free market system. Uh, you know, maybe you all agree on that. Maybe that's
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what it is, but I would think that would be something that would be pretty big, you know,
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but maybe it's just me, but congratulations to Chuck Todd. Now, Nancy Pelosi, not so brave. Here's Nancy
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Pelosi. These members of Congress are, they come and represent their district and their point of view.
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And they take responsibility for the statements that they make. I'm not up to date on her most
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recent one. I saw something in the news, but I, um, no, I haven't spoken to her about that. I do have
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some, uh, comments to make to my caucus writ large about the political nature of, uh, how politically
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charged the atmosphere is. So understand, uh, that while the Republicans have no interest in holding the
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president accountable for his words, they will misrepresent anything that you say, just if you
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have one word in the sentence that they can exploit. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh, okay. So let's,
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let's, let's just see. Let's just see. Let's go to Don Lemon, the audio, Don Lemon on airing Trump
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speeches. Now let's just see, this is politically charged and we'll take everything out of context.
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So you got to calm down because you don't want things taken out of context. Go ahead.
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Think about the despicable people we've had in history. Okay. Now I'm going to use an extreme
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example. Um, think about Hitler. Think about any of those people. Would you say that that person is
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allowed, or let's put it this way. If you could look back on in history, would you say, well,
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I'm so glad that that person was allowed a platform so that they could spread their hate
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and propaganda and lies? Or would you say that probably wasn't the right thing to do to spread
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that because you knew in the moment that that was a bad person and they were doing bad things. Not
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only were they hurting people, they were killing people. And so I just think that, well, I think
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that the example matters and that's a very extreme example, uh, rhetoric that you don't like,
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could it be a slippery slope towards violence and policy or detrimental to people? And it also,
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it also, listen to people like me. So now he's comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, literally Hitler.
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Would we give Hitler a platform? Why are we giving this guy a platform? First of all, uh, the German
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people were not all that sold that this was a bad guy. Okay. Uh, and yes, I'm actually happy that,
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uh, the New York times and time magazine and others gave him a platform. So we knew his words.
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The problem I have was the journalist we sent over, just like the journalist from the New York times
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that was sent over to Stalin said that he was a wonderful guy. So yeah, you probably shouldn't
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have given him the New York times and time magazine, you know, saying how great he is. That's probably a
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bad mistake. Um, but, uh, letting someone be heard. Yeah. I think that's what our first amendment is all
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about. And I think the only way we stop people like Hitler is by knowing what he's saying. If we
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wouldn't have read Mein Kampf, it would have been a little harder to spot him. Oh no, wait a minute. Wait
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a minute. What is he saying again? Should we have published that book? Yes. I want to know what people
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are thinking. I want to know the other side. I want, it does no good burying our heads, uh, in the sand
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when it comes to evil. You need to know about it. So now he's called him, uh, now he's called him,
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uh, a, uh, Hitler. Now he's called Trump Hitler. Okay. We got it. We are getting closer to the time.
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Remember I said, this is 15 years ago. We're a long way away from a civil war. You'll know when we're
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closer to a civil war when they just start beating each other in the Senate. Okay. That's what happened
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before the last civil war. They just started going after each other in the Senate. Well,
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we're starting to go there. I don't know if we have, do we have the audio from the view yesterday
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from Megan McCain? Okay. Play this. This is a, an argument between Joy Behar, Megan McCain,
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and Whoopi Goldberg. Listen to this. I explained because one of my producers this morning was
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saying, why do people love him so much? And I was like, sometimes it's not just that they love Trump
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so much. It's that they hate the same things Trump hates. That's what's going on as well. You mean
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and immigrants? No, I mean, who do they hate? Who do they hate? You know what, Joy, I really come here
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every day, open-minded, just trying to explain it. And it's not a fun job for me every day. But who do they hate?
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I know you're angry. I get that you're angry that Trump's president, like a lot of people are. I'm
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angry about every single thing he's doing. But I don't think yelling at me is going to fix the
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problem. Okay? I just said that it was hard for me to watch. Yes. I just said it was hard for me
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to watch Lindsey Graham, who I considered an uncle for a long time. But then you're talking about the
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Trump supporters. 2020 is not in the bag for you. It's not. Okay, guys. Okay. Okay.
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Okay. Okay. It's a great discussion. And we can go back to it. I just need everybody to take a
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beat. But being a sacrificial Republican every day, I'm just trying to. Here's the thing. Don't feel
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bad for me. I hate to do this. Okay? Don't feel bad for me. Before he headed to Florida. Hold on.
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Stop. Stop. You hear that? Don't feel bad for me, bitch. To Whoopi Goldberg trying to calm
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things down. And I completely side with Meghan McCain. Meghan McCain takes a beating every single
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day. You don't win in that position. You are the token conservative. And they beat you every
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single day. But when they can't hide it anymore. Now, this is also yesterday. Can we play? Did
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we get the audio by any chance yet of the subcommittee hearing on the Constitution and civil rights and
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civil liberties? Yesterday, they had HR 40 that they were debating. And it was the path to restorative
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justice, which is a reparations bill. Now, I can think of a lot of things that would be helpful to
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fix the country. Reparations is not on the list. But I want to play some of the audio of what happened
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in this. We the temperature is being turned up. And, and yeah, Chuck Todd is right. And yes, Nancy Pelosi is
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right. We should watch our words. We should watch our words. We should watch what we're doing to stir
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things up. I'm giving you a warning here as a nation. Look how far we have advanced. These things would not
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have happened a year ago. They certainly wouldn't have happened four years ago. Look what's, look what's
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happening to us. Look where we are as a people. I'll give you that audio. Pretty remarkable audio
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because they turn on their own again. I want to play just a little bit of this audio of a, of, of somebody
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standing up who is testifying, who is a Democrat, who says reparations. This is crazy. What are we doing?
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Now listen to his case. This is Coleman Hughes. He is a writer for Quillette, which is, is fantastic.
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He came out and said this, listen. Nothing I'm about to say is meant to minimize the horror and brutality
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of slavery and Jim Crow. Racism is a bloody stain on this country's history. And I consider our failure
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to pay reparations directly to freed slaves after the Civil War to be one of the greatest injustices
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ever perpetrated by the U.S. government. But I worry that our desire to fix the past compromises our
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ability to fix the present. Think about what we're doing today. We're spending our time debating a bill
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that mentions slavery 25 times, but incarceration only once in an era with no black slaves, but nearly
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a million black prisoners. A bill that doesn't mention homicide once at a time when the Center for
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Disease Control reports homicide as the number one cause of death for young black men. I'm not saying
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that acknowledging history doesn't matter. It does. I'm saying there's a difference between
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acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from the problems we face today.
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In 2008, the House of Representatives formally apologized for slavery and Jim Crow. In 2009,
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the Senate did the same. Black people don't need another apology. We need safer neighborhoods
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and better schools. We need a less punitive criminal justice system. We need affordable health care.
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And none of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery.
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Nearly everyone close to me, nearly everyone close to me told me not to testify today.
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They told me that even though I've only ever voted for Democrats, I'd be perceived as a Republican
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and therefore hated by half the country. Others told me that by distancing myself from Republicans,
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I would end up angering the other half of the country. And the sad truth is that they were both right.
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That's how suspicious we've become of one another. That's how divided we are as a nation.
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If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further,
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making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing black people
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today. We would insult many black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors.
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And we would turn the relationship between black Americans and white Americans from a coalition
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into a transaction, from a union between citizens into a lawsuit between plaintiffs and defendants.
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What we should do is pay reparations to black Americans who actually grew up under Jim Crow
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and were directly harmed by second-class citizenship, people like my grandparents.
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But paying reparations to all descendants of slaves is a mistake. Take me, for example.
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I was born three decades after the end of Jim Crow into a privileged household in the suburbs.
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I attend an Ivy League school. Yet I'm also descended from slaves who worked on Thomas Jefferson's
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Monticello plantation. So reparations for slavery would allocate federal resources to me, but not to
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an American with the wrong ancestry, even if that person is living paycheck to paycheck and working
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multiple jobs to support a family. You might call that justice. I call it justice for the dead at the price of
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justice for the living. I understand that reparations are about what people are owed, regardless of how well
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they're doing. I understand that. But the people who are owed for slavery are no longer here. And we're not entitled to
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So the moment you give me reparations, you've made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that. You've made one third of
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black Americans who poll against reparations into victims without their consent. And black Americans have fought you too long.
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This guy is so solid. Don't agree with him necessarily on everything he says, but so rock solid.
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So rock solid. Since when does the sin of the father get passed to the son? It's immoral. It's wrong. And he's right. It will
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divide us even more. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
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Arthur Herman, who has been one of my favorite historians for quite some time, and I'm going back and I'm reading
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all of his back catalog. And it's just it's it's so fantastic. He's such a good storyteller and teaches
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teaches history in a way I think it needs to be taught. He is, in my opinion, I don't know if anybody
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knows who Daniel Boorstin is, but he was one of my favorite historians. He was the guy who was the head of
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the Library of Congress, and I loved his Discoverer series. And and Arthur is the same kind of guy with
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the with just just a gift for bringing history to life. Welcome to the program, Arthur. How are you?
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I'm doing well. You know, I met Daniel Boorstin when I was a young scholar right after my first book,
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The Idea of Decline in Western History was published. He invited me to lunch at the Cosmos Club,
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as a matter of fact. And we met and talked about talked about various kinds of matters and writing
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history. And in fact, the book, the How the Scots Invented the Modern World was really kind of
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inspired by that conversation because we were talking about really said you should really do
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a book on Adam Smith. And it planted a seed, which, you know, two years later, three years later,
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really became the seeds of that. He was an amazing man. You know, it's funny, Arthur, that you would
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you would say that that was the book that was born out of inspiration, because I I felt this way about
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you with Daniel Boorstin for a while. But I happen to be reading How the Scots Changed the World
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right now. I'm going through your your library, you know, your your back catalog, and I'm thoroughly
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enjoying it. And it's very in some ways, it's very Daniel Boorstin. It is. And, you know, Boorstin
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and at lunch explained to me how he wrote those books. Those books have, you know, the discoverers
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and the others in that series really sprang from his reading of the philosopher Henri Bergson, the French
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intuitive philosopher. And those all come out of the way in which Bergson talks about how we experience
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the world through our senses, through our intuitions and through our connections with nature. So there's a
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I don't have to go. I'm not going to walk your readers through the philosophy of Henri Bergson.
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You can read about that and cave in light. But there was in other words, that wasn't just sort
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of book titles like what am I going to write about next? That's the kind of intellectual that
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Boorstin was. Yeah, he was great. He was great. So I wanted to get you on. I wanted to talk. We're
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talking about reparations now in Congress, seriously having this debate. They were tearing each other
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apart yesterday. People were booing, you know, blacks who were testifying and saying, no, I think this is
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wrong and I'm a Democrat. And they were being booed. I haven't seen this level of vitriol and it gets
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worse every day. You know, last night we had somebody on CNN, a host compared Donald Trump to Hitler.
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Why are we giving this man any platform? Now, this is not a guest. This is a host. We wouldn't do that
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to Hitler. Why are we doing it to him? You have Ocasio-Cortez comparing what we have happening
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on our border to a Nazi concentration camp. And people like Chuck Todd are being hammered because
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he said that this ridiculous. And are we can you give me a framework of where you think we are in
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history? Have we been here before? Yeah, well, I think that, you know, this is this is a very strange
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kind of development that you and I have talked about kind of where the country is right now. I think that
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it would be good to mention that about four years ago, I wrote a piece that appeared on Fox Opinion
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called America's Coming Civil War. And it was about what I felt was and I'm going to use a term that
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you'll recognize, Glenn, because it comes out of that period just before 1860, that there was an
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irrepressible conflict that was coming between those for whom the growth of government and of government
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control versus those for whom government control required extracting resources, including money,
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but also but also our own cultural identities as a conflict that could be as serious as the one that
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broke out over slavery. And you were just talking very correctly about how what we saw there was that
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the impossibility of finding any kind of clear middle ground between those two sides. That piece
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went viral. There was a lot of criticism of what are you talking about? America, you know, America's
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Civil War. I wrote a follow up piece after Barack Obama's inauguration because I sensed that the Obama
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administration was and his reelection in 2012 was really a turning point in this discussion and what
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was going to take place here. So with all of this, now everybody's talking about America's coming
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Civil War. Everybody is debating these kinds of these kinds of questions about are we really reaching
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an existential moment in terms of American identity? And I think what you see on the media and particularly
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on the social media suggests that I was right, that that the Civil War may not come in terms of actual
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violence, you know, we're not going to be fight refighting the Battle of Gettysburg. But I think we're moving
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very quickly into a space where we're good, it's going to be harder and harder to find sensible compromise, even on
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fundamental kinds of issues, which in the past would have been considered, you know, beyond politics.
00:22:25.140
Well, because we're not talking about but, but we're not really talking about those issues. We're, we're talking about
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reparations. What, how does rep, in, on all of the problems that we face, the politicians always pick the
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ones that are absolutely the most divisive, and with an exception of, I think, of abortion, the least
00:22:49.960
No, exactly. And this is, and reparations is a classic example, because you know, it's, it's never
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going to become reality. You know, that this is simply done by the Democrats as a way to try and
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increase the African American vote, which they sense disaster looming ahead in the 2020 election. And so
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You really believe, you, you, you actually really believe that, that, that, that they're headed for a
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I, I do. Yeah, yeah, I do. And I think that, and I think that the, the disaster is reflected both in the
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pathetic field of candidates that have come forward here, but also the kinds of issues that, that they're
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reduced to addressing and putting out there in the hopes that they'll be able to collect votes. You know,
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of course, what will happen is when Trump is reelected, there'll be all kinds of claims that
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the election was stolen yet again. This is also part of the Democrat playing book now is, is that
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any election that doesn't return a Democrat, and particularly a liberal Democrat, is illegitimate,
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has been manipulated either by voter suppression or by collusion with foreign governments or some
00:24:08.000
other kind of underhanded means. This too works to undermine people's confidence in our institutions
00:24:13.540
on both sides of the aisle, Glenn. I mean, this is the other point too, is that the increase, the, the,
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the hyper exaggerated rhetoric that we're getting out of the left also convinces those on the right
00:24:26.980
that there is no grounds for compromise. People are out of control. And that if, if they were somehow
00:24:32.880
to gain power, that we would be staring a proto-totalitarian state in the face, the equivalent
00:24:39.280
of, you know, Mao's cultural revolution is on the way. And whether that's true or not, the, the degree
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to which the, the excessive rhetoric on the part of the left requires a, a, a equally exaggerated
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response from many of the voices on the right is all pointing us towards the idea that this is a,
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we're, we're, we're in dangerous, dangerous territory.
00:25:04.520
Arthur, I want to, I want to ask you a couple more questions as a, as a historian to be able to,
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and I know this is almost impossible, to take yourself out of today and try to put yourself in
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the future and look at what's, what's happening, uh, to us right now. And, and, uh, what the,
00:25:29.740
what the, you know, there's always these, these turning points. There's always these, these road
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marks where, you know, you, it's the easiest place to find is in the Bible because they've summarized
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civilizations into, you know, a chapter. And so you'll see this, this rise and fall of a civilization
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and then the next rise and you're like, okay, well, they're going to get it right this time.
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And then they, you know, they, they fall again and you're like, didn't you, all you had to do is
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read the last chapter. Um, and I want to, I want to talk to you a little bit about some of the things
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that you see, uh, that are road markers if, if you do. And I, and I also want to talk to you a little
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bit about socialism and this, this growing state of technology and the silencing of voices. Have we
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been here before? Uh, and, and what does it mean and what should we preserve back in a second with
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Arthur Herman? He is a tremendous, tremendous author. And I think the, the, he's, he's my favorite
00:26:32.240
historian. Uh, and I can't believe he listens to this show cause I'm a little embarrassed, uh, you know,
00:26:37.580
to have somebody, somebody as good as history at history as he is listening to me blab on about it.
00:26:43.000
But, uh, we'll be back in just a second, one minute. We're back. So, um, we're with Arthur Herman
00:26:47.840
and, and, uh, I just read a new study and I'm going to go through this hopefully today. Um, the
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overwhelming ratio of adults, uh, 12 to one say they prefer a nation with individual ownership of
00:27:01.280
private property and where all the property is owned and where none of the property is owned by the
00:27:06.720
government. That is 82 to seven, six to one ratio. Americans want a government that takes its
00:27:12.580
direction from the people rather than live in a nation where the population takes its direction
00:27:16.620
from the government. That's a, that's a margin of 76 to 12. Um, economically six Americans who want a
00:27:25.220
country featuring the prices of goods based on the free market for everyone who prefers the price of
00:27:30.300
goods determined by the government. That's 75 to 12. And yet overwhelmingly people say they support
00:27:35.900
socialism. This is a problem with history. We, nobody is educated. Nobody is really understands
00:27:44.280
history. Nobody even knows what socialism is or capitalism. The study found out that most people
00:27:49.780
don't even know what capitalism is. So Arthur, have we been this close to this where people are coming
00:28:01.000
out and saying who are in power? I want to destroy the free market system. And if they win, I think they
00:28:09.160
will. Have we been here before? Well, I don't know if we've been in this country here before. Uh, but if
00:28:16.400
you look at, uh, the experience in Europe, uh, between the world wars, and I'm not really so much thinking
00:28:22.320
about Nazi Germany because that's such a cliche and the differences are really profound. I think a better
00:28:28.700
model for thinking about where we are and where we could go if we're not really careful and begin to
00:28:34.520
take some, take some serious steps, uh, backwards to rethink the way in which political debates have
00:28:43.280
shaped up is France. You know, France, like the United States, you know, emerged from World War I as a,
00:28:52.100
uh, victorious power. It seemed that to, to the rest of the world that it was Europe's, uh, you know,
00:28:59.720
superpower on the continent of Europe, just as Britain was, uh, still a major superpower in a
00:29:06.380
global sense. Uh, and yet within, with the 1920s and 1930s, the French squandered everything that they
00:29:14.000
had achieved, uh, in fighting that war. And they became so politically divided, uh, over the,
00:29:20.460
between Marxism and the extreme right and a political establishment, which was, uh, too corrupt
00:29:28.580
and unable to address, uh, the most significant issues confronting France and Europe during those
00:29:36.100
years, that when in 1940, the German invasion came, uh, both the left and the right were so determined to
00:29:44.080
see the other side lose so they could say, I told you so. I said that you guys were, were leading us to a
00:29:50.200
disaster that they refused to unite. And so France collapsed. Wow. And their entire system of
00:29:56.100
government. Does this sound familiar at all, Glenn? Am I talking about a situation in which bears
00:30:01.560
amazing resemblance to, uh, to where we are today in many respects? You could, you could, you could see
00:30:08.980
that happening with China. You could see that really happening with Russia. Uh, I mean, you know,
00:30:15.060
we could have the, the, the, just the border, you could lose the country and there would be a lot of
00:30:22.800
people that would, would want to be right so bad that it would allow it to happen. Sure. And, you
00:30:29.640
know, and, and, and, and the French chamber of deputies at a time in which the Nazi war machine is
00:30:34.700
gearing up when the Spanish civil war is threatening to embroil the world in an ideological conflict. Um,
00:30:42.740
the big debate in the chamber of deputies was how many days of vacation should French workers get?
00:30:48.680
I mean, talk about, talk about the irrelevancy of an issue like reparations. And, and fortunately,
00:30:55.420
you know, there was a man, his name is Charles de Gaulle. And he came, he was able to be the man of the
00:31:00.800
hour who alone with everybody else in France had basically given up with the, the, the, the armistice,
00:31:08.800
basically handing France's fortunes over to, over to Hitler. Uh, he was the one who said, no,
00:31:15.860
France, France is going to continue to fight. Even if I have to do it entirely alone, uh, I will do so.
00:31:22.520
And what he managed to do was to save what was left of France's honor in World War II and to really
00:31:29.720
take upon himself the mission of saving his country from the disgrace and the humiliation and the
00:31:37.600
collapse that had gone through in the last two decades. And we always talk about Winston Churchill
00:31:41.820
and, you know, I've written about Churchill. I have a great admirer of his. De Gaulle, I think,
00:31:46.240
is a figure who we might want to think about looking at more closely. I wrote my first college paper on
00:31:52.280
him in 1971. And I've always been fascinated by De Gaulle. He got a bad press because, you know,
00:31:58.620
he pulled France out of NATO and, uh, chased out American bases in France, uh, during the 1960s,
00:32:06.480
during the cold war. But he was a man who looked at his country, saw the state of intellectual and
00:32:14.020
moral rot that had set in and said, you know what, there's more to France than this. And there's more
00:32:19.720
to my country. And I have a patriotism to which I will sacrifice my career and to which I will sacrifice
00:32:26.760
all of my resources, even if I have to do it alone. And it became a symbol of strength that, you know,
00:32:32.800
that really made him a revered figure, uh, a, a savior and, and really pulled France out of
00:32:39.560
the abyss that it was in. Thanks to, thanks to the Vichy episode.
00:32:56.760
Let me give you some, let me give you some, uh, illegal immigration stats. Okay. Now these are
00:33:04.620
just between 2011 and 2016, between 2011 and 2016, there have been more than 500,000 criminal offenses,
00:33:16.300
996 homicides done by illegals, 996 homicides, 59,200 assaults, 14,000 burglaries,
00:33:26.760
58,000 drug charges, 605 kidnappings, 36,000 thefts, 39,000 obstructing police, 3,000 robberies,
00:33:38.580
5,000 rapes, 7,000, uh, 7,000 weapons charges. That's just between the, the years 2011 and 2016
00:33:54.720
What are we doing? The flood of illegals into Texas is going to kill Texas. It's going to,
00:34:05.960
it is strangling these small cities, especially these little teeny cities on the border. They're not
00:34:12.720
getting any help from the federal government and people are coming hundreds a day. And what are
00:34:18.480
they supposed to do about it? Don McLaughlin, I've been trying to talk to him for about a week. He's
00:34:23.900
been up in Washington testifying. He is, he's really, uh, a little outspoken on this. And when you hear
00:34:31.060
his story of his town, what's happening in his town, uh, you'll see, you'll see why he's outspoken.
00:34:37.440
Welcome to the program. Uh, mayor McLaughlin, how are you? He dropped. Are we going to get him back on?
00:34:44.960
Uh, I heard him, uh, I heard him speak in front of, uh, Congress. And, uh, when you hear somebody who
00:34:52.300
is actually living this and you hear him talk about, I mean, all the, a lot of the people in his
00:34:59.840
town are Hispanic and they don't, they don't want this either. You know, this is not a race thing.
00:35:06.360
This isn't a phobia. This is a real problem. Mayor, welcome to the program. How are you, sir?
00:35:12.360
Good. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. How are you today?
00:35:15.900
Very good. I heard, I heard you, uh, I heard you speak, uh, I think it was to, uh, Horowitz on the,
00:35:22.920
on, uh, the blaze and, uh, your story is amazing. Can you tell me what's happening in your town?
00:35:28.960
Sure. What, what, uh, well, as we've been saying, the border patrol is just unindated with these
00:35:36.580
family units that are crossing the border. And the misconception that, that is out there is that
00:35:44.080
everybody thinks this is strictly just South Americans that are from Mexico and Guatemala and
00:35:49.020
Honduras and El Salvador. Well, it's 29 different countries are crossing the Southern border,
00:35:55.840
not just, not just from there. And they're coming from all over and it's just, they're coming in
00:36:03.100
family units and it's, the border patrol just slammed and these family units. So as they're
00:36:10.380
getting slammed, they're having to come out and start releasing these family units because they
00:36:14.520
have no place to put them. They, they're, they're at capacity and all their holding facilities.
00:36:19.180
And so they came to us in, in May and told us, Oh, we're going to start releasing, uh, uh,
00:36:26.900
immigrant families in your community. Uh, we're going to release them up here at the Stripes
00:36:31.440
convenience store or at your H-E-B or your Walmart. And we said, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. We, you know,
00:36:37.260
no, we're not, we're not set up to, to handle that. You know, it's not that we don't want to help
00:36:42.020
them. We're just, you know, we're a town of 17,000 people. We're just not, you know,
00:36:46.840
we're just not set up to handle that. And so how many a day, how many a day were they talking
00:36:51.580
and how many a day are actually coming? Well, when they first started, we were talking about
00:36:55.960
getting 10 to 20, then it went to 20 to 40. Uh, then we ended up, uh, up to date, we've got a hundred
00:37:04.220
and 122. We haven't got in the last week only because of the, only because the facility that we
00:37:11.420
have here in Uvalde is used for unaccompanied minors. And right now they are at capacity.
00:37:19.200
So many unaccompanied minors have come in the last week that they are full. They cannot process
00:37:25.220
any family units here in Uvalde now because so many unaccompanied minors have come across in the
00:37:30.300
last week. Now I've, I've heard you, I heard you talk about how, um, there's one family who won't,
00:37:38.420
won't, the kids won't go swimming unless dad is in the, in the back by the pool with a shotgun
00:37:43.580
because things are so crazy. Well, what's happening, what's happening in the border patrol
00:37:51.160
that usually, you know, is, is watching for the, you know, whether the, the coyotes that are bringing
00:37:57.160
the immigrants through or where this particular landowner is out by the train, by the train tracks,
00:38:03.480
his property is. And these immigrants get on these trains coming out of, out of, uh, Del Rio or Eagle
00:38:10.440
Pass or even Lareda. It's a, it's a main East and West, uh, railroad that comes through here.
00:38:16.340
And so they get on this train. And so the border patrol has a, uh, facility here where they stop
00:38:22.980
the train and check it for immigrants. Well, usually they have a pretty large contingency of border
00:38:28.720
patrol when they stop that train and check it. Well, they're so spread out and spread so thin now
00:38:33.660
with these family units that they're all doing that, that when they stop it, there may be anywhere
00:38:39.180
from 30 to 40 people on that train. And you got three border patrol agents trying to, to capture
00:38:45.420
all these immigrants and they don't have the manpower. Uh, since then, since this last incident,
00:38:51.300
we're, we're trying to fill in with, with our police department and the sheriff's department
00:38:55.020
when, when, when they ask for it. But what's happening is they're, they're jumping off this
00:39:00.260
train and running. And this particular landowner is, is starting to, it's been going on in his
00:39:06.460
property. He said for the last 60 days, but it just keeps getting worse and worse. And about a week
00:39:11.300
ago, he had one that jumped off or a group that jumped off and came to his property. And one particular
00:39:15.880
individual got real aggressive, uh, with him, uh, threatening and, uh, real aggressive. He did
00:39:22.780
everything he could to try to catch him and, and get him. They, uh, brought a helicopter out and
00:39:27.340
tried to find him and didn't, didn't find him. But the man threatened him and told him he was going
00:39:31.700
to come back and get him and different things. And he said he and his wife, you know, didn't sleep a
00:39:35.440
wink that night because the guy told him he was coming back that night to get him. And we didn't
00:39:39.780
catch him in town either. Uh, and we looked, but you know, and that's when he said it, that's when I was
00:39:46.040
talking to him, he said, you know, it's gotten so bad that my grandkids won't even come out to the
00:39:49.900
house and go swimming unless I sit out in the backyard with the shotgun. Cause we never know
00:39:53.700
when they're going to show up. It is. And you're, you're a town of, you're a town of 17,000. So
00:39:59.540
you're not a town that, you know, has Starsky and Hutch kind of car chases ever. Right? No, we,
00:40:06.460
uh, in, in, in, in the last 25 years, we've had maybe two car chases in the last two weeks. We've
00:40:15.300
had five, uh, two of them have bailed out in town where we've had to lock, put our schools
00:40:20.840
on lockdown. Uh, the first one, there were eight individuals. Uh, so they jumped out in
00:40:26.920
the middle of town right by our schools. So we had to lock all our schools down. We spent
00:40:31.460
most of the day. We caught those eight individuals. The other day we had four that jumped out of
00:40:37.060
a car. The lady that was, that was transporting them claimed that one of them had a gun and, uh,
00:40:43.500
that's why she was transporting them. The border patrol says that they don't think that was
00:40:46.760
probably true, but we didn't know, but we didn't catch those four. But again,
00:40:51.240
we had to put another school on lockdown because it was in close proximity to where they jumped out.
00:41:00.060
So, so, um, we're talking to mayor Don McLaughlin, um, border town here in Texas. That
00:41:07.920
is, and this story is not unique. It's happening, uh, where the people of the
00:41:13.440
town are paying a price. And Don, I've talked about the Bubba effect for a very long time
00:41:19.640
that the government just stops doing what it's supposed to do. And the people of the town,
00:41:28.600
you know, become really angry and start to take things in their own hands because
00:41:32.660
the government is not doing it. And I'm not saying that you're there or anything else and
00:41:36.880
God forbid we ever get there. But what is the attitude towards the federal government
00:41:42.440
from your citizens? Well, Republican and Democrat. Well, they're fed up with both sides because like
00:41:49.560
I said, like I said before, this isn't a Republican problem or a Democrat problem. It's an American
00:41:55.060
problem. It's an American people problem. I mean, it's both sides and both sides are, and people in
00:42:01.080
my community are fed up. They're, they're, they're frustrated with, with, with us as local government,
00:42:06.880
because we're having to use city funds and County funds. When they drop these immigrant families
00:42:12.900
off here in Uvalde, we're having to take them and we're having to pay for a bus to take them to San
00:42:18.320
Antone because we don't have the facilities to do it. So we're spending San Antonio.
00:42:23.760
Yeah, right. And San Antonio doesn't have the funding either. And San Antonio is dealing now,
00:42:29.080
as you said, these people are not coming from Guatemala. They're dealing with people coming
00:42:33.480
from the Congo, which is the Ebola hotspot and a place where ISIS has been recruiting lately.
00:42:40.940
I mean, we don't know who's coming in and bringing what into our communities and they're being dumped.
00:42:48.860
Well, I asked our federal, I asked, I sent all our elected officials an email when this first started
00:42:55.580
the other day, when in Del Rio, Texas, the first wave, 115, uh, immigrants from the Congo showed up
00:43:04.440
in Del Rio, Texas. I mean, if you look on the map and see where the Congo is, and then you look on
00:43:10.360
the map and see where Del Rio, Texas is, how did 115 Congolese get to Del Rio, Texas? Then two days
00:43:19.460
they got another, another 350 from Congolese. Right. And they also don't speak a word of English
00:43:26.740
or Spanish. How did they get here? How did they get here? And nobody can tell us that answer.
00:43:35.680
And we, like I said, up until, up until the last day or so, we have seen nothing from the federal
00:43:41.220
government. As far as any answers, any help, we've asked for help to get reimbursed. We've asked what
00:43:47.180
we're going to do. And until yesterday is the first time that we've seen any, anything that
00:43:52.120
there's been a bill to, to reimburse communities for the expenses they're out. I mean, Del Rio,
00:43:57.660
Texas, which is, which is 60 miles from us, they're getting unindated. I mean, they're getting 140 to
00:44:04.620
160 people released in their community every day. And before they got a coalition going,
00:44:10.800
they were just taking them and dropping them off at the local stripes. And it's not the border
00:44:14.480
patrol's fault because they're being told by their, by their, by Washington, this is what you're going
00:44:19.720
to do. I mean, our local border patrol in this area, they work with our communities. I mean,
00:44:25.260
they're, they're good people and they work hard. I mean, uh, but they're just, they're strapped.
00:44:32.340
Uh, I've only got about a minute left. Are, is, is the governor's office, is, is Texas doing
00:44:38.840
anything? Are they doing enough? Where are, where's, where's our leadership from Texas?
00:44:45.240
Well, you know, again, we're just starting to hear rumblings that, that, that the governor
00:44:50.440
is going to deploy more DPS troopers and that we haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen anything to
00:44:56.980
that effect. I was told that last night. I haven't seen any, anything in writing of that, but you know,
00:45:02.820
like I said, we, we have, we have written letters called to all our elected officials
00:45:09.380
and we're just not getting responses. We're just not getting, it's like it's falling on deaf ears.
00:45:15.800
That's amazing to me. Uh, Don, thank you so much. Um, and, uh, my best to your community and please
00:45:21.180
stay in touch with us. If there's any way we can help, or if you need to bring, shine a light onto
00:45:25.360
something, please let us know, uh, and we'll be there for you. I do appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.
00:45:31.160
You bet. Thank you. Mayor Don McLaughlin, the blaze radio network