The Megyn Kelly Show - Crime in American Cities, and Myth of ＂Red State Murder Problem,＂ with Rafael Mangual and Jennifer Castro

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00:00:30.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.540 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.040 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.740 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.280 Today, a deep dive into the violence engulfing our nation.

00:00:49.480 Just as we were preparing to go to air,

00:00:51.560 we got word that three SWAT officers have been shot in Philadelphia

00:00:55.200 while serving a murder warrant.

00:00:56.560 The suspect is dead.

00:00:58.340 Fortunately, the officers are expected to survive.

00:01:01.920 But in too many of these cases, it goes the other way.

00:01:05.980 This is just one of many stories that we've seen in America's big cities as of late.

00:01:09.820 And all of this mayhem is increasingly becoming a hot-button issue on the campaign trail

00:01:15.260 as we approach the midterms.

00:01:17.820 Republicans label Democrats soft on crime.

00:01:20.740 Democrats now trying to fight back, saying in reality,

00:01:23.820 there's a red state murder problem.

00:01:26.520 We're going to take a hard look at that one.

00:01:28.640 We have one of the best minds on this topic in America.

00:01:31.740 Joining us today, Raphael Mangual is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute

00:01:36.040 and author of Criminal Injustice,

00:01:39.200 what the push for decarceration and depolicing gets wrong,

00:01:43.040 and who it hurts most.

00:01:49.600 Raphael, welcome back to the show.

00:01:50.860 Great to have you.

00:01:51.920 So great to be back.

00:01:52.780 Thanks, Megan.

00:01:53.240 So this thing out of Philadelphia is horrifying,

00:01:57.080 but I can't say it's entirely surprising.

00:01:59.080 That is one of the many cities just plagued with crime and increasing murder rates

00:02:03.980 and a DA at the top who doesn't seem all that interested in prosecuting crime.

00:02:08.580 Let's just start there in Philadelphia and

00:02:10.380 what Philadelphia tells us, if anything, about the rest of the nation.

00:02:14.240 Yeah.

00:02:14.420 I mean, well, if you look at Philadelphia, it really is kind of leading the nation in a lot of ways.

00:02:18.060 Every single year since their DA, Larry Krasner, who campaigned and has governed on a platform of

00:02:25.640 decarceration for its own sake, every single year since he's been in office, he's presided over

00:02:30.200 significant homicide increases.

00:02:32.380 And in 2021, Philadelphia set an all-time record, aka meaning that it's the worst it's ever been in

00:02:39.640 that city for homicides.

00:02:40.980 And it is on track to keep pace with that record again this year.

00:02:44.260 So, yeah, violence is probably the most massive it's ever been in that city, as it is in a lot

00:02:50.980 of other American cities.

00:02:52.660 But Philadelphia, in a lot of ways, is really ground zero.

00:02:55.500 Now, with respect to this police shooting, I mean, it's incredibly tragic, but it's also

00:03:00.080 something that's not unaligned with the broader trends.

00:03:04.260 We have seen an increase, not just in crime more broadly, but also in violence directed at

00:03:09.220 police officers.

00:03:10.000 We have seen the policing profession become more dangerous in a multitude of ways, but

00:03:15.740 especially with respect to physical danger.

00:03:18.460 And that's also problematic as cities like Philadelphia and other major cities around the

00:03:23.080 world, and country especially, struggle to find officers to fill vacant slots.

00:03:28.500 Now, what's really interesting about this, or perhaps really tragic about this, is that

00:03:33.320 I talk a lot about the phenomenon of crime concentration, right?

00:03:36.480 Crime is not a problem that's evenly distributed around the United States.

00:03:40.460 It's not a problem that's evenly distributed around American cities, including Philadelphia.

00:03:44.200 It's very hyper-concentrated.

00:03:45.600 And I harp on that point because I think people all too often forget about what it's like for

00:03:51.740 the people who are unfortunately living in the pockets of concentrated crime in American

00:03:56.920 cities.

00:03:57.300 But one of the other sort of populations dealing with that disproportionately are police officers

00:04:02.640 who are tasked with going into those pockets of concentrated crime and patrolling on a daily

00:04:07.660 basis.

00:04:08.340 And so in addition to the residents of those high crime communities, police officers are

00:04:13.700 also bearing the brunt of the downside risk associated with the kind of decarceration project

00:04:18.580 that people like Larry Krasner have engaged in since they took office.

00:04:22.660 Mm-hmm.

00:04:23.860 And, you know, the rhetoric about police was so disgusting over the past couple of years.

00:04:28.700 And now the Democrats have realized that the defund the police policies don't work.

00:04:32.380 And in city after city, they're quietly restoring the funding.

00:04:35.460 But I haven't seen an apology for the rhetoric.

00:04:38.880 I haven't seen them going out there and celebrating our police officers as the brave heroes.

00:04:44.060 Ninety-eight percent of them are.

00:04:45.940 I mean, I would say there's a two percent bad apple rate like there is in any profession that

00:04:49.620 give the rest a bad name.

00:04:50.660 But I haven't seen that.

00:04:51.820 I mean, these guys need to be built back up and we need to show them our appreciation

00:04:55.480 and affection given the risks that we ask them to take.

00:04:59.960 And to the contrary, these Democrats won't budge off of their old rhetoric because I think

00:05:03.900 they they understand if you're a member of the squad, that's just going to cost you with

00:05:08.220 your core base.

00:05:09.720 I think that's exactly right.

00:05:11.080 I mean, and also for the past decade plus, you know, opposition to the police, opposition

00:05:16.700 to the criminal justice system more broadly has been made a central part of the Democratic

00:05:22.020 Party's brand.

00:05:22.920 I mean, I really don't think there's any way around that reality.

00:05:26.060 Now, I would welcome any effort on the part of Democrats to walk that back.

00:05:30.960 I think it's important for police officers in major cities to feel appreciated, to feel

00:05:36.700 like they are going to get a fair shake in the unfortunate event that they're involved

00:05:40.460 in a controversial use of force.

00:05:41.900 What we're seeing in the survey data is that police officers don't feel that way.

00:05:46.400 They consistently report believing that they're not going to be treated fairly.

00:05:49.960 And that fear we know, you know, is associated with things like the Ferguson effect and the

00:05:54.240 Minneapolis effect where police officers disengage and they aren't as proactive as they otherwise

00:05:59.100 would be.

00:06:00.320 And that's not out of antipathy for the communities that they're serving.

00:06:05.260 It's out of, you know, a genuine fear and out of a desire to preserve themselves and their

00:06:10.620 careers and the life that they've built for their families.

00:06:14.500 And I don't think people fully appreciate just what it is that we ask police officers

00:06:18.880 to take on.

00:06:20.840 And not just in terms of the tasks that we ask them to do, but also just the mental burden

00:06:28.160 that we ask them to bear as a result of the things that they see.

00:06:31.020 I mean, you know, you, I, lots of people listening right now.

00:06:34.120 I mean, we are very fortunate in so far as we get to go about our days and kind of live

00:06:39.740 in a way that's insulated from, you know, the really terrible things that happened, that

00:06:44.580 happened in this world.

00:06:45.940 Police officers, on the other hand, are dealing with people often on their very worst days

00:06:50.080 and their very worst moments, seeing the very worst of humanity.

00:06:53.360 I mean, they see dead bodies, they respond to deadly car crashes and, you know, just terrible

00:07:00.060 problems of familial abuse and drug addiction.

00:07:03.920 And it's incredibly depressing.

00:07:05.940 It's incredibly psychologically taxing, which is one of the reasons why in addition, you know,

00:07:11.460 to the problem with respect to police being subjected to violence at the hands of criminals,

00:07:17.400 we also see police struggling with mental health and committing suicide at a significantly higher

00:07:22.600 rate than other professions.

00:07:23.600 And, you know, it's just something that hasn't made its way into the rhetoric and really should.

00:07:27.700 But this is one of the reasons why the narrative about police bothers me so much.

00:07:31.780 I have a brother who's a police officer.

00:07:34.000 He's now just retired, but he became a lieutenant.

00:07:36.300 So he rose all the way up through the ranks in inner city, Albany, where I'm from.

00:07:41.060 And he was attacked at one point by a gang of thugs who came after him and really hurt him.

00:07:47.780 He was in the hospital for a long time.

00:07:49.840 And what did he do when he got better?

00:07:51.220 He went right back out.

00:07:52.720 This is when he was a beat, you know, on foot patrolman, went right back out and kept protecting

00:07:56.400 them and went into house after house is a predominantly black neighborhood house after

00:08:00.840 house, protecting women who are getting beaten and kids who are getting hurt and, you know,

00:08:05.600 black members of the community who are victims of black on black crime, which is what it tended

00:08:09.380 to be there and never once said a racist thing.

00:08:12.720 I mean, I this is my brother.

00:08:13.800 I know him well.

00:08:15.160 Never once said a racist thing, had a racist thought, just kept going back together to protect

00:08:18.800 folks, was never accused of anything like that, had a stellar career.

00:08:22.180 And then because of some cop in Minneapolis, he's got the nation pointing at him saying,

00:08:27.700 you're racist.

00:08:28.540 You're a terrible person.

00:08:29.980 You're racist.

00:08:31.020 And you and your fellow cops don't deserve funding for what you do.

00:08:34.820 He's just one example of cops who are like, what?

00:08:38.940 You know what?

00:08:39.740 Like, this is the thanks that we get.

00:08:41.640 And he continued doing his job, as did his brethren out there serving the community.

00:08:46.420 But so many have said, forget this.

00:08:49.920 Forget it.

00:08:50.500 Why?

00:08:50.760 Why would I do this?

00:08:52.660 Yeah, well, that's the thing I don't think people quite fully appreciate.

00:08:55.700 And it's a real incongruity in the left's critique, right?

00:08:58.820 I mean, the idea that policing is an institution built on and built for the oppression of low income

00:09:07.980 minority communities is just incongruous with the reality of policing, which is that police

00:09:13.800 officers are being disproportionately deployed to areas with the largest crime problems, which

00:09:19.160 tend to have disproportionately Black and Latino populations.

00:09:23.600 As a result, when they do their job, the public safety benefits associated with that job,

00:09:30.400 and you're primarily to those very communities.

00:09:32.620 And I like to ask people the rhetorical question, why on earth would an institution allegedly

00:09:37.860 designed and operated for the specific oppression of this particular community so disproportionately

00:09:43.660 benefit that community when the institution achieves its stated ends, as stated by the

00:09:50.560 people at the institution's helm?

00:09:51.940 I mean, ask any police chief in the country, what is it that you want to do?

00:09:56.260 How do you define success?

00:09:57.440 And they say, I want to keep crime under control.

00:09:59.400 I want to get crime down.

00:10:00.540 That's how I define my success.

00:10:01.840 Well, who benefits if crime goes down, right?

00:10:04.620 In the United States of America, the homicide victimization rate for Black men is 10x that

00:10:10.140 of white men, right?

00:10:11.860 In my home city of New York, 95% of all shooting victims every single year, at least, that's

00:10:17.520 a minimum, are either Black or Hispanic.

00:10:19.920 Almost all of them are male, right?

00:10:21.680 So when you look at things like the crime decline, which over the course of the 1990s, what you find

00:10:26.320 is that it disproportionately, in fact, almost exclusively benefited low income minority communities.

00:10:31.740 Between 1990 and 2014, the decline in homicides added a full year of life expectancy to the

00:10:38.600 average Black man's life.

00:10:40.200 It only added 0.14 years of life expectancy to the average white man's life.

00:10:45.100 Now, the public health equivalent of that, according to a study done by a very liberal

00:10:48.560 criminologist named Patrick Sharkey, is the elimination of obesity altogether.

00:10:53.240 Now, why on earth would these institutions be okay with providing those kinds of benefits

00:11:02.460 to those communities if it were true that they harbored nothing but racial animus for those

00:11:07.980 communities?

00:11:08.480 It's a glaring incongruity that no one seems keen to explain, but it tells us why policing

00:11:16.140 is such a noble profession.

00:11:17.520 I mean, these are people who are going into communities that are incredibly disadvantaged

00:11:22.400 and literally risking their lives on a daily basis to make life more livable.

00:11:28.000 And that is something that should be applauded.

00:11:30.740 And instead, it's dead of great.

00:11:32.780 Yeah.

00:11:33.600 In college, I had a boyfriend whose dad was a New York City cop.

00:11:36.920 He worked in White Plains.

00:11:38.800 And he was talking to, you know, once you know one cop, you know a lot of cops because they

00:11:42.360 hang out together and his his brothers down in the Bronx in blue, they're drawing their

00:11:49.180 guns every day, every day.

00:11:51.060 This is in the 90s in New York in the Bronx.

00:11:53.980 Some some cops never have to draw their gun.

00:11:55.800 Never once.

00:11:56.560 These guys are in such a dangerous area back then.

00:11:59.320 It was.

00:12:00.340 Can you imagine in a in a profession where you have to draw your gun every day, which means

00:12:05.600 you're in great danger, too?

00:12:07.660 And all we do in today's day and age is crap all over them and tell them they're awful.

00:12:12.260 I mean, to me, it's a congruence of the media, which in particular in particular in an election

00:12:17.160 year, like we saw with George Floyd, takes a tape like that and puts it on loop and works

00:12:22.440 to elect Democrats with it.

00:12:24.000 And an underlying problem with the cops, which is short of.

00:12:28.700 Of unjustified shootings, they have been too rough, in particular with black suspects.

00:12:33.920 And that that pops up in the research, too, even people like Roland Fryer, who are, you

00:12:38.260 know, he did the seminal study showing that there is not a disproportionate rate of cops

00:12:42.160 killing unarmed black men short of killing is brutality.

00:12:47.620 And so so the experience of many black men in America of having been roughed up by cops

00:12:54.080 or pulled over too many times by cops.

00:12:56.580 You know, Tim Scott was talking about I think it was like 17 times or some ridiculous number

00:13:00.660 he's been pulled over just in the past 20 years, me one time, one.

00:13:04.760 Right.

00:13:05.740 So that experience that sort of forgive the term because I hate it, but lived experience

00:13:10.060 of black men feeling extra suspect when dealing with cops layered into an agenda driven media

00:13:17.080 and Democrats agenda driven party that represents half the United States merging to produce this

00:13:24.020 false narrative of cops, as LeBron James said, like on the hunt to kill black men.

00:13:29.100 Right, right.

00:13:31.040 And, you know, and even with respect to the disproportionality that we see in non deadly

00:13:37.180 uses of force, such as what was found in Roland's study, which, you know, it's important to

00:13:43.660 remember that use of force generally is still a very rare occurrence.

00:13:49.140 Right.

00:13:49.520 So we're seeing disproportionality in what is still a very statistically rare outcome of a

00:13:55.880 police citizen interaction.

00:13:57.220 Right.

00:13:57.340 If you look at studies of arrests or police contacts, police use force at about 1% of all

00:14:04.060 arrests that they affect.

00:14:05.420 So it is incredibly reflective of their restraint as a broader profession.

00:14:12.560 And that often gets lost in the media sort of hyper focus on any evidence that sort of backs up

00:14:18.880 this narrative that we know has huge political implications, which is that the police are part

00:14:24.060 of this sort of broader racist system that produces inequities that need to be addressed.

00:14:31.100 I mean, you know, there was a study done and I talk about it in the book that looked at a million

00:14:36.000 calls for service across three police departments in three different states in Arizona, Louisiana and

00:14:41.780 North Carolina over a two year period that led to 114,000 criminal arrests.

00:14:47.460 And that entire data set, a million calls for service, 114,000 arrests.

00:14:51.380 There's just one fatal police shooting captured.

00:14:53.820 It was of an armed suspect and police use force in less than 1% of all of the arrests that they affected.

00:14:59.840 And in 98% of the cases in which they did use force, there was either no injury or mild injury to the suspect.

00:15:07.700 And so that context gets lost in our national conversation.

00:15:12.440 And what that leads to is the sorts of really radical policy interventions that we saw rush

00:15:18.380 through the legislative process since 2020.

00:15:20.680 I mean, more than 30 states passed in excess of 140 police reform bills just in the year

00:15:25.860 after George Floyd's death in this country.

00:15:28.040 Can you say that again?

00:15:28.580 More than 30?

00:15:29.380 Say that again.

00:15:30.080 More than 30 states passed over 140 police reform bills in the year after George Floyd's death.

00:15:36.940 That is an enormous amount of policy movement in a very short period of time, probably policies

00:15:46.500 enacted with very little thought given to the potential downside risks associated with that.

00:15:50.680 And now I think we're starting to have to grapple with the reality that maybe it wasn't such

00:15:56.780 a good idea to systematically lower the transaction costs of committing a crime and to systematically

00:16:02.220 raise the transaction costs of enforcing the law.

00:16:04.760 And, you know, I did an event at UC Berkeley yesterday to talk about my book.

00:16:11.820 And then someone asked the question of, you know, why is it that despite crime going up

00:16:16.400 in so many American cities, you know, we haven't seen the kind of backlash that you might expect?

00:16:20.420 And I think the answer to that is a function of where crime concentrates.

00:16:24.640 You know, the vast majority of Americans live in places that are as safe as the safest places

00:16:29.240 in the world.

00:16:29.740 There are just so many degrees of removal between the typical American and the sort of violence that

00:16:35.180 is currently plaguing the north side of Philadelphia or the west side of Chicago.

00:16:39.220 And so those degrees of removal create a sense of sort of foreignness to that kind of problem.

00:16:45.500 And the lack of understanding, the lack of experience with actual high levels of criminal

00:16:50.060 violence, I think sort of artificially increases a tolerance for a policy agenda that probably

00:16:57.020 shouldn't be tolerated to the degree that it is.

00:16:59.700 You know, the cover of the New York Post today has it highlights the immigration issue coming

00:17:04.560 to New York, you know, thanks to all these buses that are bringing illegal immigrants here

00:17:08.040 to Manhattan and showing how the New York City public schools are getting overwhelmed,

00:17:12.740 overwhelmed with children who speak no English, who are showing up for school.

00:17:16.760 There's one district has one Spanish speaking teacher.

00:17:19.380 You know, you've got 100 plus kids who are new sitting there ready to, you know, it's like,

00:17:22.560 what are they going to do?

00:17:23.480 And this is a function of the border state governors trying to show some of these sanctuary

00:17:28.060 cities and sanctuary states what their policies are wreaking down south.

00:17:33.040 And you think about what you just said about the cities versus the burbs and whether there

00:17:36.640 should be a similar busing program for, you know, inner city gangs or inner city criminals

00:17:41.900 out to the burbs.

00:17:43.440 So these, you know, they tend to be white liberal women who push these policies on the inner cities,

00:17:50.140 taking away their police funding, getting rid of cash bail and all that would have to actually

00:17:55.360 deal with the consequences.

00:17:56.920 You know, the repeat offenders who never should have been let out now have no bail.

00:18:01.400 How do you want him?

00:18:03.160 How much you want him living next to you, hanging out at your kid's school?

00:18:07.140 Because that's what has to happen for the residents of Manhattan and Philadelphia and Chicago,

00:18:12.320 who are the victims of these policies, but may not have the time to go protest on the Upper

00:18:18.400 West Side like these other women do all the time.

00:18:21.480 Yeah.

00:18:21.600 I mean, I suspect that has a little something to do with New York's turnaround in the 90s.

00:18:25.460 I mean, you know, for the most part, you know, crime tends to remain very, very sort of

00:18:31.700 concentrated in a lot of American cities.

00:18:33.380 But New York is somewhat unique in that our subway system is very integrated or, you know,

00:18:38.720 and so a lot of really highly valued public spaces in the early 90s and late 80s started

00:18:45.880 to suffer.

00:18:46.540 I mean, if you were a stockbroker living on the Upper East Side, but working on Wall Street,

00:18:51.060 it was more convenient to take the six train to work than it was, you know, to get in a

00:18:56.860 car service and, you know, be stuck on the FDR in traffic.

00:19:00.380 But you couldn't take the subways back then, not without taking your life in your hands,

00:19:04.260 essentially, right?

00:19:04.800 They were covered in graffiti.

00:19:05.780 They were gross.

00:19:06.440 They, you know, were very dangerous, lots of robberies, sexual assault, et cetera.

00:19:10.160 So that was, you know, a major public space that was really valued by, you know, sort of

00:19:14.260 politically active people that they couldn't access because the crime had gotten so bad.

00:19:18.540 You know, if you enjoyed the theater, you know, the area in and around Times Square was

00:19:23.320 incredibly hostile, you know, to tourists and people who were just trying to, you know,

00:19:28.380 enjoy that part of the city.

00:19:30.380 And so, you know, you couldn't really go to a show without being accosted by, you know,

00:19:34.420 prostitutes and drug dealers and pimps.

00:19:37.120 And, you know, there was like porn shops all over the place.

00:19:40.360 And it was, again, it was really gross.

00:19:41.860 If you, you know, had a million dollar mansion on Central Park West, you wanted to be able

00:19:45.700 to go jog in the park in the morning, but you couldn't do that without risking getting

00:19:49.560 robbed or worse.

00:19:50.540 And so as those highly valued public spaces deteriorated more and more, I think that is

00:19:57.220 what drove the sort of rethinking that led to the revolution that allowed New York to

00:20:02.760 kind of win the war on crime for as long as it did.

00:20:05.920 But that's not going to happen in a lot of other cities where the crime is just, you know,

00:20:10.280 going to remain concentrated in the places where it's always been concentrated.

00:20:14.040 You know, it's starting to change in some places like Chicago where, you know, parts

00:20:17.560 of the loop and, you know, the Gold Coast and River North are starting to see shootings,

00:20:22.480 you know, at rates that they never saw before.

00:20:24.180 And maybe that'll start to change things there.

00:20:26.400 But in lots of other parts of the country, that's just not going to happen.

00:20:30.460 And so, you know, one of the reasons I do the work that I do is to try and sort of bring

00:20:33.280 these stories to people so that they understand or at least, you know, come closer to understanding

00:20:38.660 what life is like living in a place where that is a sort of everyday occurrence.

00:20:44.180 I mean, you know, you and I remember the D.C. sniper situation.

00:20:47.720 I mean, people living in and around, you know, Virginia and Washington, D.C. back then were

00:20:51.720 losing their minds around this time.

00:20:54.100 I mean, they were, you know, pumping gas while dunking behind their car.

00:20:57.900 They'd drive past the E on their gas tank at night so as not to, you know, have to get

00:21:02.220 out and be targeted.

00:21:03.160 They would zigzag through empty parking lots if they left work late.

00:21:05.760 I mean, these are very rational people living in America's most elite zip codes, taking

00:21:10.220 all of these drastic steps to minimize their risk of being victimized, which, by the way,

00:21:15.080 was on par with being struck by lightning.

00:21:17.540 And yet the psychological impact was so profound for them.

00:21:20.280 But they don't seem to be able to internalize what life is like in a neighborhood where someone

00:21:25.360 gets shot every week, where gunshots are heard on a near daily basis and where your chances,

00:21:33.500 you know, of being victimized by gun violence are actually higher than of you graduating

00:21:38.340 from college on time.

00:21:39.580 Right.

00:21:39.740 I mean, so that is something that I think needs to change.

00:21:43.140 And it's one of the things that really kind of motivates me to bring attention to these

00:21:47.580 issues.

00:21:48.660 We talked about Philadelphia here and there in the first 20 minutes.

00:21:52.140 And Larry Krasner is their soft on crime D.A., George Soros backed.

00:21:55.760 He was interviewed by the local Fox reporters.

00:21:59.600 I think Mike Jarek is one of the guys in this clip or my old pal from Fox News channel

00:22:03.820 and got very defensive and then kind of went on offense in a fascinating clip.

00:22:11.360 Here it is.

00:22:11.860 Watch this.

00:22:12.340 Sot 10.

00:22:14.000 Or a reformed district attorney.

00:22:15.660 Everybody in the country knows that.

00:22:17.740 But maybe it's not working.

00:22:20.000 It is working.

00:22:20.760 The reality is there are 2,000 people killed in 20 months.

00:22:24.920 It is working.

00:22:26.420 The reality is when you look at all these different jurisdictions, we have had a devastating

00:22:30.880 blow from the pandemic.

00:22:32.500 And there is absolutely no correlation between being progressive or traditional and the rate

00:22:37.880 of crime.

00:22:38.780 These states in the United States that have a rate of homicide that is 40 percent higher

00:22:43.900 are MAGA states.

00:22:45.540 They are Trump states.

00:22:46.800 I'll say it again.

00:22:47.800 The rate of homicide in Trump states as compared to Biden states, take all 50 of them, is 40

00:22:53.120 percent higher.

00:22:53.800 You know Republicans say the opposite.

00:22:55.200 It's all the blue Republicans lie.

00:22:57.240 I mean, let's just get down to it.

00:22:58.960 Republicans lie.

00:23:00.420 That is what they do.

00:23:01.540 Eight of the 10 cities without not.

00:23:03.560 Well, OK, that's right.

00:23:04.500 Not all of them do.

00:23:05.140 But the MAGA ones do.

00:23:06.420 Eight out of 10 of the most violent cities are Trump cities.

00:23:10.920 Like we got to get real about this.

00:23:12.460 Facts matter.

00:23:13.180 Eight out of 10 of the most violent cities are Trump cities.

00:23:19.720 Is that true or isn't it?

00:23:21.900 I'm going to have to request a citation on that because to my knowledge, that is completely

00:23:27.320 false.

00:23:28.020 And this whole red state murder problem meme is really.

00:23:31.520 Wait, let me pause you on that because I know I know you've got points on that.

00:23:34.020 But can I just say as a fact check, a compilation of June police data from cities with populations

00:23:41.380 greater than 200,000 shows that so far in 2022, the cities with the highest murder rates

00:23:49.240 are in, you know, from top to descending order.

00:23:52.960 New Orleans, Baltimore, Birmingham, St.

00:23:55.340 Louis, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Rochester, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Kansas City.

00:23:59.420 What do all those cities have in common?

00:24:02.500 Democrat mayors.

00:24:04.140 He's just wrong.

00:24:05.220 It's just not true.

00:24:06.080 So that second point he just said, I'll do him the courtesy of not saying it was a lie,

00:24:10.660 but he doesn't have his facts straight at all.

00:24:13.000 The top 10 cities when it comes to violent crime are Democrat controlled cities, not MAGA

00:24:18.560 Trump cities.

00:24:19.740 I mean, give me a break.

00:24:20.660 Really?

00:24:21.620 OK.

00:24:22.060 OK, Philadelphia.

00:24:23.480 Is that a Trump MAGA city?

00:24:25.440 Because last I looked, it looked pretty blue to me.

00:24:27.420 Baltimore, New Orleans.

00:24:29.020 All right.

00:24:29.860 Do your homework, sir.

00:24:31.300 Now, let's go to the larger point of states, because there are red states that are in the

00:24:38.080 top 10 when it comes to states with the biggest crime problems.

00:24:41.820 Go ahead.

00:24:43.100 Yeah, I mean, well, it's just kind of a silly point to make.

00:24:46.440 I mean, first off, you know, state murder rates are an aggregation of crime across a geographic

00:24:52.300 area that can't possibly be occupied at the same time.

00:24:55.300 Right.

00:24:55.520 So it doesn't really tell us anything about how safe or, you know, at risk we are at any

00:25:00.460 given point in time in any given place within that state.

00:25:03.180 So, you know, to me, those rates are usually pretty useless.

00:25:06.520 But if you look at red states and their murder rates, what you'll find is that their murder

00:25:12.460 rates are almost entirely a function or largely a function of their biggest cities, which are

00:25:18.720 often very blue and often very dangerous.

00:25:21.300 Right.

00:25:21.580 So there are a couple of examples that I give in a New York Post piece on this today.

00:25:25.760 If you look at, you know, Mississippi or Louisiana, in Louisiana, New Orleans, Shreveport and Baton Rouge,

00:25:34.580 which are all blue cities, if you took those out of the analysis, Louisiana's state murder rate goes

00:25:40.480 down by nearly 30 percent.

00:25:41.780 In Mississippi, if you just took Jackson, Mississippi out, which is another blue state with a

00:25:45.600 progressive prosecutor, I might add, the state's murder rate goes down by nearly 20 percent.

00:25:50.720 18.7 percent.

00:25:52.780 So, you know, the idea that this sort of red state murder problem is evidence that, you

00:25:58.740 know, conservative MAGA types, as they put it, are just wrong on crime is a little silly

00:26:07.200 because there's really no, they're not making an actual connection between policy and outcomes.

00:26:13.000 I mean, the better question to ask is, are we better off for policy decisions that make

00:26:19.200 it more likely that repeat offenders will spend more time on the street?

00:26:23.100 Are we better off?

00:26:24.780 Oh, wait, I do want to talk to you about the policies that are driving this.

00:26:27.580 But can I can I just stop on Larry Krasner for a second?

00:26:30.380 The D.A.

00:26:31.960 And number one, generally is supposed to be anti-criminal and want to lower the crime rate

00:26:37.340 and be pro-fact.

00:26:38.680 That's why we say of our prosecutors, you have an obligation to the truth and to justice.

00:26:42.380 And if you pursue a crime and you figure out that the guy didn't do it or you don't have

00:26:46.420 a good faith belief that you can convict this guy beyond a reasonable doubt, you're supposed

00:26:50.580 to drop the charges on your own without making it go to trial.

00:26:53.340 You have a different obligation than the defense attorney.

00:26:56.940 This guy is a partisan hack.

00:26:59.460 That's what that soundbite tells me.

00:27:01.180 What he so what Raphael's basically told us is that the only reason he can say that red

00:27:06.080 states Trump Trump supporting red states have a higher murder rate than some blue states

00:27:11.180 is because their largest blue Democrat run cities are jacking up the average in these

00:27:19.180 red states.

00:27:19.860 The reason they have a problematic murder rate and homicide and violent crime rate is because

00:27:23.240 of the Democrat run large cities within the red states.

00:27:27.400 Knowing that, can we just listen to that soundbite again and listen to the dishonesty of this man

00:27:32.780 who's the prosecutor for one of the cities most plagued by homicide and violent crimes in the

00:27:37.820 United States?

00:27:38.440 Here he is again.

00:27:39.520 Larry Krasner.

00:27:41.180 For our reformed district attorney, everybody in the country knows that, but maybe it's

00:27:46.020 not working.

00:27:47.420 It is working.

00:27:48.260 The reality is there aren't 2,000 people killed in 20 months.

00:27:52.440 It is working.

00:27:54.320 The reality is when you look at all these different jurisdictions, we've had a devastating blow

00:27:58.780 from the pandemic and there is absolutely no correlation between being progressive or

00:28:03.920 traditional and the rate of crime.

00:28:05.860 These states in the United States that have a rate of homicide that is 40% higher are MAGA

00:28:12.440 states.

00:28:13.060 They are Trump states.

00:28:14.300 I'll say it again.

00:28:15.300 The rate of homicide in Trump states as compared to Biden states, take all 50 of them, is 40%

00:28:21.180 higher.

00:28:21.300 You know Republicans say the opposite.

00:28:22.840 It's all the blue cities.

00:28:23.820 Republicans lie.

00:28:24.760 I mean, let's just get down to it.

00:28:26.460 Republicans lie.

00:28:27.940 That is what they do.

00:28:29.040 Eight of the 10 cities without not.

00:28:31.080 Well, OK, that's right.

00:28:32.020 Not all of them do.

00:28:32.660 But the MAGA ones do.

00:28:33.920 Eight out of 10 of the most violent cities are Trump cities.

00:28:38.260 Like, we got to get real about this.

00:28:39.980 Facts matter.

00:28:41.980 This is crazy.

00:28:42.920 Those poor Philadelphians, Raphael.

00:28:44.580 I mean, their murder rate is through the roof.

00:28:46.620 And this is the guy that they're depending on to correct that.

00:28:50.500 And all he seems to want to do is mislead and just deny the facts, never mind address

00:28:57.480 them.

00:28:58.660 Yeah.

00:28:58.820 I mean, the audacity is really just jaw dropping.

00:29:01.720 The idea that he would sit there on TV and say that what he's doing is working in the

00:29:06.800 face of all time highs for homicide, right?

00:29:10.920 This is if Philadelphia cannot say like other cities can, that it was worse in the 1990s.

00:29:16.140 No, it is as bad as it has ever been.

00:29:18.480 And that has happened under Larry Krasner's watch.

00:29:21.400 What is it that's where I mean, I suppose he can say it's working insofar as he campaigned

00:29:26.860 on releasing a lot more criminals and not prosecuting a lot more criminals.

00:29:31.720 And not incarcerating a lot more criminals.

00:29:34.000 So, you know, I guess in some sense it's working, but it's not working for the people

00:29:38.360 on the north side that are dealing with violence levels that have never been seen before in

00:29:42.680 that city.

00:29:43.740 I mean, it really is.

00:29:45.400 And these people are not going to go pull the stats and do their homework to figure out

00:29:50.100 whether he's lying to them or not.

00:29:52.040 There's there still tends to be a level of trust in our public officials.

00:29:55.500 We used to really respect prosecutors who put bad guys away.

00:29:59.140 Not this one.

00:30:00.060 This guy is an obfuscator and the nerve to be accusing the Republicans of being liars

00:30:05.640 as he lies through his teeth on television.

00:30:09.820 That one was particularly galling.

00:30:11.780 Now, you you have taken a look at how what got us here.

00:30:16.340 I mean, that's the question, right?

00:30:17.420 Is it is it because the Democrats all say pandemic pandemic drove people crazy, drove people into

00:30:22.000 the streets.

00:30:22.460 We're still recovering from that.

00:30:23.660 That may be a factor in the rising crime rate we've seen over the past few years, but it

00:30:29.600 certainly doesn't tell the whole story.

00:30:31.200 So what does?

00:30:33.520 Yeah.

00:30:33.720 Well, it's the pandemic.

00:30:34.980 Like, I mean, not telling the whole story, I think, is a little bit of an understatement.

00:30:38.600 I mean, the pandemic affected the entire world.

00:30:40.720 The entire world did not see violent crime rise the way that the U.S. saw, right?

00:30:46.180 The pandemic affected the entire country.

00:30:48.620 As far as I can tell, violent crime remained as geographically and demographically concentrated

00:30:53.460 as it was before the pandemic in the post-pandemic years.

00:30:56.760 So, you know, if, in fact, exposure to the pandemic caused people to commit violent crime

00:31:02.840 that otherwise wouldn't commit violent crime, we would have we would have expected to see

00:31:07.460 violent crime become a sort of more widespread problem as opposed to just a bigger problem

00:31:12.520 in the pockets of concentrated crime where it was already a problem.

00:31:17.560 And so, you know, that that is just, I think, something that really has to get said at the

00:31:22.740 outset.

00:31:23.040 But, you know, one of the things that I think we have to open our minds to is the possibility

00:31:27.280 that the broad trend toward decarceration and depolicing has something to do with what

00:31:32.180 we're experiencing right now.

00:31:33.780 And what we're experiencing right now isn't just a function of the post-2020 world.

00:31:38.400 People forget that in 2015 and 2016, the U.S. saw pretty significant increases in the homicide

00:31:44.300 rate across the country.

00:31:46.020 Lots of cities started dealing with much higher rates of crime.

00:31:49.780 Chicago saw something like a 58 percent increase in homicides in 2016.

00:31:53.880 In 2019, Baltimore set its homicide rate record.

00:31:57.820 So this isn't just a pandemic era phenomenon.

00:32:01.520 Now, what might it have to do with?

00:32:03.380 I think it might have something to do with the fact that over the last 15 years, our incarcerated

00:32:10.060 or imprisonment population has gone down by about 20 percent.

00:32:14.680 You know, the pandemic probably contributed to that to some degree insofar as when the

00:32:20.740 court shut down, we saw a lot fewer people going to jail in the short term and more people

00:32:24.960 being released earlier from prisons.

00:32:26.400 And that probably had an impact on public safety.

00:32:28.580 But just as a matter of policy, we have made it less likely that committing a crime will result

00:32:35.100 in incarceration.

00:32:35.840 We have seen the advent of the progressive prosecutor movement to the extent that now nearly 50 million

00:32:41.380 Americans are living in progressive prosecutor jurisdictions.

00:32:44.560 That would have been unheard of 10 years ago.

00:32:47.380 We've seen sentencing reforms, bail reforms, juvenile justice reforms, discovery reforms.

00:32:53.900 All of these things have been aimed in one direction.

00:32:57.000 And that is, like I said before, to lower the costs of committing crime as well as to raise

00:33:02.000 the cost of enforcing the law.

00:33:03.300 And those things have come in the form of new restrictions on prosecutors, you know, new

00:33:08.580 restrictions on police.

00:33:09.620 And we've also seen depolicing as a result of fear on the part of police of being proactive

00:33:15.380 and being treated unfairly and tried and convicted in the court of public opinion for things that

00:33:21.200 were actually completely lawfully done.

00:33:23.400 I mean, I'm thinking here.

00:33:24.240 The post-George Floyd.

00:33:25.960 Yeah.

00:33:26.400 I mean, just think about the Micaiah Bryant case, right?

00:33:28.520 I mean, here is an officer saving the life of of one girl who was about to have a large

00:33:34.780 knife plunged into her abdomen.

00:33:37.040 And he was, you know, plastered all over social media as a racist killer.

00:33:42.800 Mm hmm.

00:33:43.260 This is the one where MSNBC was saying, oh, it was playful.

00:33:46.540 You know, this is playful.

00:33:47.420 This is what you do when you're when you're growing up.

00:33:49.340 And Gadsad has his amazing, his amazing video.

00:33:53.180 I'll never forget going.

00:33:54.520 It was just a tickling of the aorta, you know, like we all used to do when we were growing

00:33:59.520 up.

00:34:00.040 It was absurd.

00:34:02.460 It really, truly is.

00:34:03.660 I mean, we are living in bizarre world in many ways.

00:34:06.060 And so, yeah, I mean, I think all of that in the aggregate is probably explains a big

00:34:12.260 chunk of where we're going and what we're seeing on the streets.

00:34:16.540 You know, there's just no real getting around that.

00:34:20.880 I mean, we know just from from past analyses, incarceration works, policing works.

00:34:28.120 We just haven't invented some other way to produce the same kind of public safety.

00:34:32.640 Well, you know, you just know you have these bleeding hearts who are like, well, incarceration,

00:34:36.180 we need to decarcerate because it disproportionately affects black men.

00:34:40.800 It's like, well, the stats show that that is who's committing the majority of violent crime.

00:34:45.440 These two things are related, but you're supposed to just feel bad.

00:34:49.320 And in the name of racial justice, open the prison doors.

00:34:51.940 That's a good place to pause it because there's much more to discuss, including what's going

00:34:55.500 on in New York City and these videos that have come out, which I will show you right

00:34:58.680 after this break is Raphael stays with us.

00:35:06.860 So decarceration has been the big, big push.

00:35:09.500 No, we've got to let people out of the jails because we have a racist criminal justice system.

00:35:12.580 I mean, BLM basically says, open the jails, open the jails, let them all out.

00:35:15.960 That was on their policy prescription on their website for a long time may still be, which

00:35:20.600 is absurd.

00:35:21.140 Of course, you know, you know how many people who black and brown people in particular are

00:35:25.500 going to get killed if we do that.

00:35:27.820 OK, so that's not going to happen.

00:35:29.880 But decarceration and a racist criminal justice system leading to overcrowding of black and

00:35:36.200 brown people in the jails has been something I've heard from people I respect who are not

00:35:40.620 crazed race essentialists like BLM, too.

00:35:44.720 So what do you say to that?

00:35:46.980 Yeah, I mean, I said we have to understand that just looking at top line disparities doesn't

00:35:53.120 really tell us much about what's going on.

00:35:55.240 Right.

00:35:55.500 The overrepresentation of black and brown men in U.S.

00:35:59.120 prisons is primarily a function of an overrepresentation of black and brown men involved in serious crime.

00:36:06.780 And it is serious crime that lands people in prison.

00:36:10.000 We have this sort of narrative in our country that our incarceration rate reflects a punitive

00:36:14.860 disposition on the part of our nation's criminal justice systems, a systematic failure to provide

00:36:21.620 second chances.

00:36:22.920 And the reality is that could be further for the truth.

00:36:25.400 First of all, post-conviction imprisonment is not even the most likely outcome of a criminal

00:36:31.740 felony case.

00:36:32.500 In the state system, only 40 percent of felony convictions will result in a post-conviction

00:36:38.340 prison sentence.

00:36:39.220 The majority of people are either getting time served in pretrial detention or they're

00:36:43.900 getting sentences of probation or they're having their cases, you know, their sentences deferred.

00:36:48.600 So that's that's number one.

00:36:50.580 Number two is if you look at the average prisoner, this is someone who has somewhere between 10

00:36:55.240 and 12 prior arrests and about five prior convictions.

00:36:59.260 These are not people who have been denied second chances.

00:37:01.720 So then the question becomes, well, is it in fact better to release these people out into

00:37:08.300 the community rather than incarcerate them?

00:37:10.480 And I think the answer to that question is obviously no.

00:37:13.220 And the reason I think that is because I've looked at our recidivism data and our recidivism

00:37:17.220 data show consistently that somewhere in the range of 80 percent of state prisoners will

00:37:22.220 re-offend at least once when they're released.

00:37:24.900 Over a 10-year period, released state prisoners will generate five re-arrests.

00:37:29.840 And that's a lot considering the fact that a good chunk of them will actually find themselves

00:37:34.120 back in prison before that 10-year period is up, which means that they won't be on the

00:37:38.140 street to generate more re-arrests.

00:37:39.940 So, you know, and again, this is a problem that is not going to be evenly distributed.

00:37:44.780 So if we're going to talk about, you know, the over-representation of certain, you know,

00:37:49.560 racial groups in our incarcerated population, we also have to talk about the disparities with

00:37:55.960 respect to the distribution of the risks associated with decarceration.

00:37:59.900 If crime goes up, we know that it's not going to go up in rich white communities.

00:38:04.860 That's just not the reality.

00:38:06.940 And so I just always ask people who harp on the racial disparities in incarceration,

00:38:13.040 why they aren't equally concerned with the racial disparities in victimization.

00:38:18.420 Again, you know, I repeat myself, but the black male homicide victimization rate in this country

00:38:23.640 is 10x that of the white male homicide victimization rate.

00:38:27.320 That is a massive, consistent, and incredibly stark disparity that ought to inform our decisions

00:38:34.240 with respect to whether we should pursue large-scale decarceration, which we simply cannot safely

00:38:39.780 pursue.

00:38:40.160 I mean, you know, the other thing, too, is like, if you just look at the top-line disparities,

00:38:45.880 yeah, it looks bad because, you know, black and brown men are X percent of the population,

00:38:50.460 but X plus some other number percent of the prison population.

00:38:54.200 And the implication is that, you know, well, this is just a function of racial animus within

00:38:58.740 the system.

00:38:59.500 But that's just not true.

00:39:00.580 When you actually look at, you know, at the data and control for race-neutral factors that

00:39:07.660 would explain incarceration, the disparity shrinks to almost nothing, right?

00:39:12.980 So when you control for the type of crime committed, the severity of the crime committed,

00:39:17.240 the age and criminal histories of the offenders, the jurisdiction in which the crime was committed,

00:39:22.720 the disparity in sentencing basically comes down to a matter of weeks, maybe a couple months,

00:39:27.560 which would be a really weird way for judges to manifest their racial animus toward a particular

00:39:33.020 group.

00:39:34.720 And so, you know, it really is one of the more frustrating points that I find myself sort of

00:39:40.420 repeatedly responding to because, you know, it just continues to commit the same two errors,

00:39:45.500 which is one, you're not actually controlling for all the relevant factors that might explain

00:39:48.980 the top-line disparity that you're harping on.

00:39:51.160 And two, you're assuming that whatever disparity remains after you control for those factors,

00:39:55.240 which we know is very, very small, you're attributing that to racial animus

00:40:00.300 without any real basis for that, right? Just because we haven't identified some obvious

00:40:05.420 factor that explains a disparity doesn't mean that racism is the only other explanation.

00:40:11.040 Right. Of course, that's exactly the opposite of what Ibram X.

00:40:15.040 Kennedy believes. Any disparity means racism, and the only answer is racism against the dominant

00:40:19.480 group. Can we just spend one minute on why? Did you take a look at why? Why do black men

00:40:29.120 disproportionately commit the violent crime, right? Like, that seems like a relevant question. I'm

00:40:34.080 sure Kendi would tell me because of white supremacy. You know, we've set up the system in a way that

00:40:38.340 gives them no chance in life, and therefore they resort to a life of crime. But what is the actual

00:40:43.200 answer?

00:40:44.800 Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not sure I have the actual answer. I suspect that culture is a big

00:40:49.780 explanation. It's a big part of the explanation. If you, you know, look at the arguments of people

00:40:57.160 like Kendi and other, you know, sort of decarceration activists, what they'll say is that,

00:41:01.440 well, you know, the broader economic system is sort of rigged against, you know, black men in

00:41:08.360 particular. But that doesn't seem quite right to me. First off, the majority of blacks in our society

00:41:14.580 don't commit crimes. They're completely law abiding, right? So that seems an overly broad explanation

00:41:21.220 for a problem that is very hyper-concentrated within a subset of that population. But it also

00:41:26.940 is in tension with the sort of lack of nexus between the sort of socioeconomic indicators that

00:41:33.940 are being alluded to and the kinds of violence that we're seeing, right? If you look at things

00:41:39.160 like poverty rate, unemployment rate, they don't actually provide clear explanations for violent

00:41:44.920 crime. You know, the poverty rate in New York City, for example, has remained essentially steady

00:41:49.600 since the mid-1980s. And yet we've seen a massive decline in homicides over that period. If you look

00:41:57.160 at, you know, the Great Recession, we saw the unemployment rate in this nation nearly double,

00:42:02.540 and yet homicides declined 15% during that period. Homicides didn't rise in New York City,

00:42:07.220 didn't rise in Chicago. And so, you know, that just doesn't make a ton of sense. You know,

00:42:14.760 there's also what criminologist Barry Latzer likes to call crime adversity mismatch,

00:42:19.320 which is that you can actually sort of identify different culturally identifiable groups and,

00:42:25.080 you know, sort of compare them with respect to socioeconomic status. And what you'll see are

00:42:31.020 sort of consistencies in terms of socioeconomic status, but inconsistencies in terms of involvement

00:42:36.060 in violent crime. I mean, so in New York, for example, Black New Yorkers experience poverty at a

00:42:42.040 lower rate than Asian New Yorkers and Hispanic New Yorkers, yet are represented in among violent

00:42:47.780 crime suspects at much higher rates than both of those groups. So, you know, the sort of basic claim

00:42:53.680 that the sort of economic system is really at the root of these differences, I don't think holds much

00:42:59.420 water. And that kind of leaves us with a potential argument in favor of a cultural explanation,

00:43:06.680 which does make some sense. I mean, I think there's some really good work that's been done on this in

00:43:10.780 the past. And I'm thinking now like Elijah Anderson's 1992 book, I want to say, Code of the

00:43:16.940 Street, where he embedded himself in North Philadelphia, and sort of identified the prevailing

00:43:21.460 social mores. And what he found, you know, through this kind of anthropological study was that there

00:43:28.160 was a sort of culture that elevated violence as a legitimate means of respect acquisition, and as a

00:43:33.560 legitimate means of dispute resolution. And it's that culture that explains the disparate rates of

00:43:39.520 a violent crime in those areas as compared to other areas. And, you know, I do think that it's

00:43:45.140 time, you know, for us to start grappling with the possibility that there's something to that. I know

00:43:49.480 the culture word, you know, makes lots of people really uncomfortable. But, but, you know, the other

00:43:55.260 explanations just don't seem to sort of fit the problem very well.

00:43:59.480 Hmm. I did some stories on inner city Chicago, a couple of years ago, and went right in the heart

00:44:07.900 of, you know, the problem. And it was so it was such a, there was such despair in the community. I

00:44:13.980 talked to a lot of moms, whose sons were in prison, whose husbands were in prison, who live in a in a

00:44:20.120 community where there could be shot at any moment for absolutely nothing. And there will be absolutely

00:44:25.140 no criminal penalties, nine times out of 10 for the shooter. And it's to the point where like,

00:44:30.600 you could get shot just for leaving the neighborhood. Like if you leave the one

00:44:34.820 neighborhood that's controlled by certain gangs or certain people, and crossover, say, for example,

00:44:39.660 the predominantly black neighborhood into the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood,

00:44:42.840 that can be a lethal, a fatal offense. And you can you can be somebody who's trying to better his

00:44:49.300 life, you can be going to a community center trying to, you know, take extra classes and still get

00:44:53.780 shot in a drive by on your walkout. Like there's no respect for, you know what, this kid's trying

00:44:58.520 to get out. This kid's trying to make better of himself and help his mom and do that. Like, no.

00:45:02.520 So I can see how you and of course, most of these homes are fatherless and so on. But it's like,

00:45:07.720 I can see how you'd be living by a different code that would lead you to say, I don't follow the normal

00:45:15.300 rules. And no one's really going to make me and just F this system that doesn't give a shit about me

00:45:21.260 or anybody I love. Yeah, no, I think that the broken homes point is also really important,

00:45:26.640 because, you know, one of the things that the research on family structure tells us is that

00:45:31.920 two parents are generally better than one, assuming that both parents are prosocial,

00:45:36.280 their dispositions. And when you have an absent parent, or you have the presence of an antisocial

00:45:42.140 parent, the socialization process for young children becomes much more likely to break down.

00:45:49.300 And when the socialization process breaks down, that's much more likely to result in conduct

00:45:54.860 disorders, which can then metastasize into full-blown personality disorders. And one of the

00:45:59.400 things that people don't really talk much about is the fact that in the general male population in

00:46:04.860 this country, something like antisocial personality disorder has a prevalence rate of between two and

00:46:09.880 four percent. But in prison settings, it has a prevalence rate of between 40 and 70 percent,

00:46:15.080 which is massive. That's a much higher rate even than poverty, right? So antisocial personality

00:46:21.320 disorder is more common among prisoners than poverty. So is a substance use disorder, which is

00:46:27.040 another thing that we know is very likely to come from small children who develop diagnosable conduct

00:46:34.240 disorders. And we know that conduct disorders are much more likely to develop if the socialization

00:46:39.460 process breaks down, which is much more likely to break down if you don't have two pro-social parents

00:46:45.240 in the house sort of dedicated to that process. I mean, you know, people kind of think that, you know,

00:46:50.000 children are born into the world generally good and that we learn how to be bad. But I think anyone

00:46:54.440 with toddlers knows that that's not true. You know, our sort of natural disposition as, you know,

00:47:01.020 uncivilized humans is to use violence and our parents and our teachers socialize us out of that.

00:47:05.920 And when that process breaks down, it's problematic. Wow. All right. Up next, we're going to get into

00:47:11.560 some specifics. There have been some horrific crime videos making the rounds in the news. And I have to

00:47:17.780 say for good reason, because it does seem to speak to a general deterioration in our humanity. So why,

00:47:25.360 why and what is the answer? Raphael's got thoughts. That's next. And remember, folks, you can find the

00:47:30.200 Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video

00:47:36.060 show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. The

00:47:41.000 YouTube channel's on fire right now. Don't miss all the fun happening over there. If you prefer an

00:47:45.640 audio podcast, follow, download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast

00:47:50.400 for free. And there you will find our full archives, including the very first time Raphael was on

00:47:54.960 in episode 363. Check it out.

00:48:00.200 Raphael, let's talk about what we're seeing. I mean, of course, I live in the New York area and

00:48:07.520 it's horrendous what's happening here. I lived in New York in the late 1990s. I lived downtown. I

00:48:13.960 rode the six train that you mentioned about. This is during the Giuliani era when things started to

00:48:18.080 get better, you know, and then we had Bloomberg. Thanks to Giuliana and Bloomberg, we had a nice long

00:48:23.100 time here in New York where you could live in a neighborhood without having to worry about

00:48:26.660 crime that much. Boy, how things have changed on our horrific last mayor,

00:48:32.060 the soft on crime DA that we now have now and so on. But there was this one video that really

00:48:37.480 underscored. Just how we've lost our moral compass, we've we've lost our connection, our humanity.

00:48:44.560 And it happened just the other day. A dead man, a man was run over by a truck in Midtown Manhattan.

00:48:52.740 I think it was 8th Avenue and 44th Street, which is right right in Midtown. And the guy was in his

00:48:58.760 young fifties. He was there underneath the wheel of the truck dead. It's a tragedy. And some guy ran

00:49:10.460 over and pick pocketed him to the point where they couldn't even identify the guy without checking

00:49:17.760 dental records later because they took his ID. And the worst part of it, maybe it's hard to pick

00:49:23.180 is he was cheered on. These New Yorkers standing there right in the middle of Midtown, New York

00:49:29.840 cheered him. I'm going to play it. You can see it on YouTube later in our listening audience. We'll hear

00:49:34.960 the exuberant cheers as this man picked the pocket of a dead man in Midtown.

00:49:41.300 They loved it. The man still underneath the enormous wheel of the truck dead in front. I don't I don't even

00:50:07.420 know what to say. We've lost our humanity. Yeah, yeah, there really aren't any words that fully

00:50:12.860 capture just how disgusting that is. I mean, you know, it's and the laughter that the sense of

00:50:20.220 enjoyment is, you know, that that's the kind of thing that I think indicates, you know, sort of

00:50:24.840 cultural argument as to what undergirds this, right? Because if you could make the argument that

00:50:31.180 this was just a function of poverty, this is just, you know, someone trying to make ends meet because

00:50:35.840 they're desperate, you that that doesn't come with the laughter that doesn't come with the go ahead

00:50:41.240 gangster. I mean, you know, what is that? It's, I think you're exactly right. I think in a lot of ways,

00:50:47.020 too many people are becoming far too desensitized to tragedy and gore and violence. And that's only

00:50:54.480 going to breed more of it. Yeah, and they see it everywhere. They see it in the New York City subway,

00:50:58.940 former New York governor, Democrat, Patterson came out this week, I think it was and said,

00:51:04.880 I have never felt more unsafe in my life in New York City ever. This is a lifetime record for him.

00:51:12.120 I think a lot of people are feeling that you cannot take the subway anymore. I would not take

00:51:16.880 this up. I took the subway. You mentioned the six train again. I took it every day, every day when

00:51:21.280 I was a young lawyer practicing in Manhattan in 1997 through 1999. Every day I took it. You I would not

00:51:28.860 take the subway anymore. The hell no. There's I saw you had a tweet the other day about the murder

00:51:35.900 rate down in the subway and how we're seeing it go up and up and up this year. I think it's they've

00:51:41.300 had seven this year. Seven people get get killed. That doesn't count. All the people have just been

00:51:45.600 stabbed in the face and stabbed in the shoulder. And these are young dads, young moms doing nothing,

00:51:52.160 nothing wrong. And people say, well, it's only seven. OK, well, it it tends to be one, one per year.

00:52:01.340 Seven is a huge increase. It's the point you were making. And the videos are every day. We see another

00:52:06.680 one of people down in the subway harassing people. Here's just one bizarre one just to show the viewers

00:52:11.460 at home. Some I think it was women dressed as green goblins took to the subway and committed a crime.

00:52:19.160 Um, this is just a video. It was on October 2nd. I don't even know what they're doing.

00:52:24.320 I don't even know. It's like organized crime who think they think it's funny. They think it's going

00:52:29.280 to be like a laugh riot to deck themselves out in bizarre neon green body suits, brutally attacking

00:52:35.060 and mobbing to 19 year olds where Times Square Times Square subway station, 2 a.m. after one of the

00:52:42.320 victims committed the sin of apparently bumping into them happens over and over nine times out of 10,

00:52:48.240 Rafael, though, not always. It's some homeless person shoving somebody onto the tracks.

00:52:53.600 Yeah, no, this is a real problem. I mean, people try to downplay it and say, oh, well,

00:52:57.300 it's only seven. Yeah, well, it's only seven compared to one or zero, right, in prior years

00:53:04.160 before 2020. And that doesn't even begin to account for the fact that we have significantly

00:53:08.980 lower ridership so that on our best day, we're at about 70 percent of what our pre-pandemic

00:53:13.420 ridership was. So the rate's even higher when you account for that change. But basically in the last

00:53:19.180 three years, we have seen a decade's worth of subway murders compressed into three years,

00:53:25.320 less than three years, really, because 2022 isn't over yet. That's a massive change. And it's a change

00:53:30.780 that really matters for the future health of the city, right? If people don't take public

00:53:35.620 transportation out of fear, which is a completely reasonable thing to do. You know, our family got

00:53:41.260 a car recently when my wife took a job in the Bronx because I just didn't want her taking the subway,

00:53:47.160 you know, at six o'clock in the morning by herself and at six o'clock at night by herself.

00:53:52.560 And, you know, I suspect lots of people who can afford to and who are fortunate enough to be in

00:53:57.480 that position are making similar decisions, if not deciding to leave the city altogether on that

00:54:02.140 basis. And that's really, really not good for the future of New York, which depends on a tax base

00:54:08.100 of people that really valued having a 24-7 public transportation system that was safe. I mean,

00:54:15.400 I remember being, you know, young and in college and, you know, in my young professional life,

00:54:20.760 you know, taking the subway home from a bar at 2.30 in the morning, not thinking twice about,

00:54:24.620 you know, closing my eyes and taking a nap. Now, when I take the subway, I don't even,

00:54:28.920 you know, turn my headphones on. I'm, you know, I do feel tense and sometimes afraid. I mean,

00:54:35.640 for the first time in my life, actually, in 2020, I changed cars out of fear of someone who was in

00:54:41.080 the car. I'd never done that. I'd been riding the subway by myself since I'm nine years old.

00:54:45.380 And I had never done that until I was in the mid-30s.

00:54:48.020 Oh my God, I've done that a million times. I've done it a million times. But that's,

00:54:50.820 especially because I was on the subway a lot in my young 20s. And I'm telling you,

00:54:54.360 like, young women in their 20s are the ones who get attacked. I mean, so it's like, you know,

00:54:59.420 when you're a young woman in your 20s, you're at like peak possible victimization. I've moved

00:55:04.080 subway trains more times than I can count. But now everybody's, everybody's in that same boat.

00:55:08.740 That's right. And you know, what's interesting about that is that, you know, there is a mental

00:55:11.920 health problem aspect to this, right? I do think that, you know, we see an overrepresentation of

00:55:17.040 people suffering from mental illness among subway attackers. But what's interesting to me about that is

00:55:21.840 that they're not quite so mentally ill as to attack a, you know, fit, muscular, 25-year-old

00:55:27.820 guy in the prime of his life. They tend to pick on weaker targets who aren't paying attention,

00:55:32.960 who are unsuspecting. And, you know, it's just one of the reasons that more has to be done to get

00:55:40.160 the subways under control. Because again, if people leave that system abruptly, and they already have,

00:55:45.960 right, again, on our best day, we're at about 70% of pre-pandemic ridership.

00:55:50.460 That system, which is already financially taxed, is going to suffer and be degraded further. And

00:55:56.380 that, I think, spells real trouble for the future health of New York as a city.

00:56:01.020 How has policy led to this? You know, how, I'm very curious, you know, from the homelessness that

00:56:07.400 we see everywhere, that why are people naked everywhere now? I mean, like a video a day comes

00:56:12.300 out of somebody naked committing a crime, misbehaving with police, down in the subway all the time,

00:56:19.320 all the time, not to mention human excrement everywhere. It's disgusting. So why? What

00:56:26.060 policies, let's just take New York, because we're on the subject of it, are leading to this?

00:56:31.240 I think the deinstitutionalization that took place throughout the 70s and early 80s has a lot to do

00:56:36.080 with it. And we have sort of built our mental health system in a way that has moved further and further

00:56:41.980 away from models that prioritize real supervision, so that people can actually be forced into compliance

00:56:48.000 with, you know, taking medication so that they can be healthy. This idea that people who are suffering

00:56:53.740 from acute mental illness can just be trusted to go out into the world and take care of themselves

00:56:58.380 is incredibly misguided. And I think is that the misguided nature of that idea is being illustrated

00:57:04.620 for everyone to see. I mean, when I see someone, you know, who is, you know, naked, you know,

00:57:09.840 on the floor of the subway, talking to himself, I don't see compassion, right? There's nothing

00:57:14.480 compassionate about that. You know, again, there were lots of problems with our mental

00:57:19.540 health institutions, which is one of the reasons why there was such a backlash against them. But

00:57:23.620 as is the case with our broader criminal justice policy, you know, the response to a perceived

00:57:30.140 problem cannot be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because oftentimes the unintended

00:57:36.000 consequences of that kind of policy are worse. And I think we're seeing exactly that. I mean,

00:57:41.720 these are unstable individuals who need to be protected from themselves and who other people

00:57:48.020 need to be protected from as well. We're not doing them any favors by allowing them to roam the subways

00:57:53.420 or to roam the streets, to live unhealthily, to not take medications, to suffer, you know, from the

00:58:00.540 psychosis that they're suffering from, and that they're often exacerbating by, you know, taking drugs

00:58:05.720 as well, which is another big part of this. And so, you know, the idea- And by the way, our mayor

00:58:09.580 in New York, basically, our chief of, sorry, our DA, basically said, I'm not going to go after

00:58:15.280 anybody for jumping the fair. So it's like, welcome, go on in there, homeless people and people who are

00:58:21.260 mentally unwell. You're not going to get prosecuted for jumping the turnstile. You don't have to pay your

00:58:25.820 fair way in. And this would be a great place for you to hang out. No one's going to bother you,

00:58:29.640 is essentially what he said. And guess what? They did it. And they started bothering others in record numbers.

00:58:35.720 Yeah, yeah. I think part of it, too, had to do with the pandemic insofar as the subways were

00:58:40.460 essentially emptied. And, you know, there were no real sort of capable guardians in the system

00:58:44.920 keeping order. And, you know, I think as we see in lots of aspects of life, it's very easy to tear

00:58:50.600 something down and not so easy to build something up. I just think about my own physical experience

00:58:55.520 during the pandemic. I was really in shape going into it. And within two months, I was in the worst

00:59:00.460 shape ever, right? Torn down. Eat a few donuts and, you know, have a couple of

00:59:05.640 cocktails at night and there goes your beach bod. Well, I think the same can be said for

00:59:10.280 safety in the city, right? It takes a lot of hard work and vigilance to build up to the point that

00:59:15.100 New York got to. And what we're seeing is a much more rapid deterioration than I think anyone really

00:59:20.000 expected as a result of, you know, these kinds of policy approaches. I mean, the order maintenance

00:59:26.340 has to be a central part of the mission of the city's criminal justice apparatus. The idea that we

00:59:32.120 can just ignore order maintenance and focus on serious crime is just so wrong in so many ways.

00:59:37.420 And one of the ways is that it ignores the significant overlap between people who commit

00:59:42.140 sort of public order offenses and more serious crime. Just the other day.

00:59:45.220 Explain order maintenance.

00:59:47.640 You know, like things like enforcing laws against littering, enforcing laws against fair evasion,

00:59:52.540 enforcing laws against public urination and public defecation and open air drug use.

00:59:56.440 You know, all of these things do, they have a lot of effects. One of them is that it sends a signal

01:00:02.560 to people that they process in the following way. It's like when I go into the subway and I see

01:00:07.420 someone injecting heroin into their arm on my subway platform, as I saw just very recently,

01:00:12.100 what that tells you is that that person feels completely comfortable engaging in that antisocial

01:00:16.280 behavior in that space. And if they feel comfortable, then it's because no one else is in

01:00:20.540 charge of this space. And if no one is in charge, then anything goes. And if anything goes,

01:00:24.480 anything can happen to me, which means that I'm vulnerable. That's how people process that

01:00:28.280 psychologically. This is the great innovation of the broken windows theory. It recognized

01:00:32.240 this psychological impact of exposure to consistent public disorder. When that happens,

01:00:38.060 people do exactly what they're doing now, which is avoid those public spaces that they see as unsafe

01:00:43.200 in greater numbers, which in turn makes them even more vulnerable to more serious kinds of crime.

01:00:48.360 And then on top of that, I mean, there just really isn't such thing as an exclusively violent

01:00:54.900 criminal, right? This idea that we can just sort of take resources from order maintenance and put them

01:01:01.840 towards violent crime investigations is wrong in the following way, which is that there's no one who

01:01:07.080 says like, I'm just a violent criminal, right? I don't jump the turnstile. I don't litter. I don't

01:01:11.600 drive past the speed limit, right?

01:01:13.000 That's not my thing, right? That just doesn't exist, right? People who commit serious violent

01:01:18.880 crime are often very antisocial in their dispositions. And that antisocial disposition

01:01:23.400 will manifest itself in a multitude of ways, including in the commission of quality of life

01:01:30.340 offenses, which is one of the reasons why when Commissioner Bratton took over the transit police

01:01:34.580 in 1990, they had such success in lowering the crime rate underground with respect to their

01:01:39.700 fair evasion program, because one in seven fair evaders had an open warrant and one in something

01:01:45.080 like 20 or 21 were found to be carrying an illegal weapon. So, you know, acknowledging that overlap,

01:01:52.120 I think, is kind of step one towards getting back to a system that recognizes the importance of order

01:01:59.120 maintenance. These are not just victimless crimes, right? You may not be able to identify an individual

01:02:03.820 victim, but the victim is the neighborhood. The victim is the public space itself. And that needs

01:02:09.600 to get reintegrated into our broader crime fighting strategy.

01:02:14.440 You know, this is reminding me a bit of, as you know, we left New York because of the lunacy in

01:02:18.680 the public, in the private schools. It's also happening in the public schools, but moved to

01:02:22.740 Connecticut and our kids are in private school out here and our sons are at an all boys school. And I

01:02:28.260 love the head of school. He's, he's great on all these issues. And he, at our annual dinner the other

01:02:34.380 week was talking about how, um, he, he was endorsing the broken windows policy of Giuliani and saying,

01:02:40.980 you know, that kind of approach to life works not only when it comes to crime, but even when it comes

01:02:47.140 to the raising of young men, young boys and men. And he was saying how they take a similar approach

01:02:52.820 in that, um, he, he was encouraging, encouraging us to have our children make their beds every day,

01:02:58.500 um, to have chores that they really have to do, you know, real responsibilities that they have to

01:03:03.020 live up to. He was saying that's one of the reasons why they have them say the pledge in the lower

01:03:06.340 school every morning. Um, and it reminded me of my older son's complaint that they go outside and

01:03:11.600 they play at recess and, you know, they have to wear their little uniforms. You know, they have a

01:03:15.380 little suit and tie or coat and tie and they play and they run around. And then before they go in for

01:03:20.180 their lunch, they have to tuck in their shirts. They have to fix their ties. They have to make

01:03:23.480 sure their jackets are on. They have to make sure they're not covered in dirt. And my son found it

01:03:26.760 annoying because he just wants to eat, you know, he's hungry and they don't have a lot of time to

01:03:30.640 eat. And the head of school is explaining separately, very coincidentally, the same week my

01:03:36.940 son had complained about this to me, that they make them do that too. For, for very good reason.

01:03:42.880 They're trying to instill order in these kids, not by saying like, walk a straight line,

01:03:48.100 shoulders back, no talking, just respect, respect for one's self, for one's environment,

01:03:54.140 for one's elders and a system, you know, that acknowledges the importance of that,

01:03:59.160 right? That will produce a responsible citizen who takes himself seriously and those around him,

01:04:05.460 you know, respect, he treats them respectfully. So anyway, it's all connected. It's all connected.

01:04:09.720 So when you let them jump the turnstile or urinate on the subway bench, or, you know,

01:04:16.760 the one guy pushed somebody off the subway onto the tracks in the morning, just this past two weeks

01:04:23.120 in New York. And thank God the guy lived. But later that afternoon did the same thing. He did it to

01:04:28.980 somebody else. It's like one little step over the line leads to a bigger step, leads to a bigger step.

01:04:35.740 And then you're making only big steps. So the small stuff matters.

01:04:39.160 It does, it does. And it reflects on society more broadly, right? If you enforce order,

01:04:45.980 you are communicating what the expectations are. And believe it or not, that does affect how people

01:04:51.360 behave in those public spaces. And if you fail to enforce those rules, those rules essentially go away

01:04:58.100 because, you know, enforcement matters. It matters that we communicate, you know, what it is that we

01:05:04.060 expect of our fellow citizens. And I think we've lost sight of that as a city. I think lots of

01:05:09.180 cities have lost sight of that. But, you know, New York is really kind of the city on a hill. And,

01:05:13.220 you know, as was the case in the 90s, when we were moving in the right direction, as New York goes,

01:05:17.480 so goes the rest of the country in a lot of ways. And so, you know, I think this is a real important

01:05:22.380 moment for New York to step up and set an example again. And, you know, I hope we can do that. I think

01:05:27.940 Mayor Adams has his head in the right place. I think the NYPD has its heart in the right place.

01:05:32.260 What I fear is that the broader system, you know, our DAs, our, you know, lawmakers in the city

01:05:39.500 council who are incredibly radical, our lawmakers in Albany are just not on the same page. And until

01:05:45.900 that happens, I think we're going to continue to see things get worse.

01:05:49.120 We have a budded soundbite from Gianno Caldwell of Fox News, whose younger brother, who was just 18,

01:05:55.020 was killed in Chicago. And he's been speaking out about it. And he's also doing reporting on it.

01:06:00.340 By the way, Chicago, we haven't touched on it this time. We talked about it the last time you were

01:06:04.120 here. Chicago is now about to end cash bail entirely. New York and New Jersey passed legislation

01:06:11.640 that largely curtails the use of cash bail. So you basically just write out back out on the streets

01:06:16.640 after you get accused of a crime. And Illinois is going to end it all together, though people

01:06:22.920 accused of some of the worst crimes, forcible felonies, stalking and domestic abuse will be

01:06:27.160 exempt from pretrial release. So they think that that's a reasonable compromise, like the worst

01:06:32.320 felons won't won't be getting pretrial release, but everybody else will get turned out on the street

01:06:36.600 immediately. Anyway, I mentioned it just because Gianno has been doing good reporting. His brother got

01:06:41.960 killed in Chicago. And now Gianno took a microphone to some of these folks here in New York, like Chuck

01:06:47.140 Schumer, Jerry Nadler. He went they were down in Washington, but some of the lawmakers are from New York

01:06:53.380 and and tried to get some accountability from them on what they've done and the policies they've

01:06:58.660 pushed. And it's pretty extraordinary how this went. It was in order of appearance that you hear

01:07:02.760 Jerry Nadler, Chuck Schumer, Ilan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, the last two in particular,

01:07:08.180 huge defund the policers. Take a listen to how that went.

01:07:11.820 I can't do it now. I can't talk now.

01:07:23.200 I'm going to be pretty busy.

01:07:30.820 Tomorrow, is that where? Who should we reach out to in your office, Congressman?

01:07:36.960 You just want to talk about the crime crisis in America.

01:07:41.560 The elevator door is closed.

01:07:42.900 Any reaction to the crime crisis in America? Crime is up, sir. There's a crisis. You have

01:07:47.140 any reaction? You're a leader. I would think you would have a reaction to what's going on

01:07:50.860 in the country. You supported the defund the police movement. It led to a rise in crime.

01:07:54.940 Do you have any reaction? Any reaction? No reaction. It impacts your citizens.

01:08:03.920 Any reaction to the rise in violent crime across the country, which is impacting students?

01:08:09.520 Well, I mean, our work on student debt cancellation is a direct response to what I would consider

01:08:14.400 to be policy violence. You mentioned policy violence. I just want to follow up on that.

01:08:19.920 She got your question. Yeah, I know the policy violence. I just wanted to know,

01:08:22.920 do you feel that the police should still be defunded? Shoot your note. We'll set it.

01:08:28.140 Unbelievable. Unbelievable. But policy, her response, Ayanna Press has been one of the

01:08:35.440 worst on defund the police. Her response is, well, student debt. That's what's leading to

01:08:40.520 all these, this uptick in crime. I don't even know, like, this is going to come back to haunt

01:08:45.200 these Dems in these midterm elections.

01:08:47.920 It should, you know, because that'll send a signal that people aren't going to tolerate

01:08:53.080 arguments as silly as that. I mean, it really is just beyond the pale. I mean, what do you even

01:08:58.260 say to that? There's the, you know, it's, it's as if she just, you know, doesn't care

01:09:02.480 about being, you know, called out. And I suspect she doesn't in part because she just sees herself

01:09:07.680 as, you know, a team member and she's going to be loyal to her team no matter what the facts say.

01:09:12.900 But, but yeah, this is, this is the problem, right? This is, you know, kind of takes us full

01:09:16.640 circle to the beginning of our conversation. This is what, you know, the American people are being told

01:09:21.000 now, you know, to, to, to sort of close their eyes to, they're not, to not believe they're

01:09:25.960 lying. I mean, you know, the Democratic Party has a problem with individuals like this who just

01:09:31.640 are not willing to engage on this issue and are not, at least not in a serious way. You know,

01:09:38.520 the reality is, is that we have experimented with the lives of people who live in already

01:09:43.840 distressed communities. It's like walking into a casino and gambling with the 401k of a complete

01:09:48.000 stranger, right? We're, we're, we're going down a policy road that makes it less likely that crimes

01:09:54.820 will be solved. That makes it less likely that crimes will result in incarcerations. That makes

01:10:00.280 it, you know, much harder for, for police to be proactive that, you know, and, and where's that all

01:10:06.800 happening in the, in the midst of a nearly unprecedented crisis. I mean, I say unprecedented,

01:10:12.500 not because crime has never been hired, but because in 2020, we saw the single largest year

01:10:18.260 over year increase in homicides that our country has ever seen in recorded history that, that should

01:10:23.640 matter. And, you know, it just doesn't seem to be getting the attention that it deserves. And I

01:10:29.780 suspect that's because our broader criminal justice and policing debates have moved concerns,

01:10:35.940 you know, for people who come into contact with the criminal justice system to the front burner of

01:10:40.940 those debates and move concerns for the potential victims of those individuals to the back burner.

01:10:45.560 And I think that needs to change. We need to rebalance that debate. I mean, you know, these are both

01:10:50.780 important considerations, but I suspect that, that, that we have lost sight of, of the true and first

01:10:57.560 duty of government, which is to provide for the public safety. We have definitely seen this raised in

01:11:02.900 debates for the Senate seats in Ohio, in Wisconsin. It's become a campaign issue in terms of the ads

01:11:10.740 in places like Pennsylvania, certainly in New York now and the gubernatorial race, we're seeing it. So on

01:11:16.380 and on, these Republicans are starting to get on message and, and remind people of how we got to this

01:11:22.160 place. It wasn't accidental. It didn't have to happen and it can be undone. Rafael Manguel, thank you so much

01:11:29.040 for all the great, great work you've done in this criminal injustice is the book. Check it out.

01:11:35.080 Thank you.

01:11:36.460 Coming up a new story of a trans woman dominating over biological women in a women's sport. Uh,

01:11:46.680 and the people who run the sport couldn't care less. One of the biological women is here in a moment to

01:11:52.460 speak out. This is another Leah Thomas situation. So this woman is brave to come on and tell us what's

01:11:57.800 happening. Um, that's up next in a Megan Kelly show exclusive. Don't go away.

01:12:06.640 The world of sports continues to navigate through the inclusion of trans players in gender specific

01:12:11.980 leagues and always to the disadvantage of biological women. Professional disc golf is experiencing its own

01:12:19.660 Leah Thomas moment right now with trans women winning top awards and monetary prizes at the expense

01:12:26.140 of the biological women. Some female disc golfers are now speaking out, including our next guest,

01:12:32.200 Jennifer Castro. She's here to share why she is concerned about the position. The professional

01:12:37.260 disc golf association is taking on trans players. Jennifer, welcome to the show.

01:12:43.380 Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks for being here. So just explain for our audience what disc golf

01:12:48.920 is. Cause not everybody knows that sport. Disc golf is basically playing golf, but instead of,

01:12:56.000 um, a hole in the ground, there's a basket and we're throwing Frisbees, you know, that we say discs

01:13:02.600 now, but older generations still say Frisbee. Okay. Okay. Got it. And this is actually, I mean,

01:13:08.640 it's got a, a very devoted following and there are people who've been working on this for decades of

01:13:13.860 their lives. And as you move up in the rankings and the competitions become more professional,

01:13:19.740 you can make some good money as a, as a winner or competitor in these competitions. Oh yeah,

01:13:26.440 absolutely. And we're sponsors alone are paying lots of money to have, uh, players represent them.

01:13:33.780 So it's, it's, there's a lot of money to be made in the sport. And, and like most sports,

01:13:39.340 there's a men's league and a women's league. Yes. Okay. So, well, actually let me correct you. It's

01:13:45.980 not men's, it's a mixed league. So it's primarily men that play in that division, but it's not considered

01:13:53.220 men's. It's now mixed. Hmm. Oh, so a trans man can play against the biological men. Correct. Yeah.

01:14:02.100 Which of course, I mean, it never works the other way. You know, it's like, that's fine. They can say

01:14:05.140 that's fine, but they'll never win. So is it a situation where a man's physical advantages over

01:14:11.480 a woman could be helpful to it? Like a trans woman is a biological man. So like in the Leah Thomas

01:14:17.720 situation, we could see that this, this man, biological man had physical advantages over

01:14:23.520 the other swimmers. Is this the same situation? Oh yeah, definitely. We are absolutely seeing that

01:14:28.780 across the board. Um, recently, uh, Natalie Ryan just won the distance competition and through 458

01:14:36.780 feet. The average woman is about 250. So that makes it a big advantage for these transgender players.

01:14:46.420 This is Natalie Ryan that we're showing on the screen right now. So you're saying that the,

01:14:50.600 that the trans women like Natalie can throw the frisbee much farther than the biological woman can.

01:14:56.620 Okay. And that's obviously an advantage because you want to make the frisbee in the hole in as few

01:15:01.720 throws as possible. Precise. Okay. So how, how you're an amateur player, right? You're not a,

01:15:08.720 you're not a professional player. Correct. And what was the first you noticed trans women are coming

01:15:15.400 into this sport and they're starting to crush the biological women? Um, honestly, when I started

01:15:20.780 playing about three years ago, um, locally to where I was at at the time, there was a transgender

01:15:26.520 player, uh, but however she was playing in the mixed division. So I have a lot of respect for her

01:15:31.720 because she knows what her talent level is and that she can handle her own. And so she played,

01:15:38.160 plays in the mixed division. Um, but then we started seeing a bunch of transgenders in the female,

01:15:44.440 uh, divisions and I'm watching it on TV and I'm just seeing all of these biological women just being

01:15:51.620 crushed and having, you know, their financial security basically at risk the entire time.

01:15:56.960 Yeah. Their financial security. Exactly. Because they're not going to win. That's your point. Like

01:16:01.660 in most of these competitions, they're going to lose to the trans women. All right. So then there was an

01:16:06.600 event at, um, you tell me how you, how you pronounce this. I'd see it as D glow, um, which is a big elite

01:16:15.100 event. When was that? And what happened? Uh, that was back in July. Um, and Natalie Ryan took first

01:16:27.260 place in that. And it was the first time, uh, she had won a major event, um, and took such a prize

01:16:35.080 purse from the biological females. So how much did, how much did Natalie win? Uh, I don't have the exact

01:16:44.240 number offhand. I believe it was six, actually it was six grand, 6,000 bucks, 6,000. Yes. And how

01:16:51.880 often do these competitions come along? Oh, they're all the time there. They, these pros are touring all

01:16:58.080 the time. Um, locally I have one about every weekend, sometimes two. So you could really support

01:17:03.860 yourself doing this if you're good at it. Yes. If you're pro yes. And how long has Natalie Ryan,

01:17:11.360 this trans woman been playing disc golf? Do you know? Three years, three years as a woman or three,

01:17:18.560 just three years total, three years total. She's been playing about as long as I have.

01:17:23.900 And so you, she goes up against biological women who've been playing the sport for 10 plus years.

01:17:31.000 And how's that, how's that going? Um, honestly, it's kind of defeating because a lot of the females

01:17:37.560 work day in and day night, day in and day out, you know, to make sure that their game is to a level

01:17:43.660 where they can, you know, get the furthest distance and be the best in their fields. Cause

01:17:49.100 females, if you're not one of the best, you're not going to get a sponsorship,

01:17:52.980 you know, worth, worth it financially. So they're doing the best they can and they can't keep up with

01:18:00.040 these men. And so the spotlight is in essence being taken away from them. And instead of them

01:18:04.520 being celebrated, like they should be, they're basically being forgotten or the opposite is,

01:18:11.180 which is happening now. It's the transgender is getting all of the limelight and it's kind of

01:18:17.260 almost negative, negative to be a biological woman. Like you're not the fun, sexy, exciting new

01:18:25.580 thing. Exactly. We're not even, we're like a blip now because the transgender in disc golf happens to

01:18:34.240 be the big story. Wow. And it's not just Natalie Ryan. It looks like, um, there's a couple of trans

01:18:40.640 players. Uh, one of whom I know you raised this issue, Chloe Alice, we have on camera admitting that

01:18:49.640 Chloe sometimes forget to take, forgets to take Chloe's quote, pretty pills, which is what Chloe

01:18:56.600 needs to take to transition from male to female. Chloe's talking about, I guess, estrogen, uh, and

01:19:02.780 you know, the, whatever Chloe has to take to appear and, and seem, I guess, I don't know how to say it

01:19:10.020 more female than Chloe actually is. Cause Chloe's a biological man. Here's that soundbite. It's number 12.

01:19:14.960 They give me medicine. I'm supposed to take it twice a day, every day. They're called my pretty

01:19:22.160 pills. I forget to take these a lot. You know, just the medicine that's solely responsible for

01:19:29.340 creating a lot of what I am today. Just forget whatever. It's whatever. Three days will go by

01:19:37.560 and I'll like, remember, Oh, I haven't taken my pills. If I stopped taking these for an extended period

01:19:44.060 of time, I will start reverting back, like transitioning back to how my natural testosterone

01:19:52.840 works. Hmm. And okay. So there may be a lot of people out there saying, well, if the testosterone

01:20:01.000 spiked up, disc golf would tell this person, Chloe, you may no longer compete because your testosterone

01:20:07.720 rose to a level that was not appropriate for the women's division. But is that true?

01:20:14.060 Not at all. We recently found out, um, that they don't do any testing whatsoever.

01:20:21.060 So you found this out because you decided as, as an amateur player, which I have to tip my hat to

01:20:27.700 you because it's pretty ballsy, um, to do a little experiment on whether they were actually doing any

01:20:34.760 enforcement to make sure testosterone levels were at a certain place, or that these are not just,

01:20:39.760 you know, completely biological men claiming that they're women and overnight playing in the women's

01:20:45.880 league. And tell us about how that went. Uh, back in August, uh, August 30th, I decided to set up an

01:20:54.100 email account cause I kind of wanted to know how it was working from the ground up to get some kind of

01:20:58.800 answers. Um, so I set up this email and I messaged the board and asked them, I did an inquiry asking them

01:21:06.680 as a transgender woman, do I need to document or show any documentation, prove that I had the

01:21:11.880 surgery, et cetera. Uh, and I was told that a medical committee member would get back in touch

01:21:18.020 with me. And the person who reached back out to me happened to be Elaine King, who is big in the

01:21:23.440 disc golf world in very respectable, respectable woman, um, in the FPO field. So she was the one that

01:21:31.320 messaged me back, basically letting me know that one, they don't test, they don't look for, I don't

01:21:38.740 need to have the surgery. All I had to do was basically read the criteria. And if I felt that

01:21:43.920 I met the criteria, then I could definitely join as a female. And what about testosterone levels?

01:21:51.060 Would they ever be checked? No. The only time anything ever gets checked is when they started

01:21:57.120 off disc golf as a man and decided that they wanted to transition in that case, they would have to show

01:22:03.020 12 months straight of being under 10, um, nano nanomoles per liter, um, of testosterone to make

01:22:12.680 it acceptable and fair, or they have to have the, um, surgery, the reassignment surgery. And Chloe is

01:22:21.640 one that has neither. So in essence, she is a man playing against women. Chloe came on the scene as a trans

01:22:29.700 player. Like Chloe wasn't Clyde. Chloe actually started as Chloe did start as a man and she took two

01:22:38.540 years off, but the way, um, we've looked at it, it's nothing. If they're not being asked for anything, she

01:22:45.640 didn't supply anything. We highly doubt the, the PDGA is definitely not letting us know whether,

01:22:51.120 or anybody has submitted anything and we can't do anything. We can't challenge it. We can't,

01:22:56.160 you know, show anything. The only time we can challenge is, challenge it is if we have

01:23:01.220 actual evidence. And the only evidence that'll work is if a doctor breaks HIPAA and gives us the

01:23:07.040 documentation we need. And they're not going to do that. So you can't just say we want Chloe tested

01:23:11.880 because Chloe looks exactly like a man and is the size of a man and was playing as a man very recently.

01:23:18.320 So we want the testosterone tested because to keep it fair, you can't do that. You need somebody to

01:23:22.940 actually leak to you a test or some sort of documentation that you could bring to them.

01:23:29.640 Yeah. We need to have medical documentation to prove it or else the medical committee will just

01:23:34.860 throw out the challenges when I was told. So they're, they're basically encouraging you to commit a crime

01:23:40.560 to investigate this issue. From what I was told is the PDGA is not big enough yet to be able to do

01:23:49.580 the medical testing. So they've got it written in their bylaws that this is what they have to do in

01:23:55.920 order to, you know, play as a female, but they've openly admitted they don't have the money to make

01:24:02.440 sure that, you know, the testing is being carried out. So they just expect nobody to challenge it.

01:24:07.900 And, and I, I mean, I don't know if this would be sufficient to you, but could they go back to

01:24:13.540 Chloe and say, you need to prove it. You need to submit your testing to us on your own dime.

01:24:19.260 I would hope so. Plenty of people have put in challenges, but we're getting a copy and paste

01:24:24.780 response on it. So I highly doubt that they're doing anything. What's the copy and paste response?

01:24:29.760 It's basically saying that the subcommittee and the medical committee, um, are meeting soon,

01:24:37.620 which happened to be last night to take a vote on it and submit their results to the board of

01:24:43.040 directors on what they think should be done as far as transgenders playing with, with females.

01:24:48.520 So do you think they're reevaluating it? Do you think there's a chance that this Chloe and, uh,

01:24:53.380 Natalie Ryan, and I know there's a couple of others might get booted out of the women's league?

01:24:57.920 Uh, I would certainly hope so, but we're not holding our breath. Every, everything that's

01:25:03.680 been thrown out there or proven has been combated with, uh, very, uh, a very lack response. They're,

01:25:12.660 they're not helping out in any way, shape or form. And the, currently the BOD sits where there's

01:25:18.100 four who are biased leaning towards this happening and two who aren't. So we're kind of,

01:25:23.800 the only way we can make a change is if it gets out there. And unfortunately, sponsors aren't

01:25:29.360 letting the pros speak. And the pros are the ones that need to be able to speak. So the PDGA sees

01:25:34.280 that there is an issue. I want to talk about the pros. I want to talk about them. Yeah. I'm just

01:25:40.120 an amateur. Let me, yeah. So you've got more freedom, but what that four to makeup on the board,

01:25:45.660 that's going to decide this. Um, do we know anything about those folks and what their leanings are?

01:25:50.760 You say, you think it's, you know, four who want the trans people to compete against the women and

01:25:54.980 two who might not like, I mean, cause I only ask because we've seen this happen time and time again,

01:26:00.720 where the entire board making the decision is men or trans women. And there's no biological woman

01:26:08.560 on the board representing them who are the, the ones who are going to suffer if it goes the wrong way.

01:26:14.540 Um, yeah, we have, uh, two men that are definitely for it. Uh, we have a transgender who's obviously

01:26:22.540 for it. And then we have a doctor who specializes in, uh, that field. So she is also very for it.

01:26:31.600 Of course. Uh, like I'm telling you, there's no hope for it. You can take it to the bank. So I know

01:26:37.200 I read the Quillette piece, which they, which is how I found you. And I thought it was really

01:26:40.840 interesting. And they were saying that when you got your receipt, your response email from this

01:26:46.180 Elaine King, who's the head of medical community or committee, um, she, she informed you that no

01:26:54.460 proof. This is when she thought you were a trans woman versus on your, based on your email, no proof

01:26:59.020 of gender reassignment surgeries needed. Testing is not done to make sure testosterone level is at the

01:27:04.700 proper levels. Nothing will be monitored. Uh, once you are a member of the group and allowed to play,

01:27:11.560 no one can challenge a trans woman based on looks or ability, even though, I mean, it's so obvious

01:27:18.020 when you show that video of Natalie Ryan throwing the disc, I mean, this is clearly a man. I, with all

01:27:23.200 due respect, I understand that this person identifies as trans trans, but this is clearly a biological man

01:27:27.820 who's made actually very little effort to appear a female in order to challenge. Uh, we must have

01:27:33.740 proof. This is what you were just pointing out. You, you, you can't get proof without a doctor

01:27:38.480 breaking HIPAA and that all you would have to do is read the criteria for playing in the women's

01:27:44.580 league. And if you felt you met the criteria, that was all that was needed to register as a female

01:27:50.380 in the gender protected division. I mean, this is no protection at all. This is basically a middle

01:27:57.640 finger to the biological women competing as amateurs or pros. Exactly. So have you heard

01:28:04.540 from the pros? Have any of the pros who feel less able to speak out spoken to you off the record

01:28:10.020 behind the scenes? I've spoken to some behind the scenes and I have yet to speak to one who is

01:28:16.240 actually for it. Not one. And I, I, I truly invite them to message me or get in contact with me

01:28:24.060 because I'd love to hear a different point of view, but we have science on our side and they

01:28:29.300 need to go off the science on this because we fought for years to get this protective division

01:28:33.880 and just to go back and undo it. It's basically two mixed divisions again.

01:28:40.120 Two mixed divisions, right? Where I see. So you fought to get a female league so that you can get

01:28:44.680 your own sponsorships and prize money and so on. Exactly. So it's financially feasible for women to be

01:28:52.780 able to be professional athletes in this field, in this sport.

01:28:57.320 So what, what are, what are the women saying? You know, you say you've spoken to a couple of them.

01:29:01.500 Like, how are they feeling?

01:29:04.800 Some of them don't feel that their form is very great. Like a lot of these females,

01:29:11.920 that transgenders that are playing as female, they haven't been in the game very long. And for them

01:29:18.140 to be in the game and automatically be conquering in the sport, it's just baffling. And we're just

01:29:27.320 dumbfounded by it. And we just feel like we're being robbed here and nobody's listening.

01:29:31.780 Um, I have made an effort to like, look everybody's individuals, um, PDGA records. Like for example,

01:29:42.460 Chloe Alice, who we were looking up for before she did her transition, she was playing in men's

01:29:48.420 advance amateur league. She wasn't even professional. She was an amateur. So she was playing for plastic.

01:29:54.440 So for her to go and do this transition and come back and professionally play in the female league

01:30:04.720 and winning and taking money from women, it's like, if you hadn't gone through this transition,

01:30:10.120 you would still be playing for a disc. And even when she was playing advanced, she wasn't placing

01:30:15.800 to even get free discs. So it's clearly an advantage here.

01:30:20.740 It's just like the Leah Thomas situation where when Leah Thomas was Will Thomas,

01:30:25.020 he was placing 500th plus in the league. That's where he was ranked. And then as soon as he said

01:30:31.000 he was a woman, he was number one and winning tournaments, including at the NCAA. So I understand

01:30:37.780 as they reevaluate what they want their policy to be, they sent out some survey, uh, to all the

01:30:44.820 professional disc golf association members last week, and it's causing some outrage. Why is that?

01:30:51.620 The survey that was sent out, we were informed through email from the PDGA on an official

01:30:58.060 letterhead that it was going to be through a university. They didn't tell us which one at the

01:31:02.840 time, but it was supposed to help the board make a decision on what they should do about transgenders

01:31:09.660 playing in the female divisions. And so when the email went out the very next day, and we all looked

01:31:15.460 today, it took about five minutes for everybody to get on social media outlets with just rage because

01:31:21.760 all about two questions had anything to do with the topic at all. The rest was, um, should my child be

01:31:30.340 well-behaved or obedient? Should, or is it more, um, on becoming for a woman to be pushy or for a man

01:31:39.220 to be pushy? Are you left-leaning on a scale from zero to seven or are you right-leaning? It's like,

01:31:44.580 what? What? It had nothing to do with the topic on hand.

01:31:49.840 So what, like, are they just looking for cover? I don't understand. Like, why would they go through

01:31:55.360 the effort? Because I think there's at least a couple transgender questions on that survey. What,

01:31:59.280 what's the point? What are the care, whether you're left-leaning or right-leaning?

01:32:02.240 We couldn't quite understand it. Um, and because nothing was like given out as far as like who was

01:32:11.620 doing the survey university and stuff. I actually saw in the, um, link that was sent to us that it

01:32:18.740 was WDU. So I looked it up and I called Western Carolina university and I asked them, Hey, who's

01:32:24.560 responsible for doing this survey? Because a lot of us disc golfers have questions on it. And he asked me

01:32:31.720 to send him a link. I did. And when he received it and looked it up on his end, he was like, Oh,

01:32:36.380 it's associate professor, Justin Mick. I'm going to mess with this thing. McKinney. McKinney. Um,

01:32:44.040 anyway, he happens to be the old president of the professional disc golf association. So they were

01:32:51.040 hiding this survey through the university without saying, Hey, it's actually the board giving you this

01:32:56.420 survey. Hmm. It's a, sounds agenda driven. I mean, that's the bottom line.

01:33:01.040 It really is. So what happens to you as an amateur player, aspiring to move up? I imagine

01:33:05.960 what, if they say transgender players can continue on as is no proof of anything required.

01:33:14.040 What will you do?

01:33:16.160 Myself and a whole lot of females that are playing right now, as well as men have decided

01:33:21.780 they're not going to re up their membership with the professional disc golf association.

01:33:25.380 If they don't make this right, it's just not fair. There's no point in us paying registration fees to

01:33:31.920 get into these are not cheap. So we're putting our money into something in the hopes that we're going

01:33:37.720 to get something back. And when we don't, because we have no chance because there's a man playing in

01:33:44.800 our division, then there's really no point in registering whatsoever. So a lot of people are just

01:33:50.100 like, I'm just not going to pay for another membership this year.

01:33:53.820 How do the trans women react when they win and they beat all the biological women?

01:33:59.820 Um, well, I can tell you, Natalie, uh, Ryan definitely thinks that she is a ambassador for

01:34:06.620 the sport now for transgender women and has a very almost cocky attitude about how great she is.

01:34:15.300 And she doesn't need to practice all that often. And women are just like, we're working in day in

01:34:20.360 and day out to be able to beat them for her to be able to just like, it's no big deal. It's like,

01:34:26.580 ouch.

01:34:29.140 It's just like Leah Thomas all over again, who's completely unsympathetic to the plight of the women

01:34:35.800 whose titles and trophies Leah has now taken. Uh, Jennifer, it is brave of you to speak out on

01:34:42.960 this, but you're in the, you're in the moral, right? I think you know that. And we're going

01:34:46.540 to continue to follow this. Uh, this is, it's not right. What's happening to you and to the other

01:34:50.880 women in your sport. So please keep us, keep us informed. Okay. We'll do a follow-up when you get

01:34:54.860 a ruling.

01:34:55.740 I will do. Thank you so much.

01:34:57.940 And, uh, we look forward in naming names, uh, of the people who, who issue that ruling,

01:35:02.500 Jennifer, all the best.

01:35:03.220 Remember we talked about that story on the documentary focused on reform terrorists that

01:35:08.980 the left seemed to love until they decided it was somehow racist and turned against it.

01:35:13.560 That filmmaker will be here exclusively tomorrow. I just watched it. It's extraordinary. Don't miss it.

01:35:19.960 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 12, 2022

Crime in American Cities, and Myth of ＂Red State Murder Problem,＂ with Rafael Mangual and Jennifer Castro ｜ Ep. 410

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