The Megyn Kelly Show - July 20, 2021


Defund The Police Consequences, with Larry Elder and Don and Sondra Samuels | Ep. 131


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 25 minutes

Words per Minute

187.86337

Word Count

16,027

Sentence Count

1,263

Misogynist Sentences

39

Hate Speech Sentences

22


Summary

Larry Elder and Sondra and Don Samuels join Megyn on the show to talk about the recall effort against Gov. Gavin Newsom, and why they think he has a chance to get on the ballot. Megyn also talks about the Minneapolis City Council's attempt to defund the Minneapolis Police Department.


Transcript

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:12.260 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:15.340 I'm in a hurry because you have got to hear our guests today.
00:00:18.120 We just finished taping with them.
00:00:19.900 My adrenaline is flowing. They were so good.
00:00:22.640 We just did three amazing interviews.
00:00:25.160 If you don't like this show, I'm not the show for you, right?
00:00:27.920 This is not the show for you, but you will love this show. It's amazing.
00:00:31.600 All right, we're going to kick it off with Larry Elder, who now is running to replace Gavin Newsom as the California governor.
00:00:38.400 You know there's the recall effort to vote September 14th, and Larry has just thrown his hat into the ring.
00:00:44.180 But the Secretary of State of California is giving him some guff on it and getting himself on the ballot.
00:00:49.080 I think it'll happen, but so far they've been giving him sort of the rope-a-dope.
00:00:52.280 So we're going to talk to Larry about that first and see whether he's actually got a chance.
00:00:55.820 What does he think? What's the plan? What's he going to do out there?
00:00:59.100 They have had Republican governors, even though it's a blue state.
00:01:02.260 And then we're going to be joined by two people you're going to want to know, Don Samuels and Sondra Samuels.
00:01:07.680 They have lived in the north side of Minneapolis for 24 years, and they are speaking out about the defund, the police, not just effort,
00:01:16.920 but measures that have been taken there by their city council over the past year in the wake of George Floyd.
00:01:22.000 I found the interview so infuriating, inspiring, illuminating, invigorating, all my eyes.
00:01:30.340 Just listen to them, okay? Please, please, please, please listen to what they have to say.
00:01:34.520 Voices of reason on this whole problem on both sides.
00:01:38.780 They will open your eyes if you think police can commit no harm,
00:01:41.580 and they will open your eyes if you think police need to be eliminated, defunded,
00:01:45.780 and replaced with some, you know, random citizenry body.
00:01:48.800 They're great. Okay, we're going to get to them in one second. First this.
00:01:58.260 Larry Elder, how are you?
00:02:00.300 I'm well, Megan. How are you?
00:02:01.940 You've been busy since we last spoke, Mr. Governor.
00:02:06.020 I ran a small business for about 14 years, and somebody once said,
00:02:10.480 running a business is an exercise in terror and disorder.
00:02:13.660 Whoever said that has never run a political campaign.
00:02:15.880 This has just been a very, very wild ride, and I think I've been officially a politician for about 6.5 days now.
00:02:23.140 Is it awful? It seems awful.
00:02:26.040 It's different.
00:02:27.400 You know, they've kept me off the ballot.
00:02:30.640 I'm not on the ballot that was just released.
00:02:33.260 It's not the certified ballot. That won't come out until Wednesday.
00:02:36.160 And we're in court.
00:02:36.900 And apparently what I failed to do was redact my Social Security number, which I was required to do.
00:02:43.280 And the purpose behind that is to protect the candidate.
00:02:46.320 So if somehow I screwed up or intentionally kept my Social Security number on there,
00:02:51.560 the only person who's harmed is me.
00:02:53.620 And nobody that I've talked to, none of the election lawyers that I've hired or the ones I've spoken to just for consultation,
00:02:59.420 believe it is serious enough to keep me off the ballot.
00:03:01.640 So we filed a writ in court last night.
00:03:04.300 We're going to have a hearing on Wednesday, and I would be shocked if I don't prevail
00:03:08.120 and I ultimately get on the certified ballot come Wednesday.
00:03:11.460 I'm going to run against this governor, and I'm going to take him down.
00:03:14.860 And, Megan, I believe the reason for this is because they're afraid of me.
00:03:18.520 Somebody asked me whether or not it was because of race.
00:03:20.880 I said, please, it's because of face, as in the face of Larry Elder.
00:03:24.240 That's who they're scared of, and that's what I think has happened.
00:03:26.540 This is only the second gubernatorial recall in California history.
00:03:31.500 The first one was in 2003 when Governor Gray Davis lost to Schwarzenegger.
00:03:36.360 So it would be a huge deal if Gavin Newsom is actually recalled.
00:03:39.980 And the way I understand it is you get on the ballot.
00:03:42.380 That's the battle you're fighting right now, getting your name on the ballot.
00:03:45.040 And it does seem like they're doing a rope-a-dope with you, Larry,
00:03:48.100 because the Secretary of State had the opportunity to call any deficiencies,
00:03:53.020 alleged deficiencies to your attention.
00:03:55.000 It didn't happen.
00:03:56.660 Suddenly, you're not on there.
00:03:58.560 And yours is, I mean, really, you and Caitlyn Jenner are the only truly recognizable names
00:04:05.260 on the list, although there's something like 60 potential candidates.
00:04:08.440 I've heard between 20 and 60.
00:04:09.640 I don't know what the final number is.
00:04:10.660 But you're the one getting a lot of attention right now since Caitlyn's kind of petered out.
00:04:15.620 So do you think it was intentional that they found an error that would keep your name off
00:04:20.760 of the list, at least for now?
00:04:22.240 You know, I'm not a big conspiracy person, but it looks awfully, awfully fishy.
00:04:27.480 You know, you're a lawyer.
00:04:28.220 I'm a lawyer.
00:04:29.020 I filed 300 pages.
00:04:31.240 And this is the first time this law has ever really been used.
00:04:34.160 It was designed.
00:04:35.500 The requirement to turn in five years of tax returns was designed to make Donald Trump have
00:04:40.880 turned over his tax returns, this is before they were turned over or stolen, on the California
00:04:46.000 ballot for 2020.
00:04:47.480 It was litigated all the way up to the California Supreme Court, Megan, and seven zip, it was
00:04:51.480 ruled unconstitutional.
00:04:52.840 But they did let it stand as to gubernatorial elections.
00:04:55.800 It isn't even clear whether it applies to recall elections like this one.
00:04:59.660 But the bottom line is, to use a fancy word, whatever errors I had on my applications is
00:05:06.120 de minimis.
00:05:06.700 It doesn't really mean anything, and it ought not keep me off the ballot.
00:05:10.700 This petition had 2.2 signatures to recall this man, and many of them were Democrats and
00:05:16.240 independents.
00:05:16.740 And they were cheesed off by a number of things, most notably the way he slammed down this economy
00:05:21.280 for the coronavirus, while he had his own kids enjoying in-school private education, while
00:05:26.640 he exempted his own business and destroyed the lives of so many businesses here in California.
00:05:31.480 Only one half of all the jobs have come back, as opposed to two-thirds in the average state
00:05:35.940 outside of California.
00:05:37.320 And then we have the rise in crime, and the rise in homelessness, and the outrageous cost
00:05:42.100 of living.
00:05:42.840 And this governor either is too incompetent or too unconcerned to do anything about it.
00:05:47.140 So for all those reasons, I'm getting into this race.
00:05:49.280 Mm-hmm.
00:05:50.480 Now, is it true that, because I want to get back into the legal challenge, actually, for
00:05:54.100 one second.
00:05:55.000 Do you think that by Wednesday, you'll have a ruling saying they have to put your name
00:05:58.680 on the ballot?
00:05:59.820 I do.
00:06:00.620 There'll be a ruling by Wednesday.
00:06:02.300 And if we lose, and we're not going to, it'll be appealed.
00:06:05.160 And if it goes up to the same seven Supreme Court justices who ruled unanimously that this
00:06:09.800 law did not apply to Donald Trump, I don't believe that they're going to rule against me.
00:06:15.140 This is just absolutely insane.
00:06:16.640 And furthermore, there are at least two other rival candidates, rival Republicans, who didn't
00:06:21.320 even turn in their 2020 tax returns.
00:06:23.520 Now, the IRS has given people an extension because of COVID, and I'm not saying they didn't
00:06:27.360 comply, and I'm not saying they should be kicked off the ballot.
00:06:29.400 But can you imagine what they would have done to me had I not included my 2020 tax returns,
00:06:33.300 which, in fact, I did?
00:06:34.960 Right.
00:06:35.520 Exactly.
00:06:36.060 Well, it does make you wonder.
00:06:37.260 And why didn't they take the opportunity to raise this with you prior to when they released
00:06:41.400 the list?
00:06:41.780 But we're still in time at this point because the vote is not until, what, September 14th?
00:06:47.260 That's right.
00:06:47.980 And there's a provision that allows the Secretary of State to correct any redactions or things
00:06:54.680 that should have been redacted that weren't redacted.
00:06:56.460 So she could have done something had she wanted to.
00:06:58.360 And by the way, this new law doesn't even apply to Governor Gavin Newsom.
00:07:01.840 He doesn't have to turn over five years of his tax return.
00:07:04.220 So there's also an equal protection argument that we also made.
00:07:07.020 So there's a bunch of arguments that have been made, any one of which, in my opinion,
00:07:11.360 is powerful enough to reveal on its own, let alone about a half a dozen major arguments
00:07:15.760 that we've made.
00:07:16.440 And we're going to post the brief online sometime before the end of the day.
00:07:21.160 Okay.
00:07:21.620 So assuming that you succeed in this battle to get your name on the actual ballot, then
00:07:25.600 the vote comes along in September.
00:07:27.220 And as I understand it, there are two questions on the recall ballot.
00:07:31.500 One is, do you want to recall Gavin Newsom?
00:07:33.420 And only if they get a majority in response to that, do they move on to question number
00:07:36.860 two, which is, who would you like to replace him with?
00:07:39.160 And that's where you hope your name will be.
00:07:41.880 Caitlyn Jenner's name will be.
00:07:43.400 Former mayor of San Diego's name will be.
00:07:45.340 Some businessmen and so on.
00:07:46.560 And on down goes the list.
00:07:48.680 Let me just ask you about Caitlyn.
00:07:50.120 Do you think she still has a shot?
00:07:51.840 She's just announced she's going off to Australia to film Big Brother VIP.
00:07:58.080 And she says, look, I'm just honoring a prior work commitment, but I'm still totally into this
00:08:02.340 race.
00:08:02.640 Yeah.
00:08:03.420 Well, Megan, with all due respect, I'm going to duck your question because when I get that
00:08:07.820 question, that means that we're turning our cannon fire on each other.
00:08:11.320 It's a circular firing squad.
00:08:12.800 As you pointed out, the first question is whether or not this man is going to be recalled.
00:08:16.720 And that requires 50% plus one vote.
00:08:19.240 After that, the next question is, whom do you want to replace him?
00:08:22.400 And whoever gets the greatest number will then replace him.
00:08:25.080 But until and unless 50% plus one voter votes to recall Gavin Newsom, it doesn't matter how I
00:08:30.200 feel about the rest of the candidates.
00:08:31.440 So I want us all and I urge all the Republicans to keep your eye on the prize.
00:08:36.360 The prize is Gavin Newsom.
00:08:37.600 Gavin Newsom has got to go.
00:08:39.260 This guy has lied about how many fallen trees he's cleared because we have our fifth season,
00:08:45.280 which is called fire season.
00:08:46.360 We have an infrastructure for water and for power that is for a state half the size because
00:08:51.700 of the environmental rules and regulations that the lawmakers in Sacramento have been
00:08:56.440 foisting down the throats of Californians for decades, which is why the cost of living
00:09:00.420 is so high.
00:09:01.340 My father came here, Megan, in 1945.
00:09:03.980 You know my story.
00:09:04.660 He cleaned toilets for two full-time jobs, managed to save enough money to buy a house
00:09:09.960 in South Central, which is still in our family.
00:09:11.680 I just checked with Zillow the other night.
00:09:13.680 It is worth $600,000.
00:09:16.180 No eighth grade dropout could have a stay-at-home wife, my mother, raise three boys until the
00:09:20.760 latter of us was in middle school on a salary of two jobs, let alone three jobs, because
00:09:26.780 the cost of living is so ridiculous.
00:09:28.800 The average price of a home in California is 150% more than the average price of a home
00:09:33.720 outside of California.
00:09:35.060 And one of the people who I often consult on these kinds of matters is a brilliant economist
00:09:39.240 named Leo Hanian at UCLA.
00:09:41.020 He says the average price of a home in California is 50% more than otherwise would be, but for
00:09:46.500 these environmental regulations that have developers treated like felons, while this
00:09:51.220 governor has overseen the release of 20,000 real felons into our streets because of the
00:09:56.480 early release COVID program.
00:09:58.120 This guy has got to go.
00:09:59.620 So if he doesn't go, it doesn't matter what happens with the rest of us Republicans.
00:10:03.100 Okay, now the odds are stacked against-
00:10:05.660 How about that answer, Megan?
00:10:06.860 I love it.
00:10:08.320 And I appreciate somebody dodging my question by explicitly saying I'm dodging you.
00:10:12.220 That's what I love about you, Larry.
00:10:13.480 You'll give it to me straight.
00:10:15.600 I've only been a politician for 6.5 days.
00:10:18.580 I haven't figured out yet how to be inauthentic and phony.
00:10:21.080 I'm sure that's going to come.
00:10:22.740 No, I don't believe it.
00:10:24.940 Never with you.
00:10:25.440 Okay, so your problem in California, your biggest problem is that Democrats outnumber
00:10:30.020 Republicans by about two to one, and that the governor's approval rating, it was 64%.
00:10:37.480 Let me just finish that.
00:10:38.380 It was 64% back in spring of 2020.
00:10:42.600 Then it fell down to 52%.
00:10:44.480 Now amongst likely voters, the latest I read was it's at 54%, and some 49% said they don't
00:10:51.600 favor a recall.
00:10:52.680 It's tight enough it could go either way, but just looking at the sheer numbers, they
00:10:57.340 say you're an underdog, and he's overwhelmingly favored to keep his job.
00:11:01.760 Are you telling me that Megyn Kelly believes these polls?
00:11:04.740 Honestly, the day before Donald Trump got elected, what did they say?
00:11:08.000 Hillary had an 85% chance of winning.
00:11:10.160 I don't believe them.
00:11:11.380 The intensity is on our side.
00:11:13.500 By the way, I've conducted interview after interview after interview up and down the state,
00:11:17.360 and I've not seen Governor Gavin Newsom conduct any interviews because how are you going
00:11:21.440 to defend the rising crime?
00:11:22.760 How are you going to defend the outrageous homelessness?
00:11:25.240 How are you going to defend the cost of living?
00:11:26.900 How are you going to defend the fact that he is totally beholden by the teachers union?
00:11:31.140 The largest contributor to this campaign, teachers wanted the schools shut down, even
00:11:35.520 though the CDC said under certain precautions they could be reopened.
00:11:38.640 75% of Black kids cannot read at state levels of proficiency in California.
00:11:44.360 My former high school, Crenshaw High School, was the high school that was the center of
00:11:48.660 that movie, Boys in the Hood.
00:11:49.920 I just checked yesterday, 2% of the students at my former high school are math proficient.
00:11:55.060 Now, who the hell sends their kid to a school where only 2% of the kids are math proficient?
00:11:59.100 And by the way, it is a school that is controlled by the gang called the Crips.
00:12:02.500 Who sends their kid to a school like that if the parent has an option out?
00:12:05.840 The majority of Black and Brown parents, the ones who pull the lever for the Democrats,
00:12:10.100 support school choice.
00:12:11.300 Who's not giving them school choice?
00:12:12.920 The very Democrats they pull the lever for.
00:12:14.800 So a whole bunch of people are rethinking their attitude and their allegiance to the
00:12:18.140 Democratic Party.
00:12:19.060 And I believe they're going to take, they're going to rethink a whole lot of things come
00:12:22.360 September 14th with me on the ballot.
00:12:24.380 You can, it's a private ballot and you can pull the lever for Larry Elder and not tell your
00:12:29.220 independent or Democrat friends that you've done so.
00:12:32.260 That's a good, that's a good way of getting to the Californians.
00:12:35.060 No one has to know, you know, it'll be just between us when I get to the gubernatorial
00:12:38.860 mansion.
00:12:39.860 But it'll be our secret.
00:12:40.840 It'll be our secret.
00:12:42.020 The thing you have going for you, according to the local pollsters and sort of pundits,
00:12:46.700 is there is apparently is Democratic apathy when it comes to this recall.
00:12:51.620 Like they're like, ah, he's got it.
00:12:53.600 I'm not really paying attention to this.
00:12:55.400 Whereas on the GOP side, according to the locals who follow California politics, they say
00:12:59.820 there's a tremendous enthusiasm for this.
00:13:02.020 Again, because it's only the second gubernatorial recall effort in history there.
00:13:06.240 So the Republicans are psyched up and, but, but the Republican field is pretty fractured.
00:13:11.280 So, you know, there could be a split vote situation that undermines you or.
00:13:15.820 No, I don't, I don't analyze it that way.
00:13:17.900 I don't analyze it that way.
00:13:18.760 Megan, more the merrier.
00:13:20.280 Bring, bring, bring in the, the candidates that you just now mentioned.
00:13:23.000 Everybody has a certain base, a certain number of followers.
00:13:26.120 Uh, the, the idea is to generate interest in this election.
00:13:29.800 What the Democrats have smartly done, however, is not enter a, a prominent Democrat in the election
00:13:34.460 because they don't want him or her to take away votes from, from Gavin Newsom.
00:13:38.440 So again, the prize is Gavin Newsom and tell him unless we get 50% plus one doesn't matter
00:13:43.700 what the other Republicans do.
00:13:45.180 Uh, and, um, I'm urging people to go to elect elder.com, elect elder.com and throw a little
00:13:51.000 something in the tip jar.
00:13:51.920 By the way, Gavin Newsom has no finance limitations.
00:13:54.760 He can raise as much money as he wants and spend as much money as he wants.
00:13:58.880 We have limitations.
00:14:00.240 And by the way, when it was pretty clear, I was going to announce all of a sudden, one
00:14:03.080 of the major unions contributed $5 million to his campaign.
00:14:07.060 I haven't raised that money, but I'm on track to raise a great deal of money.
00:14:10.640 But this guy has unlimited powers, unlimited ability to raise and spend money.
00:14:14.900 We do not.
00:14:16.260 What do you, how does COVID play into this?
00:14:17.980 Because we've all been watching the national headlines now about what's happening in LA County
00:14:21.860 where they've reimposed mandatory masks indoors, even for people who are fully vaccinated,
00:14:30.760 which goes against CDC guidance, even, which says you don't need to wear a mask if you're
00:14:34.720 fully vaccinated.
00:14:35.500 But they're saying that the numbers in California are bad.
00:14:38.000 I'm just looking at the latest hospitalizations are up 42% in California.
00:14:45.280 Cases are up 198% in California.
00:14:48.620 Deaths are up 22% in California.
00:14:51.320 And so, you know, his explanation and the explanation of the locals in LA is desperate times.
00:14:56.260 And so we've got to sort of go back to these, what felt like draconian measures in order to
00:15:00.660 save lives.
00:15:01.300 You say you're going to undo it immediately.
00:15:02.880 What do you say to those people who say people will die if you do?
00:15:06.960 No one is denying that the coronavirus is serious.
00:15:10.720 I've been vaccinated.
00:15:11.780 My girlfriend's been vaccinated.
00:15:13.140 Everybody I know has been vaccinated.
00:15:15.000 It is a very serious thing.
00:15:16.200 But when you put it in context and look at, it's only about 10% what it was at its peak.
00:15:21.220 Furthermore, you have the LA County Sheriff, Alex Villanueva, saying this is anti-science
00:15:25.540 and I'm not going to use my manpower to enforce this.
00:15:27.980 And again, there are story after story after story about what Gavin Newsom did, anti-science
00:15:32.620 by shutting down the schools and by shutting down businesses.
00:15:36.240 One of my campaign members has a brother who used to be a football coach in Oakland, happens
00:15:41.540 to be white.
00:15:42.180 Virtually all of his players were black.
00:15:43.660 Many of them did not have fathers and he was their father figure.
00:15:46.660 And the coach and the regimen gave them structure.
00:15:49.540 He begged the schools to remain open.
00:15:51.320 He begged Gavin Newsom to keep practice open.
00:15:53.720 Come on, we can do it outdoors.
00:15:55.180 We can do it with social distancing.
00:15:56.340 This is not a violation of CDC mandates.
00:15:59.480 He still shut down practice.
00:16:01.160 Two of these young men got into trouble with the law.
00:16:03.080 One of them committed a crime so serious, he's going to be in jail for years.
00:16:06.580 This would not have happened had Gavin Newsom not shut down the schools.
00:16:09.860 This coach got so ticked off, he went to Tennessee where he now lives and where he's
00:16:13.880 now being the kind of father figure for other people outside of California.
00:16:17.420 I have a makeup artist, single mom.
00:16:20.240 Her son is 17 years old, one of the top 25 wrestlers in the state of California for
00:16:24.560 his weight class.
00:16:26.960 And again, the coach begged the school to remain open.
00:16:29.340 The kid was coaching, was being coached six days a week.
00:16:32.320 That structure was gone.
00:16:33.300 He and mom were in the house month after month after month after month.
00:16:36.240 He becomes sullen and morose and becomes suicidal.
00:16:39.120 He had enough integrity and had a good enough relationship with his mom that he went up to
00:16:42.280 her and said, Mom, I feel suicidal.
00:16:44.020 He's now in therapy.
00:16:45.320 You can swing a dead cat and get story after story after story like that because of what
00:16:48.800 Gavin Newsom did.
00:16:49.580 This guy has got to go.
00:16:51.640 And one more time, I'm urging people to go to electelder.com and throw something in the
00:16:55.320 tip jar.
00:16:55.720 Let's get him out of here.
00:16:57.200 You tip jar.
00:16:58.600 How about the LA Times?
00:16:59.800 They dropped a perfectly timed hit piece on you.
00:17:02.160 I'm sure you weren't surprised to read it.
00:17:03.580 This is if I didn't know you, Larry God, I would think you were a terrible man.
00:17:06.740 This is the LA Times view of Larry Elder.
00:17:08.480 It's absurd and it's just mean.
00:17:10.900 OK, this is them.
00:17:12.360 There was a black led boycott against Larry Elder in the 1990s because of his racial views.
00:17:16.640 He says black people are more racist than whites.
00:17:18.560 He says he's he's engaged in white grievance politics.
00:17:22.300 That's his bread and butter.
00:17:23.840 He has a delusion of rampant reverse racism taking place in this country, saying that your
00:17:30.240 campaign builds on the fantasy that it's not racist to deny the threat of white supremacy.
00:17:36.960 Goes on.
00:17:37.800 You've repeatedly twisted crime stats to portray black people as more violent than whites,
00:17:42.220 a theme for white supremacists.
00:17:44.540 And then there's he blames black community struggles on an alleged lack of self-determination.
00:17:49.860 That's a David Duke talking point.
00:17:53.020 Well, I don't I don't think they're for you.
00:17:55.800 I don't think you're getting the endorsement.
00:17:57.860 I don't think she's going to throw something in the tip jar.
00:18:00.200 Let's just do this.
00:18:01.320 Let's just do this.
00:18:02.660 Pick up your magic wand and wave it over America and remove every smidgen of white racism
00:18:07.980 from the hearts of white people.
00:18:09.380 Do we still have 70 percent of black kids entering the world without a father married
00:18:13.400 to the mother?
00:18:14.160 Do we still have a 50 percent dropout rate in urban high schools?
00:18:17.460 Are urban black boys still 25 percent of them with criminal records, either in jail, on
00:18:21.880 parole or on probation?
00:18:23.320 Is a black child eight times more likely to be a victim of a homicide compared to a white
00:18:28.500 child?
00:18:28.940 If all of those things are true, what are we talking about here?
00:18:32.260 Why am I a bad guy?
00:18:34.080 Why am I Uncle Tom?
00:18:35.380 Why am I a sellout?
00:18:36.340 How does that make me defending white people?
00:18:38.360 These are situations that the left is ignoring.
00:18:42.440 The fact that the welfare state has incentivized women to marry the government has allowed women
00:18:47.100 to abandon, has allowed men to abandon their financial and memorial responsibility.
00:18:50.920 So we've gone from 25 percent of black kids entering the world without a father married
00:18:54.340 to the mother in 1965 to 70 percent today.
00:18:57.140 Are you telling me America is more racist today than it was in 1965?
00:19:00.460 Let's talk about what's really going on here.
00:19:02.420 And they don't want to do that.
00:19:03.400 What who would you say, you know, for Californians who don't know you and they're wondering what
00:19:09.140 kind of a politician you'd be, what kind of a leader would you be?
00:19:12.780 Who would you be like?
00:19:13.860 Pick a politician and say, if you like this person, you'll you'll like me.
00:19:17.640 I've never thought about that.
00:19:19.320 I think I'm a unique person.
00:19:20.760 As I said, I don't believe it's race, meaning the reason that I'm not on the ballot.
00:19:24.380 I believe it's this particular face.
00:19:26.100 I believe I can connect to people in a way that a lot of Republicans can't, either because
00:19:30.240 they don't go to the hood.
00:19:31.360 They're not from the hood like I was.
00:19:33.060 They didn't kind of come out of public schools.
00:19:34.680 They don't realize how bad they are.
00:19:36.100 But all I know is that I was raised by great parents.
00:19:40.120 My father was a came to California, as I mentioned, in 1945 from the Jim Crow South.
00:19:46.220 And my father, if anybody had a reason to be angry at the world, angry at America and
00:19:50.500 calling America racist, it's my dad, who I didn't know his biological father, kicked
00:19:54.300 out of the house when he was 13, joined the Marines, came back to Tennessee to get him
00:19:58.600 a job as a short order cook.
00:19:59.740 And he was told, quote, we don't hire niggers in the book.
00:20:02.380 He comes to California, walks around to get him a job as a short order cook.
00:20:05.600 And he was told, we don't hire anybody without references.
00:20:08.420 My dad said, I need references to make ham and eggs.
00:20:10.700 So he starts a small cafe after he saves his nickels and dime from being a janitor.
00:20:15.720 And my father always told my brothers and me, hard work wins.
00:20:18.720 You get out of life what you put into it.
00:20:20.040 Larry, you cannot control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort.
00:20:23.900 And before you moan about what somebody else did to you, go to the nearest mirror, look
00:20:26.620 at it and say, how could I have changed the outcome?
00:20:28.940 That's the philosophy my father had.
00:20:31.020 And years ago, Megan, I was interviewed by 60 Minutes.
00:20:33.340 My father is a man of few words.
00:20:34.720 So 60 Minutes comes to South Central and sets up all the cameras and the lights.
00:20:40.060 You know how that works.
00:20:40.940 They're there for 45 minutes, an hour.
00:20:43.480 And Morley Safer, the correspondent, sits my dad down and says, you know, your son, Larry
00:20:47.120 says, if you work hard, keep your shoulder to the grindstone, you'll be just fine.
00:20:50.960 Do you believe that?
00:20:51.760 And my dad said, work for me.
00:20:54.460 Work for me.
00:20:55.760 And Morley said, OK, that's a wrap.
00:20:57.700 And that's the only segment of my dad that made it into the program.
00:21:02.180 That's all he said.
00:21:03.280 Because it's that simple.
00:21:04.860 I'm not saying it's easy, but it's that simple.
00:21:06.920 Stay focused.
00:21:07.700 My goodness, Barack Obama got elected in 2008, had a higher percentage of the white vote than
00:21:12.220 John Kerry.
00:21:13.080 What are we talking about?
00:21:14.640 2007, Gallup did a poll.
00:21:16.920 Obama's running for the nomination against Hillary.
00:21:19.220 And Mitt Romney's running for the nomination against John McCain.
00:21:21.860 And Gallup said, what percentage of Americans would not vote for a black president?
00:21:26.000 5%.
00:21:26.480 What percentage of Americans would not vote for a female?
00:21:29.260 11%.
00:21:29.740 What percentage of Americans would not vote for a Mormon?
00:21:32.640 24%.
00:21:33.080 What percentage of Americans would not vote for a man 72 years old when he became president,
00:21:37.540 referring to John McCain?
00:21:39.500 42%.
00:21:39.980 Obama had a lower hurdle than these three white politicians.
00:21:43.100 So can we knock it off?
00:21:44.640 Can we just get on with it?
00:21:46.060 Talk about schools.
00:21:47.280 Talk about crime.
00:21:48.440 Talk about accountability.
00:21:49.200 Making sure that you are good enough to be able to compete in this economy and get a
00:21:53.420 good job.
00:21:54.120 Isn't that what we're talking about here?
00:21:55.760 The left-wing think tank, the Brookings Institution, Megan, said there are three things you need
00:21:59.320 to do to escape poverty.
00:22:00.700 Number one, finish high school.
00:22:02.600 Presumably one good enough so that you can read, write, and compute at grade level.
00:22:05.860 Number two, don't have a kid before you get married.
00:22:07.920 Number three, get a job.
00:22:08.840 Keep that job.
00:22:09.500 Don't quit that job until you get another job.
00:22:11.280 They didn't say that only applies to white people.
00:22:13.080 That applies to people.
00:22:14.720 Knock it off.
00:22:15.460 The left always wants to bring up race because they know that if they can get 13% of black
00:22:19.600 people all upset about social justice, they'll pull the lever for the Democratic Party, ignoring
00:22:24.180 that this is the same party that denies them choice in school, which urban parents, according
00:22:28.060 to the polls, want desperately.
00:22:29.660 You know, the other thing that the LA Times came after you on, and we talked about this
00:22:33.440 last time you were on, you're proud of the fact, they're shocked and horrified by the
00:22:38.120 fact that you've mentored a lot of people in the conservative movement, including Stephen
00:22:42.200 Miller, who is completely demonized while working for Trump, and Candace Owens, who is
00:22:47.600 very open about the fact that you're her mentor and who we love.
00:22:50.760 But, you know, she's another person who they say is a white supremacist.
00:22:54.660 And the question is, I know all this is BS, but I do wonder how will the California, California
00:23:00.540 is blue.
00:23:01.300 You know, it's like my state, New York.
00:23:02.920 How are the voters there going to think about you mentoring folks like Candace and Stephen
00:23:08.700 and, you know, you having these very heterodox views when it comes to things like Black Lives
00:23:12.860 Matter and welfare, which we're getting back to at the federal level, right?
00:23:17.020 Like, do you think they're going to hold that against you?
00:23:19.400 Well, crime doesn't have a color.
00:23:21.000 A crime is up in the Bay Area.
00:23:23.080 It's up in LA.
00:23:24.340 It's up in San Diego.
00:23:25.420 And the primary victims of this crime are black and brown people that the people on the
00:23:29.120 left can't find they care about.
00:23:30.220 Homelessness, which is a hygienic problem, it diminishes property values, causes insurance
00:23:37.880 premiums to go up, it causes people to steal.
00:23:41.940 That doesn't have a color.
00:23:43.800 And again, I just saw an article about the LAUSD, the Los Angeles Unified School District.
00:23:50.120 Two-thirds of black parents do not want to send their kids back.
00:23:53.360 And the district put out a statement, and it was something like this, and this is almost
00:23:56.380 verbatim, quote, the district needs to develop an inclusive and strategic approach to supporting
00:24:02.500 the achievement of black students, close quote.
00:24:04.680 What the hell have you guys been doing for the last several decades?
00:24:07.420 You need to develop.
00:24:08.780 When are you going to start?
00:24:09.980 That doesn't have a color.
00:24:11.480 And I'm going to be their champion.
00:24:13.200 I'm going to be the champion of people who want school choice.
00:24:15.980 Eighty percent of the students at public schools in California are black and brown.
00:24:21.340 300,000 public school teachers.
00:24:23.140 And I'm told that between five and seven percent of them are incompetent, Megan.
00:24:27.120 That means 15,000 teachers are unleashed on the school systems every single year, miseducating
00:24:33.520 these kids.
00:24:34.500 Let's make an analogy.
00:24:35.720 There are 20,000 LAPD officers.
00:24:38.300 Imagine if five percent of them were incompetent.
00:24:41.060 Say what you want about the trial of Derek Chauvin.
00:24:43.440 There were about 15 complaints against him.
00:24:45.840 And in a normal environment, if you have 15 complaints against you, you get fired.
00:24:49.440 If five percent of the LAPD were bad, that's a thousand cops unleashed on the streets of
00:24:56.440 L.A.
00:24:57.060 We wouldn't put up with it.
00:24:58.500 Why are we putting up with 15,000 incompetent teachers unleashed in the classrooms of black
00:25:03.180 and brown students every single day?
00:25:05.380 I am their champion.
00:25:06.700 The Democrats do not give a damn.
00:25:08.260 They've got their own kids in private school.
00:25:10.120 I mentioned Gavin Newsom has his own kids in person, private education, while he was shutting
00:25:14.700 down the schools for everybody else.
00:25:16.280 This is something that is taking off everybody, independents and Democrats, no matter the race.
00:25:21.460 So I don't believe that schools have a color.
00:25:23.560 I don't believe crime has a color.
00:25:24.900 I don't believe homelessness has a color.
00:25:26.400 I don't believe the cost of living has a color.
00:25:28.420 And I can make the case in a way far more persuasive than I think anybody else can.
00:25:32.340 I've been on radio in California for almost 30 years, Megan.
00:25:35.260 All the major markets, San Diego down up to Sacramento, people know me.
00:25:39.780 They know who I am.
00:25:40.680 And they know that I've got some practical things that I'm going to bring to the table on how
00:25:44.200 to solve some of these problems.
00:25:45.260 And you're real.
00:25:46.580 You're real in your data base.
00:25:48.180 That's what's so refreshing about you is you don't actually have a politician's filter.
00:25:52.280 And that way you're like Trump.
00:25:53.760 You just sort of say it the way you see it.
00:25:55.520 You always have.
00:25:56.140 You don't have this veneer the way somebody like a Gavin Newsom does, who seems like he's
00:26:00.260 tested every talking point, not to mention his hair, before he goes out there on camera.
00:26:05.220 I do think there's a chance that's really going to resonate, even with people who might
00:26:08.860 be ideologically suspicious of you.
00:26:13.940 But then I wonder, in a state that's already controlled by the teachers' unions, that really
00:26:18.860 hasn't done so well on school choice, how do you convince them, right?
00:26:22.180 How do you actually change things?
00:26:23.740 And then I just look at sort of the disdain for Gavin Newsom by Republicans, right?
00:26:28.000 The French laundry, do as I say, not as I do.
00:26:30.600 French laundry, you stay home, but I'm going to go out to eat.
00:26:32.960 You send your kids to public school, but I'm going to send mine to private school.
00:26:35.440 And I question the other side, is there enough disdain for the guy at this point that people
00:26:39.840 are going to say, you know what, like they did with Trump, let's just take a shot.
00:26:44.080 Let's see what happens.
00:26:45.320 Right.
00:26:45.580 And what Trump said, of course, is what do you have to lose?
00:26:47.540 I was talking to a Bay Area, probably a Sacramento black newspaper.
00:26:52.100 And as they were setting up, I can tell that they weren't feeling me.
00:26:54.800 And during the interview, I said, aren't you tired?
00:26:57.540 Aren't you tired of a teacher's union controlling the schools to the point where 75% of black kids
00:27:01.760 cannot read at state level's proficiency?
00:27:03.200 Aren't you tired of these white liberals who belong to the Sierra Club and to Ducks Unlimited
00:27:08.920 filing lawsuits that stopped the construction of homes so that the price of housing has gotten
00:27:13.620 so high, the percentage of black living in San Francisco and in LA has gone down.
00:27:18.160 And the primary reason is the cost of living.
00:27:20.040 I said, do you know anybody black who belongs to Ducks Unlimited?
00:27:23.140 And they started cracking up.
00:27:24.320 I said, aren't you tired of this?
00:27:25.660 Aren't you tired of being used?
00:27:26.980 And I could tell I opened their eyes.
00:27:28.840 I'm not saying they became Reagan Republicans overnight, but I think they're going to go
00:27:32.120 in there and quietly pull that lever for Larry Elder and not tell their friends.
00:27:36.560 Exactly.
00:27:37.560 The other example of that kind of hypocrisy that we saw so much during the COVID shutdowns
00:27:41.900 comes with respect to Black Lives Matter.
00:27:43.960 And Cori Bush, representative of Missouri, comes out.
00:27:47.300 This is she's a big defund the police advocate.
00:27:49.600 She thinks the police are terrible.
00:27:50.960 Now it comes out in the news.
00:27:52.500 She has spent $70,000 on private security for herself.
00:27:58.740 And she had a private guard, private security over the past few months, $70,000.
00:28:03.000 The average person in California, not her state, but still cannot do that.
00:28:07.920 And yet they are beholden to these politicians who want to take this sort of moral ground of
00:28:11.680 the police are terrible, let's defund.
00:28:13.360 And then they've got almost $100,000 to spend on their own security while the people in South
00:28:17.300 Central are going to have to fend for themselves.
00:28:19.080 Right.
00:28:19.800 And St. Louis, where Cori Bush is from, we often pick on Chicago as the murder capital
00:28:24.540 of the world because they have the largest number of murders in absolute numbers.
00:28:28.000 But in terms of per capita homicides, St. Louis is three times more deadly than Chicago.
00:28:33.980 What is she doing?
00:28:35.000 And look at the school system in St. Louis.
00:28:36.580 What is she doing?
00:28:37.620 Running around, talking about defunding the police.
00:28:40.360 What are these people doing?
00:28:41.920 Who's on your side?
00:28:43.320 I am.
00:28:43.960 And that's why, again, I'm urging people to go to electelder.com and let's stop some of this
00:28:47.780 nonsense.
00:28:49.080 Larry, cannot wait to see what happens.
00:28:51.080 Now, wait, is there a chance that they reject you on Wednesday?
00:28:53.900 And if they reject you on Wednesday, you can file an appeal.
00:28:55.920 So it's not over.
00:28:57.160 Is it not over until the ballot actually, you know, the vote is actually out on September
00:29:01.360 14th?
00:29:01.920 Because like, how long do you have to resolve this issue of getting your name on?
00:29:04.160 It's not over until if I get rejected on Wednesday and I'm not.
00:29:07.940 It then goes up to the Supreme Court on an expedited basis.
00:29:10.720 So we should know within a few days whether or not I'm going to be on the ballot.
00:29:13.500 And I am going to be on the ballot.
00:29:14.720 No question about it.
00:29:15.400 I think you are, too.
00:29:16.280 Yeah, I don't believe that Gavin Newsom has the cashews to debate me.
00:29:20.840 He's not even been interviewed anywhere.
00:29:22.360 The cashews.
00:29:23.460 I'm being interviewed everywhere.
00:29:25.040 I've not even seen this man because he can't defend his record.
00:29:27.280 I've never heard quite that that term used, but I guess I'm picking up what you're putting
00:29:33.120 down.
00:29:33.300 It's a gender.
00:29:33.980 It's a gender and ethnic neutral term, Megan.
00:29:36.760 Cash.
00:29:37.220 I got no issue with that whatsoever.
00:29:39.200 No, he doesn't have him to debate you.
00:29:40.580 And he won't because he's, you know, he's the favorite.
00:29:43.200 So I understand politically it's a smart move.
00:29:45.120 He doesn't want to acknowledge that you exist.
00:29:47.520 This is like not happening as far as he's concerned.
00:29:50.260 Right.
00:29:50.400 He's the favorite.
00:29:51.020 And also the other other reason is he won't win.
00:29:54.160 William B. Buckley had a show on PBS called Firing Line for 33 years.
00:29:58.340 And he was asked, why is it despite the numerous invitations you've made to then Attorney General
00:30:02.780 Robert Kennedy, he's never come on your show?
00:30:05.060 And Buckley said, why does the baloney avoid the grinder?
00:30:07.500 This guy doesn't want me.
00:30:08.920 And he's smart to avoid me.
00:30:10.300 I'd avoid me if I were him.
00:30:11.540 He can't defend his record.
00:30:13.620 Yes, I'd avoid you if I were him, too.
00:30:16.060 But I would buy money to that.
00:30:18.100 I mean, I would pay money to see that debate by any amount.
00:30:21.100 We could have a debate solved budget by selling tickets.
00:30:24.360 That's true.
00:30:25.080 If you put this on pay-per-view and said you'd split the proceeds, you'd both benefit mightily.
00:30:29.460 You should propose that.
00:30:30.860 Right.
00:30:31.380 I'll propose it.
00:30:32.200 I don't think he's going to accept, but I'll propose it.
00:30:33.960 Yeah, I think you're right.
00:30:35.320 He's got good strategic reasons.
00:30:36.680 So we will continue to follow it.
00:30:38.580 Larry Elder, electelder.com for a tip if you are so interested.
00:30:42.740 Larry, we'll be watching and cheering you on.
00:30:44.980 All the best.
00:30:45.920 Megan, thank you so much.
00:30:46.820 God bless.
00:30:48.160 Okay, so it'll be fun to continue watching what happens with Larry.
00:30:50.480 I predict he gets on the ballot and then we'll see.
00:30:53.200 Then we'll wait till September to see whether, can you imagine Governor Elder?
00:30:56.740 It would be such a great story, right?
00:30:58.640 Given his dad's background and the whole bit.
00:31:02.180 I don't know.
00:31:03.040 I think Caitlyn Jenner, I think she's kind of out of it, frankly.
00:31:05.680 Big brother.
00:31:06.540 Big brother VIP.
00:31:07.700 That's not where she, at heart, she's still a Kardashian.
00:31:10.540 But we'll see.
00:31:13.980 It's, you know, it's uphill battle.
00:31:15.140 Very blue state.
00:31:15.860 So we'll see.
00:31:16.440 Continue following it.
00:31:17.300 In any event, let me introduce you to two amazing people.
00:31:20.420 Don Samuels and Sondra Samuels, who are taking Minneapolis by storm and they are not taking
00:31:26.660 what's happening to their city when it comes to the increase in crime, in shootings and
00:31:31.220 homicides, including of little children, including in the past couple of weeks and this week,
00:31:36.340 lying down.
00:31:38.040 They're fighting back and they've got a roadmap for how you can too.
00:31:41.880 Don and Sondra Samuels, now.
00:31:47.140 Don and Sondra, thank you so much for being here.
00:31:49.700 Oh, thank you for having us.
00:31:50.980 Great to be here, Megan.
00:31:52.480 In reading the Daily Mail account of what you did and what you've been through and Don,
00:31:57.500 your op-ed piece, my heart goes out to you.
00:32:01.180 Let's try to explain it to the audience so they can understand.
00:32:04.140 You live, as I understand it, on the north side of Minneapolis and you've been there
00:32:09.460 for what?
00:32:09.780 A quarter century?
00:32:11.280 Yes, that's right.
00:32:13.240 Okay, it's been a long time.
00:32:14.440 I feel old.
00:32:16.040 We are old.
00:32:17.340 Same.
00:32:18.060 I just hit half a century as a birthday, so I understand.
00:32:22.600 And walk us through what kind of a neighborhood, before the whole defund the police and the
00:32:26.880 George Floyd situation, what kind of a neighborhood was it?
00:32:30.620 Well, north Minneapolis is a quadrant of the city.
00:32:36.540 It's bound by freeways and river and so on.
00:32:41.240 And so it's a little bit isolated.
00:32:44.520 And it's also a fifth of the population, a little less than 20%.
00:32:53.160 So while it's a larger geographical area, it's a small population.
00:32:57.260 It's got the youngest population in the city and the lowest income population in the city
00:33:03.480 and its highest minority community.
00:33:07.640 And 50% African-American.
00:33:10.420 Was it safe?
00:33:11.720 Did it feel safe?
00:33:12.700 It was a high crime or what?
00:33:13.840 It was the least safe community, traditionally.
00:33:18.780 Right.
00:33:19.480 But we had been making progress, I would say, on crime over time, gradually.
00:33:28.520 How?
00:33:29.300 That was a big part of what we were doing there in terms of, for the last quarter century,
00:33:34.580 working in partnership with the police, with our neighbors, with the Police Athletic League,
00:33:40.640 you know, with the city and really worked block club meetings and national night out and door
00:33:47.760 knocking.
00:33:48.720 And, you know, we started an organization called the Peace Foundation, Public Engagement, Community
00:33:53.460 Empowerment, and really felt like, like we knew we had a higher level of crime than the rest
00:34:01.720 of the city, but felt like we were making a lot of progress.
00:34:05.860 And were you working with the police?
00:34:09.220 I mean, what was your experience in dealing with the police?
00:34:12.660 Because, of course, we've heard all sorts of different accounts in different pockets
00:34:16.320 of the country.
00:34:17.420 Yeah.
00:34:17.620 Well, we've, you know, over the 25 years, we have been working closely with the police
00:34:25.360 because even though we were intensely engaged community members, they were our last resort,
00:34:33.540 our backup people.
00:34:34.500 And so we, with all the block clubs and neighborhood organization activities and so on, and strategies,
00:34:42.620 the police were the people we called when things fell apart or when things got beyond our
00:34:48.680 capacity.
00:34:50.540 Sure.
00:34:50.760 And so I became a council member out of that whole movement of neighborhood engagement.
00:34:56.540 And my neighbors asked me to run after we'd kind of succeeded in tamping down crime in
00:35:02.180 our community, our little neighborhood.
00:35:06.200 And then we started the Peace Foundation.
00:35:10.500 And Sandra then took over the Peace Foundation and that morphed into the Northside Achievement
00:35:16.100 Zone, modeled after the Harlem Children's Zone, to address the whole Northside crime through
00:35:24.440 education and whole family support.
00:35:29.840 But I do want to add, though, Megan, while we work with the police, it is true that the
00:35:36.140 police police black low-income communities differently.
00:35:39.600 And though we were never harmed personally, we knew several stories of black young men who
00:35:47.140 had been harassed by the police.
00:35:49.360 Yeah.
00:35:49.500 We knew several stories of a different response to our white neighbors who would call the police
00:35:56.240 versus when we did.
00:35:57.460 Dramatically.
00:35:58.080 Dramatically different, Megan.
00:35:59.360 And in fact, one of our white female neighbors, white, blonde hair, blue eyes, you know, single
00:36:09.960 mom, she said that when she would call the police for various things, they would say, why do you
00:36:15.660 live in this neighborhood anyway?
00:36:17.400 You know, you shouldn't even be here.
00:36:19.400 We never heard that.
00:36:20.560 We never heard that.
00:36:21.300 One of the older white couples who moved like right after we moved in, they said that the
00:36:27.440 police would follow their daughter home, their white daughter from high school.
00:36:32.520 She went to North High to make sure she was safe in our neighborhood.
00:36:36.720 They would drive slowly behind her.
00:36:38.780 Behind her to protect her.
00:36:39.340 All the way home from school.
00:36:41.040 Yeah.
00:36:41.560 And so, and then Donna's council person, you heard the stories.
00:36:45.140 Yeah.
00:36:45.460 And by the way, we are among the highest income people in our neighborhood.
00:36:49.280 So it's not a class thing.
00:36:51.540 It's a race.
00:36:52.060 And so, yeah, and then I was on the council and I saw, you know, I was sat in on the closed
00:36:59.500 sessions where lawyer, lawyer, client privilege allowed us to not have an open meeting.
00:37:08.280 And so we could look, review cases and so on.
00:37:11.480 And yes, you saw videotapes of cops kicking people and we had to settle cases because they
00:37:17.100 had violated the city's policies and had gone beyond the pail and punching and so on and
00:37:24.140 yanking out of their heads and so on.
00:37:27.120 Where did that leave you, you know, emotionally, right?
00:37:30.060 Because you're saying you needed them as a last resort.
00:37:32.500 Right.
00:37:32.800 I'm sure you had some positive interactions with them.
00:37:35.240 Lots of positives.
00:37:36.000 Lots of positives.
00:37:36.620 But also this other disturbing strain.
00:37:40.080 So like, how were you, pre-George Floyd, how are you feeling about the police?
00:37:43.580 A little helpless about that part, because we had kind of, I guess you could say, almost
00:37:51.000 resigned ourselves to it because it was such an unfixable issue with the union, the power
00:37:59.120 of the union over the years to accumulate privileges.
00:38:03.240 Every negotiation point over the decades and decades would result in some bargaining that
00:38:10.900 would accrue power, more and more power to the union to negotiate on behalf of their
00:38:16.480 members and to insulate the membership.
00:38:19.940 And so by the time, you know, a new council member, a new council and mayor come in, the
00:38:25.300 insulation is so thick and you're still trying to make concessions, right?
00:38:30.820 You're still trying to put a pause on wages because the economy is down and so on.
00:38:35.920 And then you have to negotiate with the union for their, to pause their wages.
00:38:41.120 And then they want even more privileges.
00:38:44.100 That's how it works.
00:38:45.100 And so instead of actually shrinking the insulation, the insulation keeps getting padded with every
00:38:51.540 point of negotiation.
00:38:54.140 And Megan, I want to add, but a kind of black life in America is, so on the ground, every
00:39:01.960 officer was not Officer Chauvin, right?
00:39:04.320 So we have great friends who are police, right?
00:39:09.020 And, and who we wouldn't be able to live in North Minneapolis without them.
00:39:12.580 And at the same time, there's so many systems levels.
00:39:16.300 And Don's mentioning that with the union so that Don, you've mentioned that 50% of the
00:39:21.440 time and three police chiefs worked under you when he was on city council, Megan, and 50%
00:39:27.100 of the time when a chief would fire a police officer like Chauvin, 50% of the time, because
00:39:35.600 of union negotiations, they would be forced to rehire them.
00:39:39.680 Wow.
00:39:40.200 And so, yeah.
00:39:41.520 And so then the, so then the chief starts to, to check, check his actions.
00:39:47.720 He would not recommend a firing or fire someone unless he was absolutely sure that this one
00:39:56.100 would go through and half the time it wouldn't.
00:39:58.900 So that meant not only would half of the bad guys come back, but then some bad guys wouldn't
00:40:04.900 even get fired because the chief felt like it wasn't even worth it.
00:40:08.500 This is reminding me of what we see sometimes with the teachers unions, where you cannot
00:40:13.560 get rid of bad teachers.
00:40:14.900 Same thing.
00:40:15.340 Same thing.
00:40:16.000 Right?
00:40:16.300 The union's so powerful and who ends up suffering?
00:40:19.120 The community.
00:40:20.300 The community.
00:40:20.660 And the worst, the thing they have in common is that in both cases, it's the African American
00:40:26.120 community that suffers the most.
00:40:28.320 And so the general racism in the society allows adult prerogatives to supersede black children's
00:40:39.760 and black population prerogatives because it's not worth changing for that population.
00:40:45.480 Right.
00:40:46.200 So that's sort of where you were.
00:40:47.840 Then George Floyd happens, which was disturbing to the country.
00:40:51.380 And Minneapolis started like the city council then and the mayor started talking about defund
00:40:58.460 the police.
00:40:59.300 They did defund the police to the tune of several million dollars.
00:41:03.260 And they started making all sorts of statements about how they were going to stop training the
00:41:07.160 police and they were going to not rehire for the positions that police started to vacate
00:41:11.520 in droves, you know, sort of like, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
00:41:15.400 And by the way, we have no desire to replace your position.
00:41:17.980 And how did that manifest in your neighborhood?
00:41:21.780 Did you see the results of that soon?
00:41:25.440 One thing, Megan, the mayor has never been for defunding.
00:41:28.980 So he's a Democratic mayor who is basically on an island.
00:41:32.960 And we have a weak mayor system.
00:41:34.980 So 13 council members of the different wards in the city.
00:41:38.900 And in fact, he is reviled and has been humiliated because he would not agree to defunding.
00:41:48.900 So I just want to stress that.
00:41:49.960 Jacob Fry.
00:41:50.500 Jacob Fry.
00:41:50.900 Yeah, Jacob Fry.
00:41:51.800 Never.
00:41:52.420 I mean, they came to his condo downtown and demanded he say that he, after the city council
00:41:58.900 did it, that he would defund them.
00:42:01.620 And he said, I'm not going to say that.
00:42:03.300 No, no and no.
00:42:04.860 And they cursed at him.
00:42:07.260 And, you know, so just so you know.
00:42:09.400 So they got it through without him.
00:42:11.200 That's possible.
00:42:11.880 City council can defund without the mayor's blessing.
00:42:13.980 Absolutely.
00:42:14.180 City council ultimately approves the budget.
00:42:17.380 And then they can make decisions through the budget to impact the police.
00:42:22.480 Yes, absolutely.
00:42:23.240 So what did you first start noticing?
00:42:25.600 You know, it's like, I will confess, not on this level at all, but even on the Upper West
00:42:29.800 Side of New York, where I live, you can start to see crime start to move into the area, homelessness
00:42:35.440 move into the area.
00:42:36.480 You could definitely see the lower police presence shortly after New York pulled a billion dollars
00:42:41.100 away.
00:42:41.680 And just there was general police malaise in the wake of, you know, all of them being
00:42:46.740 branded as racist and terrible.
00:42:48.140 And, you know, we saw attacks on cops, too.
00:42:49.960 So morale went down.
00:42:51.120 But so I mean, what I read is it was a it was an egregious and extremely dangerous situation
00:42:56.700 where you guys live.
00:42:57.920 Oh, yeah.
00:42:58.220 Everything was on the extreme, whatever you observed in upside, upper west side.
00:43:05.520 It was, you know, multiple times in our community because it's because of the historical trajectories
00:43:14.580 of where the population, our population being the most likely to be involved in the criminal
00:43:21.420 justice system.
00:43:22.980 Then we were the most likely to have people return to our community because COVID was they
00:43:29.800 reduce the populations in the jail for COVID.
00:43:33.340 We were the most likely to have children who did not have good connections to school through
00:43:38.540 Internet and so on and didn't have the kind of parents who were equipped to help them through
00:43:44.920 with their homework and schoolwork and, you know, work with them during COVID.
00:43:50.120 And, you know, every little inch and detail of quality of life, we were more impacted because
00:43:57.640 of income and class.
00:44:00.800 Wow.
00:44:01.400 That makes perfect sense.
00:44:02.580 I've never heard somebody pull it together like that.
00:44:04.580 Yes.
00:44:04.900 Right.
00:44:05.180 But what was happening with COVID with the kids, what's happening with the prisons going
00:44:09.100 and people being released going back to the neighborhoods.
00:44:11.400 And at the same time, the police are disappearing.
00:44:14.660 I can't imagine your frustration.
00:44:17.660 And then and then children started getting shot, which I just I mean, you know, Sandra, I
00:44:24.780 can't imagine I was reading in the account of what happened when you guys had a community
00:44:29.780 block meeting not long ago and a little eight year old and a little three year old coming
00:44:35.440 to you about the some odd 60 gunshots that were heard during the course of the meeting.
00:44:40.400 Oh, yeah.
00:44:41.960 Megan, you heard that.
00:44:43.320 Yeah.
00:44:44.140 And it was my first time in the neighborhood, you know, being there for close to 25 years
00:44:49.440 and raising our three daughters there and never wondering, Megan, if they were going to make
00:44:54.680 it home, you know.
00:44:56.920 But it was my first time looking at one of our frightened neighbors, her daughter, and
00:45:02.240 and saying, you know, it's it'll be OK, you know, we're going to protect you.
00:45:08.040 And I knew I wasn't telling the truth, that I wasn't sure, like like for the first time
00:45:13.700 in my 55 years, I felt like as an adult in my community, I was impotent when it came to
00:45:21.100 protecting our children and couldn't promise really that she would be OK.
00:45:25.880 And it has been, Megan, that's the thing, it is it has been an onslaught.
00:45:32.820 And this is the other thing I do want to add, the murder of George Floyd, also on top of
00:45:38.500 the COVID and everything that was happening in community and what's happening with the
00:45:42.260 courts.
00:45:43.020 And by the way, the courts are releasing violent offenders.
00:45:47.720 It's one thing to let people go who are not violent.
00:45:50.540 It's another thing when the police arrest and and they are right back out on the street.
00:45:57.540 Violent folks who are carjacking people at gunpoint.
00:46:00.660 Carjacking has gone up crazy, too.
00:46:02.560 But the other thing also, Megan, that the bandaid got ripped off was the racial pain,
00:46:09.260 the trauma associated with yet again another unarmed black person being killed.
00:46:14.140 So all of that made for a perfect storm.
00:46:18.360 And we are disproportionately impacted.
00:46:21.200 Ten-year-old LaDevion Garrett shot in the head, driving with his father in our neighborhood.
00:46:27.780 He's still struggling for his life.
00:46:30.320 He's alive.
00:46:31.660 And this was all within the last couple of months.
00:46:34.260 But we don't know what the quality of his life will be, even if he and we pray that he
00:46:40.560 survives.
00:46:41.140 A nine-year-old Trinity Addison Smith, she was shot while jumping on a trampoline just
00:46:49.040 a block from our home at a party.
00:46:52.520 And she was shot in the head.
00:46:54.260 She did not survive.
00:46:55.780 And then there was six-year-old Anaya, who we call Naya Allen.
00:47:00.420 And she was shot at coming, getting a happy meal with her mom in the car, in the head.
00:47:06.520 And Anaya didn't survive either.
00:47:08.380 Since we, over this weekend, Megan, or I don't know what day it is now, Tuesday, another three-year-old
00:47:15.060 was shot in our neighborhood.
00:47:17.080 One was shot just a week ago.
00:47:19.080 A nine-month-old, a bullet grazed.
00:47:21.660 I mean, we've never.
00:47:24.020 And then, I mean, the shootings.
00:47:26.000 We are up 19% of all the shooting victims in the city, Megan.
00:47:31.920 We're up 19% in our precinct.
00:47:34.960 We're precinct four.
00:47:36.240 That's North Minneapolis.
00:47:38.600 166 people shot.
00:47:40.820 The next highest is 88 people shot.
00:47:44.400 So we are by far 50% of the victims who were shot in the city.
00:47:48.820 And, but we, but the uptick is not as big as in some neighborhoods in Minneapolis that
00:47:56.040 are more affluent and have never seen this level of violence and are seeing it now.
00:48:01.340 So it's devastating for us.
00:48:03.520 And then when you, when you hear 166 people shot in one part of this lowest population part
00:48:10.080 of the city, it seems like, okay, people got grazed, people got, you know, but one, one
00:48:17.360 example, for instance, to show you how anonymous these folks are, when Anaya was shot in the
00:48:24.940 head and killed, a high schooler was shot, the same incident, and was paralyzed.
00:48:33.780 Nobody mentions that because it's such a minor part of the demographic story.
00:48:40.080 But when you hear 166 people killed in our community, you better believe that there's
00:48:49.740 a significant amount of those people who have been maimed.
00:48:52.980 Yes.
00:48:53.900 And paralyzed.
00:48:55.080 It's stomach turning.
00:48:56.440 This is making me sick to my stomach.
00:48:58.700 Thinking about these littles getting shot, their lives snuffed out on the way home from
00:49:03.620 McDonald's doing nothing, sitting with their moms.
00:49:05.820 I mean, the amount of trauma that is being heaped in your community, that each, even one
00:49:12.360 of those would have resonating effects.
00:49:15.200 But so many in such a short time.
00:49:17.600 Yeah.
00:49:17.920 Our neighbors are on medication.
00:49:20.020 Yeah.
00:49:20.260 One, one of the eight of us who, one family, two, two of the eight people who filed a lawsuit
00:49:27.340 with us, they had to move from their home where they've lived for about 15 years.
00:49:32.800 We are great.
00:49:33.420 Our great neighbors.
00:49:35.840 At the two houses down from us.
00:49:37.680 Yeah.
00:49:38.020 Because their child, one of their children began to be traumatized.
00:49:41.800 Their 11 year old started sleeping on his parents' floor for months and began to have
00:49:47.900 all kinds of full sweat, psychos, shaking, psychological problems.
00:49:52.980 And they had to move.
00:49:55.980 Up next, Don and Sandra have been working with police for a long time, you know, in tandem
00:50:01.160 with their community.
00:50:01.900 And they have noticed the cops are demoralized.
00:50:04.900 Can you blame them?
00:50:05.880 We'll get into that next.
00:50:07.280 But before we get to that, I want to bring you a feature we have here on the MK show called
00:50:11.020 Real Talk.
00:50:12.120 And that's basically where I get to talk about really whatever I want, whatever we
00:50:16.140 think is interesting you might want to hear about.
00:50:17.980 And today we're going to talk about Naomi Osaka because I've gotten, I got into more Twitter
00:50:23.440 fights.
00:50:23.760 I've been getting in a lot of Twitter fights lately for some reason.
00:50:26.200 I actually believe it's because the serious announcement came out recently and now the
00:50:29.900 left is super focused on me.
00:50:31.100 They really would love to destroy me.
00:50:32.580 Not just me, but anybody who's considered more of the right.
00:50:35.880 You know, the New York Times, I think it was the Times one after Ben Shapiro.
00:50:41.300 Recently, or they went after Black Rifle Coffee.
00:50:44.120 It's just like you can see sort of figures on the right or perceived right getting targeted
00:50:49.460 one by one.
00:50:50.480 That's fine.
00:50:51.120 I got this.
00:50:52.200 So I've been critical of Naomi Osaka, who I admire as a tennis player.
00:50:56.620 She's a young gal.
00:50:57.400 She's she's a killer on the court.
00:50:59.220 Number two in the world because she came out and objected to doing the press conferences
00:51:04.480 after the French Open.
00:51:05.520 Y'all remember that, right?
00:51:06.980 This is the same woman who wore BLM masks of various people killed by police, seven different
00:51:13.640 masks on her face during the US Open last year.
00:51:17.780 So she clearly has no problem inviting media coverage on her terms.
00:51:22.660 But the press conferences, I guess she sees differently.
00:51:25.960 And she sort of showed her cards about why she didn't like it first.
00:51:29.000 She said, look, I don't like what happens at these press conferences.
00:51:31.480 It feels like kicking a person when they're down.
00:51:33.780 And then she said, if organizations like this think they can just keep saying do press
00:51:38.000 or you're going to be fined and continue to ignore the mental health of the athletes that
00:51:42.420 are the centerpiece of their cooperation, then I just got to laugh.
00:51:46.340 And the French Open said, well, we do think we're going to fine you because all the athletes
00:51:50.120 talk to the press after the press is the people's representatives.
00:51:54.000 And now you got to do it.
00:51:55.240 And they were supported by all the Grand Slams.
00:51:57.580 And so and by the way, this is the highest paid female athlete in the world.
00:52:00.160 OK, Naomi Osaka made $55 million last year, thanks to her public image, brought to you
00:52:06.180 by the press.
00:52:06.920 That's really how you get to know these athletes and these superstars.
00:52:10.380 Well, then there was pushback, right?
00:52:12.760 Then a bunch of athletes actually sort of came out and said, this is kind of, you know, we
00:52:16.440 all have to do it.
00:52:17.340 We don't we don't really love it.
00:52:19.120 But, you know, you're not alone.
00:52:20.680 And if we have to do the press, so do you.
00:52:23.540 There was more pushback than that, including by the Grand Slam tournaments.
00:52:26.700 And she then came out and expanded on the mental health messaging.
00:52:32.740 But the problem for Naomi and where I sort of got convinced that this might not be the
00:52:38.100 full story was her sister came out.
00:52:40.700 Her sister came out at the same time and sort of gave it up and said, look, tennis players
00:52:44.720 don't get paid for press conferences.
00:52:46.500 They get paid when they win.
00:52:48.600 And she said, and this is me quoting the older sister, Naomi mentioned to me before the tournament
00:52:53.620 that a family member had come up to her and remarked that she's bad at clay.
00:52:57.760 OK, a family member at every press conference, she's told she has a bad record on clay when
00:53:03.020 she lost in Rome.
00:53:04.140 She was not OK mentally.
00:53:05.520 Her confidence was completely shattered.
00:53:07.260 And I think that everyone's remarks and opinions have gotten into her head.
00:53:10.460 And she herself believed she was bad on clay.
00:53:13.260 Maria Osaka wrote, this isn't true.
00:53:15.720 And she knows that in order to do well and have a shot at winning Roland Garros, that's
00:53:19.160 the French Open, she will have to believe that she can.
00:53:22.380 That's the first step any athlete needs to do.
00:53:24.240 Believe in themselves.
00:53:25.420 So her solution was to block everything out.
00:53:27.760 No talking to people who are going to put doubt in her mind.
00:53:30.440 She's protecting her mind, hence why it's called mental health.
00:53:35.080 So many people are picky on this term, thinking you need to have depression or some sort of disorder
00:53:39.440 to be able to use the term mental health.
00:53:42.020 And then she goes on to talk about how tennis players don't get paid for press conferences.
00:53:45.200 They get paid when they win.
00:53:46.620 So there you have it from her sister.
00:53:48.420 That's the truth.
00:53:49.860 She says it.
00:53:50.840 We're not talking about depression.
00:53:52.280 We're talking about trying to keep negative people out of your head.
00:53:54.940 I get it.
00:53:56.120 I get it.
00:53:56.920 I'm not an athlete, but I get it even in my business.
00:53:59.300 I don't like putting negative people in my head either.
00:54:01.760 But it's part of the job.
00:54:03.380 It's literally part of the conference.
00:54:05.060 And apparently she was wrong.
00:54:06.360 They do get paid for these press conferences because it's part of the whole deal that the
00:54:10.980 athletes agree to when they perform at these tournaments.
00:54:13.940 So I understand her feeling, but that's not a justification for you getting special treatment
00:54:20.660 over all the other athletes, many of whom also hate dealing with the press.
00:54:24.760 That's when Naomi came out and said, oh, no, no, no, no.
00:54:27.440 I've this is about me being an introvert, having huge waves of social anxiety before I speak
00:54:34.280 to the media that I had long bouts of depression since the U.S.
00:54:37.860 Open win in 2018.
00:54:39.920 And I can't I can't speak to the media because it just causes too much social anxiety for me.
00:54:45.040 Well, the media did what it does.
00:54:47.560 They laud anybody who says mental health.
00:54:50.100 You know, yes, yes.
00:54:51.160 Good for you.
00:54:51.840 Oh, you're a leader.
00:54:52.880 There's no more praising anybody for getting past a challenge like that.
00:54:56.420 Right.
00:54:56.640 Saying it's tough, but I did it.
00:54:58.300 It's more like lean into your your whatever, whatever your struggle is, you lean into it.
00:55:04.140 There's no overcoming it.
00:55:05.120 It's just surrender to it.
00:55:06.560 Don't muddle through.
00:55:07.740 Don't don't deal with the press and sort of emerge victorious.
00:55:10.820 Say I can't.
00:55:12.220 And the press will applaud you all day long.
00:55:15.380 This is where I started to turn on it saying she already gave it up.
00:55:18.180 The sister gave it up.
00:55:19.400 Now she made it sound super big because she was getting all this blowback.
00:55:23.040 And then on the on the heels of that, we find out that she has no problem doing press.
00:55:28.300 She's since she made this announcement and withdrew from the French Open under all the controversy.
00:55:32.980 She's been on the cover of Vogue Japan, Time, Sports Illustrated.
00:55:36.780 She's done a Netflix documentary, fashion deals.
00:55:39.480 And now she's even promoting a Barbie of herself.
00:55:41.640 This woman has no problem doing press just as long as nobody's asking about how she apparently
00:55:46.820 isn't very good on clay.
00:55:48.480 That's that is what my lawyerly background tells me is happening here.
00:55:53.820 You may disagree.
00:55:54.560 That's fine.
00:55:55.380 This is my opinion.
00:55:57.380 So Clay Travis tweeted out something about her magazine covers, and I sort of added on to
00:56:01.900 it saying, don't forget about these two.
00:56:03.680 And then she responded to me on Twitter.
00:56:06.980 OK, she actually responded saying she blocked me at the same time she responded to me, which
00:56:12.280 is not a very brave move.
00:56:14.660 But I saw it in a news article.
00:56:17.080 Anyway, it said, seeing as you're a journalist, I would have assumed you would take the time
00:56:22.720 to research what the lead times are for magazines.
00:56:26.100 And if you did that, you would have found out I shot all my covers last year.
00:56:29.920 Well, I understand that a lot of those big magazines, Vogue and probably Sports Illustrated,
00:56:34.900 they have a three month lead time.
00:56:36.700 As for the time magazine piece that she wrote all about Roland Garros in that magazine, she
00:56:43.960 wrote an essay for the magazine about her decision to withdraw from the French Open.
00:56:48.740 And that was after she was she was fined for refusing to take part in the mandated news
00:56:53.580 conferences.
00:56:53.920 So that 100 percent came after that did not happen three months prior to Roland Garros.
00:56:59.660 So the point is she'll do press if on her terms.
00:57:03.820 She just doesn't want to do press that asks her tough questions.
00:57:06.940 I get it.
00:57:07.980 It's just not the way her business works.
00:57:09.720 And that is why people like Rafa Nadal have come out and said this is me quoting him.
00:57:15.380 We as athletes need to be ready to accept questions and produce answers without the press
00:57:18.820 who are writing the news.
00:57:20.220 We wouldn't be the athletes we are today.
00:57:21.820 We would not be that popular.
00:57:24.300 This is me adding on.
00:57:25.480 We would not have fifty five million dollars in endorsement deals like Naomi does.
00:57:29.780 Ashley Barty, world's number one, said speaking to the press is part of the job.
00:57:33.480 We know what we're signing up for.
00:57:35.120 Even the Women's Tennis Association came out and said, look, we understand the importance
00:57:39.780 of mental health, but professional athletes have a responsibility to to deal with their
00:57:46.660 fans, to deal with the media, to speak to the media surrounding their competition.
00:57:51.700 And since then, you've had people like Boris Becker come out and said, look, if you can't deal
00:57:54.980 with the media, it's very difficult to be a professional tennis player.
00:57:57.780 He said it's part of the job.
00:57:59.340 A lot of us don't like it, but it's part of the job.
00:58:01.700 And then he went on to say her claim that this is just too pressure filled, doesn't
00:58:05.180 hold up.
00:58:05.820 You know, like he made the point of like, look at these people who are dealing with the
00:58:09.060 loss of their businesses, the loss of their jobs.
00:58:11.020 That's pressure.
00:58:12.200 Speaking to the media, asking about how you're not that great on clay.
00:58:15.340 That's not pressure.
00:58:16.340 And we shouldn't be bending over backwards to say that she's a hero for saying that, you
00:58:20.680 know, for saying she can't handle it.
00:58:21.760 I see all of that.
00:58:23.500 I will note just as an aside that Martina Navarrola, she decided to weigh in on this.
00:58:28.420 And that's probably my favorite, favorite part of the whole dust up.
00:58:31.840 She actually called me an asshole for my tweet, right?
00:58:36.780 Like saying she blocked me.
00:58:39.480 And I guess she's not that tough unless she's on the court.
00:58:41.400 So she called me.
00:58:42.840 So I responded.
00:58:44.500 And then I will read it to you.
00:58:46.840 Actually, being an asshole, as you so elegantly put it, is calling for riots everywhere, as
00:58:51.460 you did after George Floyd died while you sat in one of your mansions in zero danger.
00:58:56.120 Nineteen people died in said riots, including David Dorn.
00:58:58.920 Now you want to pretend you care about others, please.
00:59:01.380 And the other thing about Martina, which I also pointed out, was this woman was among
00:59:05.660 those who piled up on Naomi when she first made her.
00:59:08.660 And Martina came out and said, this is not a mental health issue.
00:59:13.620 It's a mental issue.
00:59:14.940 And then told Naomi to, quote, woman up.
00:59:17.920 Then she got all this blowback and suddenly she wants to be her champion.
00:59:22.060 I respect you more if you just be honest, right?
00:59:24.200 Like you're either for her from the beginning or not.
00:59:26.540 But like, let's not pretend you're her champion because you're not.
00:59:29.880 Anyway, petty dust ups to some extent.
00:59:32.040 But I also, to me, it underscores how you must have one view in today's day and age,
00:59:38.400 right, or they're going to pile on you.
00:59:40.240 I have to accept Naomi's statements that she can't deal with any media unless it's Vogue
00:59:46.600 or Time or Sports Illustrated and unless it was prior to Roland Garros.
00:59:50.440 I have to.
00:59:51.060 I'm not allowed to doubt that.
00:59:53.100 Why not?
00:59:54.300 What a journalist job is, frankly, to be skeptical.
00:59:56.760 It's not to be a cheerleader for the for, you know, all the people that we cover.
01:00:02.000 And I just think that the pushback to try to silence opinions that are nuanced and maybe
01:00:07.440 off the sort of beaten path where everybody's going is problematic.
01:00:12.220 Right.
01:00:12.620 It troubles me.
01:00:14.280 And I think it's part of the reason that the trust in media is so low and we're so fractured
01:00:18.280 as a country.
01:00:19.340 So, look, I wish her all the best.
01:00:21.640 I hope she bailed on Wimbledon.
01:00:23.340 She's apparently going to the Olympics.
01:00:25.100 I hope she wins and I hope she represents the country and kick some butt.
01:00:29.060 I also hope that she gets honest with herself and and realizes that the more you lean into
01:00:34.220 challenges, however real they may be, and conquer them, the stronger you are.
01:00:40.640 And that's the example I'd like to set for my own daughter.
01:00:43.140 And I hope more women set for theirs.
01:00:45.860 So I'll leave it at that.
01:00:47.140 And I'd love your thoughts on it.
01:00:49.340 You can submit them by going subscribing to the show, downloading the show, and you can
01:00:54.940 leave me a review.
01:00:55.700 Five stars would be lovely.
01:00:57.340 And your thoughts on the whole back and forth.
01:01:00.380 OK, now back to our stars, Sandra and Don.
01:01:04.340 Is it true that there have been no arrests in these cases you just mentioned?
01:01:13.620 There have been.
01:01:14.400 Not in the not in the shot, the the children's shot.
01:01:17.760 Oh, yeah.
01:01:18.320 Not in the children's shot.
01:01:19.400 No, no, no, no, no.
01:01:20.500 Sorry.
01:01:20.960 You're right, Megan.
01:01:21.820 Yes.
01:01:22.480 My gosh.
01:01:23.560 So far, no justice.
01:01:24.900 And so those people are still out there.
01:01:26.180 They're still out there.
01:01:26.960 Right.
01:01:27.460 And the cops, of course, not only were the cops defunded, they were also demoralized.
01:01:32.800 Right.
01:01:33.280 You know, there was this whole concept of you guys are bad guys.
01:01:37.040 You all are.
01:01:38.080 You all are.
01:01:38.740 You're all chauvin.
01:01:39.680 You're all chauvin.
01:01:40.460 We don't like you.
01:01:41.400 We want to get rid of you.
01:01:42.740 Right.
01:01:42.960 And so there's been a kind of naive type of leadership, totally misunderstanding the impact
01:01:50.000 of negative feedback and criticism on the workforce.
01:01:57.700 You know, at the end of the day, they're the workforce.
01:02:00.020 And if you constantly are putting down your workers, even though some of them are not good
01:02:06.240 workers, everybody's going to be eventually demoralized.
01:02:11.200 There have been studies showing that, right, that where police misbehave or, you know, commit
01:02:16.040 an egregious act and it's handled on a local level.
01:02:18.820 The police officers punished, fired, what have you.
01:02:22.780 Things can get better.
01:02:24.420 But when it becomes a big national story and it winds up on loop, you know, on some national
01:02:28.780 news program over and over and over and the narrative gets started that the cops are
01:02:32.500 bad, the cops are all racist, the cops are all this, that, the other thing, police pull
01:02:36.140 back.
01:02:37.180 Yeah.
01:02:38.120 And they're spitting.
01:02:39.020 They're spitting at cops, you know, they're spitting, yelling at cops, throwing things.
01:02:43.600 Yeah.
01:02:43.860 And when the cops come to help, people are yelling at them.
01:02:46.920 And, and, and, and one of the things, Megan, I tell you is so, and like you were mentioning
01:02:52.280 when it's, when it's handled on a local level, what, what, what period we're in now in our
01:02:57.220 history in this country is that it's no longer just local because we have smartphones.
01:03:03.020 So this is national, the, the part of the force that is racist, that does abuse communities
01:03:10.480 of color, they're now on blast.
01:03:13.460 And so that has gone viral.
01:03:16.460 Repeatedly.
01:03:17.260 Repeatedly.
01:03:17.780 Across every city.
01:03:19.660 Everybody's had the shared experiences.
01:03:21.920 And so all of that trauma is swelling up in this perfect storm.
01:03:27.440 Right.
01:03:27.960 Right.
01:03:28.280 Is that a good thing or a bad thing, Sandra?
01:03:30.200 That, that, you know, the bad cops now, we can't see them again.
01:03:33.440 It's both.
01:03:33.940 Both are good.
01:03:34.560 Right.
01:03:35.020 It's both.
01:03:35.740 But how we handle it.
01:03:37.480 Yeah.
01:03:37.820 That is.
01:03:38.860 That could make it a good thing.
01:03:39.800 That's what, that's the challenge.
01:03:42.000 And so far our city council and many, many councils, you know, across the country are not,
01:03:49.580 they're handling it irresponsibly, naively, and dangerously.
01:03:55.080 And that's this big overarching sweep that we are defunding and abolishing the police.
01:04:01.840 And we don't care what the collateral damage is.
01:04:05.940 So a few folks got to die.
01:04:07.480 And by the way, they're all going to look like Don and I in Minneapolis of all of the
01:04:12.520 people shot year to date, 83% of those people are black, Megan.
01:04:16.760 And we only make up 19% of the city.
01:04:20.200 Okay.
01:04:20.560 Wow.
01:04:21.060 So.
01:04:21.620 And it seems as if the activist community are considering that to be the necessary collateral
01:04:29.180 damage for progress.
01:04:30.840 Right.
01:04:31.300 Because they're not talking about it.
01:04:33.480 What's the racial makeup of the, of the city council?
01:04:36.460 Do you know?
01:04:37.480 Oh, they're, it's pretty diverse.
01:04:40.740 Yeah.
01:04:41.040 So the two, our two council people who cover North Minneapolis are both defunders, for example.
01:04:46.880 Yeah.
01:04:47.180 And they're our, they're covering the most.
01:04:49.980 They're our, the most, the place where 80, where, where all the folks are, look like us
01:04:54.540 who are getting shot and killed.
01:04:55.940 All the children that we mentioned, Megan, we didn't say it, but they're all African-American.
01:05:00.340 Mm-hmm.
01:05:01.420 Why don't, why don't those two city council members take a look at that?
01:05:04.660 I mean, you think, you ask yourself, how can they be in favor of defunding?
01:05:08.420 Exactly.
01:05:08.980 Exactly.
01:05:09.500 That's where we're, we're, we're befuddled by that as well.
01:05:12.680 And we were shocked when we saw them have the big defund announcement last summer on
01:05:17.820 CNN.
01:05:18.900 And by the way, that is in defiance of the polls.
01:05:23.060 Of the polls.
01:05:23.660 That show that.
01:05:24.840 That most African-Americans.
01:05:26.480 African-Americans, yeah.
01:05:27.040 Are opposed to that.
01:05:28.140 Yeah.
01:05:28.300 Don't want that.
01:05:29.360 That's right.
01:05:29.800 I mean, I've been saying that just in my neighborhood, like I live in a doorman building.
01:05:33.400 I'm going to be fine.
01:05:34.560 I, I'm not out there calling for defunding the police, even though I see that they're
01:05:38.280 by far from perfect, I won't have to pay the penalty, right?
01:05:42.320 I understand it's black and brown communities in, in some of the more crime rooted areas
01:05:47.540 who, and you know, moms and dads and kids who are going to have to deal with this, which
01:05:52.000 is why it's so irritating where I live to see.
01:05:53.880 It's usually white women wearing Lululemon, you know, and a sign trying to make pronouncements
01:05:59.680 for communities that they have no real connection to.
01:06:03.120 Yes.
01:06:04.300 Make it, it is so funny you said that.
01:06:07.080 So, you know, all the drama with George Floyd Square, how they had blocked it off and you
01:06:12.220 couldn't get in and they weren't letting media in and, you know, at different times.
01:06:16.840 But when you, when you would go, it was becoming a garrison community, right?
01:06:21.780 And when you, when you went, we went, you know, a couple of times there were, it was white
01:06:27.460 young women who were standing guard and manning these little booths, you know, when you would
01:06:34.340 come in and, and I mean, they were like, they're in force and it was like, oh my goodness,
01:06:40.560 like you get to say whether George Floyd Square is open or not.
01:06:44.840 And you get to say whether we can, whether we can come.
01:06:48.620 Well, they didn't, of course, they didn't say anything to us.
01:06:50.620 They were saying it to media for sure.
01:06:53.260 But yeah, it is, it is the most, it is absolutely.
01:06:57.240 And because Megan, here's the deal.
01:06:59.260 We have to do both.
01:07:00.840 And we have to reform the system of policing.
01:07:04.320 We talked about what, I mean, we are adamant about that.
01:07:07.840 And we have an African-American police chief who grew up in Minneapolis.
01:07:14.500 And I mean, Megan, if you met Chief Arradondo, you'd want to be his best friend.
01:07:19.060 And he's competent.
01:07:20.620 He's not just nice, he's competent.
01:07:22.940 And he has a, he sued the police department himself as a police officer because of the racism,
01:07:28.860 but he didn't give up on the profession.
01:07:31.660 Right.
01:07:32.140 And ultimately became chief and has all kinds of things that he's working on in terms of reform.
01:07:38.880 Wait, didn't we see him testify?
01:07:40.760 Did we see him testify at the Chauvin trial?
01:07:42.920 Yeah, I remember him, of course.
01:07:44.480 Yes.
01:07:44.800 Saying that Chauvin's action violated every policy.
01:07:47.960 Violated everything.
01:07:49.580 Yes.
01:07:49.780 He was not on the side of Derek Chauvin.
01:07:51.440 People forget it was Chauvin, but it was a bunch of police officers against Chauvin at that trial.
01:07:56.000 Yes.
01:07:56.440 All right, so let me move forward to the lawsuit because I do want to get your thoughts on that.
01:08:00.360 So you guys, to your credit, and I'm now hearing your history about what you've done in your
01:08:04.260 own neighborhood, it makes more sense to me because you've been organized, you've been
01:08:08.160 active, you've been proactive.
01:08:10.040 So this starts happening and the deaths start happening and you, a team of eight, as I understand,
01:08:16.280 eight plaintiffs get together and file a lawsuit against the city council.
01:08:20.900 And I understand the mayor, I think you can explain that, but saying you've failed to
01:08:27.820 live up to the city charter, which requires that there be a certain number of police per
01:08:33.240 member of the citizenry and you've fallen below and you won.
01:08:39.060 Yeah.
01:08:40.160 It's amazing.
01:08:41.660 So tell me, how did you feel about the lawsuit and what was the reaction to it locally?
01:08:46.460 Well, you know, let me say that when we filed the lawsuit, we understood that this 740, 730
01:08:56.180 to 750 number that it will eventually be after the new census numbers come out was not even
01:09:04.300 adequate.
01:09:05.160 And that he's talking about of police officers for a city our size.
01:09:09.980 750 is what the charter requires for a population our size.
01:09:15.140 The city charter.
01:09:16.240 Yeah.
01:09:16.680 Got it.
01:09:17.440 But, but that's, that's 130 less than what, what the force is designed for.
01:09:26.600 Yeah.
01:09:27.060 And where you were a year ago.
01:09:29.220 Yeah.
01:09:29.560 Yeah.
01:09:29.860 Well, we were about a hundred, a hundred less than where we were a year ago.
01:09:33.620 Yeah.
01:09:33.980 Okay.
01:09:34.220 Yeah.
01:09:34.620 At the beginning of 2020, it was like 840.
01:09:37.660 840.
01:09:38.500 Right.
01:09:38.820 And they were projecting, I'm trying to get my numbers in front of me, but they were projecting
01:09:43.720 that the numbers were going to fall.
01:09:45.440 Okay.
01:09:45.600 Here it is.
01:09:46.080 They were saying by June of 2022, we'll have only 669 officers.
01:09:52.020 Yeah.
01:09:52.380 Right.
01:09:52.540 It's only 669.
01:09:53.720 So it was going in the wrong direction, which makes perfect sense when you understand they
01:09:57.340 had resolved, don't replace the people who are retiring.
01:10:00.520 Let's take away the budget.
01:10:01.980 You know, we don't even have the money to rehire.
01:10:04.200 Right.
01:10:04.560 So, so you win, you do, I mean, I love when people use the law, somebody who used to practice
01:10:09.160 law.
01:10:09.560 I just love, cause it's still there for us and you win that.
01:10:12.960 So now is it, is it, is it just total victory or is this just step one?
01:10:18.240 Step one.
01:10:18.840 Cause you know, the city is going to appeal.
01:10:20.740 Yeah.
01:10:21.100 And what they're saying is, and by the way, Megan, one thing I want to stress is we're not
01:10:26.140 demanding more police, right?
01:10:29.040 More police.
01:10:29.920 It's like, you know, you have a hundred dollars, I have a hundred dollars, Megan, and you steal
01:10:33.800 50 from me.
01:10:34.960 And I say, I want my 50 back.
01:10:36.980 And you say, oh, you want more money.
01:10:38.960 I mean, it's not more.
01:10:41.160 We just want to, and that's what the defunders are making it seem like that we just want a
01:10:45.900 police state.
01:10:46.900 More police.
01:10:47.260 And right.
01:10:47.820 We want a sufficient number of police.
01:10:51.280 Cause even what the judge said, you have to have at minimum 730 by June 22nd, I'm sorry,
01:10:59.800 June 2022.
01:11:02.080 That for us is, I mean, it's scary because that's a whole nother year, for example.
01:11:08.500 And 730 is a minimum.
01:11:11.680 It doesn't get us back even to where we were.
01:11:15.440 110 short of where we were.
01:11:17.280 So this is not more.
01:11:18.520 Yeah.
01:11:18.920 This is actually less.
01:11:20.440 Right.
01:11:20.760 It's less than what we had.
01:11:22.100 It's just a sufficient level for our city, which we actually don't believe is sufficient.
01:11:27.520 No, not anymore.
01:11:28.760 But, but we understand the charter and we're just saying, do, do what the charter says.
01:11:34.520 That's our, at least that's our document.
01:11:37.660 It's so crazy, you guys, that you, you can see the amount of change, the amount of protests,
01:11:41.520 the amount of riots in the street after George Floyd, which I understand.
01:11:45.200 I mean, it was horrific, but you don't see anything after these children, you know, like
01:11:51.400 where, where are all the protests for these three kids, for the little girls, for the
01:11:55.380 little boy who's on what life support right now.
01:11:57.580 And I've heard you saying, Sandra, you'll, you're, if you have to choose, if you had to
01:12:02.980 choose how your child died, was murdered, you, you would, you'd have to choose by a police
01:12:08.940 officer because then at least he'd get some attention.
01:12:12.080 Yeah.
01:12:12.260 Because we, we go to the visuals.
01:12:13.940 In the egregious, devastating event that that were to happen, right?
01:12:18.120 You want people to remember your child, to rally behind you, you know, to make sure the,
01:12:24.920 the perpetrator is apprehended and, and that's not happening.
01:12:29.480 To remember the anniversary of your child's death.
01:12:31.840 Yes.
01:12:32.120 I've heard grandmothers cry, Megan, and say, what about my child?
01:12:38.080 Yeah.
01:12:38.340 My grandchild, doesn't he deserve for people to come and rally around us, right?
01:12:45.680 And we have, we have vigils, you know, every time a child dies like that, we have vigils
01:12:52.100 and sometimes the vigils go on for days or weeks as a child is in the hospital.
01:12:57.040 And, you know, there'd be a couple dozen people, three dozen people, 50 people, but missing in
01:13:05.960 action is the protest community that attends when a police officer kills someone.
01:13:11.340 And so it's not then you, you, you have to deduce that the important thing for that community
01:13:17.620 is not the loss of life of an African-American.
01:13:21.400 It is the taking of life by a cop.
01:13:25.160 Right.
01:13:25.660 So it's not about the value of the, the one who died.
01:13:28.860 It's the value of the one who killed.
01:13:31.580 Right.
01:13:31.840 And, and so all black lives don't actually matter to, right?
01:13:37.720 Cop killers.
01:13:38.800 If a cop kills you, then your life matters.
01:13:40.940 Because if it did, they'd be taking a both and approach, Megan.
01:13:45.600 And they'd be saying, while we reform the police, the system of policing to stop this egregious
01:13:52.120 killing that happens across our country of unarmed black men and women, we also will work with
01:13:58.480 the police, um, on those reforms.
01:14:01.200 Yes.
01:14:01.900 And, and so that we have a sufficient level of police, the ones who actually got into the
01:14:09.160 profession because they care about society.
01:14:12.820 There are some police out there.
01:14:14.800 We will affirm them.
01:14:15.840 Yes.
01:14:16.180 We're going to affirm them.
01:14:17.600 Because they actually are taking care of the people we care about.
01:14:21.760 Yes.
01:14:22.300 Right?
01:14:22.960 Yeah.
01:14:23.100 So if you, if you make it about how the community is treated.
01:14:26.600 Yes.
01:14:26.780 About the children in the community.
01:14:28.720 Right.
01:14:29.120 Then it leads to a whole different set of habits and, and, and responses.
01:14:33.080 You start having.
01:14:33.840 Than what's happening now.
01:14:34.420 You start having, coming to a conclusion, um, that's wise.
01:14:38.960 Yeah.
01:14:39.640 What about.
01:14:40.260 You start saying to the community, hey guys, you can't do that.
01:14:42.800 You got to cooperate with the police and tell, if you know who took, who shot this child,
01:14:48.420 tell the police and stop this foolish, no snitching business.
01:14:52.520 Yeah.
01:14:52.860 They're not all the enemy.
01:14:54.780 You begin to make a whole, uh, different approach to the whole thing.
01:14:58.780 Don't leave me now.
01:14:59.760 We got more coming up in 60 seconds.
01:15:01.400 In June of 2020, the city council announced it would dismantle the police department and
01:15:09.760 quote, end policing as we know it.
01:15:11.100 And they said, we're going to replace cops with community-based public safety programs.
01:15:15.140 So that sounds, I guess, okay.
01:15:17.480 In theory.
01:15:17.900 I don't know what it is, a community-based public safety program.
01:15:20.460 I mean, I, my reaction from way over here is I think I'd rather have just a cop with a
01:15:25.300 gun.
01:15:25.580 If somebody was trying to carjack me, I don't know what the community-based public safety
01:15:29.220 program does, but what is that?
01:15:31.200 And what do you think of that?
01:15:33.060 Well, first, let me say that if you want community-based public safety, you can look at our neighbors
01:15:39.700 over the last 25 years that we've been there.
01:15:43.900 We've engaged with every neighbor who comes in and moves in.
01:15:47.600 You know, sometimes we overlook it when we got too busy or didn't notice.
01:15:52.340 We talk to them.
01:15:54.120 We have meetings.
01:15:56.080 We get neighbors together to deal with a particular problem property.
01:15:59.820 We go over to the house where the problem is occurring.
01:16:03.540 We talk to the people there.
01:16:04.800 We call their landlord.
01:16:06.360 We, it's going on.
01:16:07.860 And we have been doing it.
01:16:09.240 So it's kind of like, hey, guys, can we just be realistic about this?
01:16:15.340 Are you just talking about, you know, 30 guys walking up and down the street who don't
01:16:20.240 have any connection to the neighborhood?
01:16:21.880 Or are you talking about a real deeply integrated plan that's integrated into the neighborhood
01:16:27.920 itself?
01:16:29.140 This is back to your point of it's not either or.
01:16:31.900 It's both and.
01:16:33.520 But I do have a, so it has to be both and, Megan.
01:16:36.860 And so we would, we do have an office of violence prevention in Minneapolis.
01:16:40.200 And there's a lot of models around the country of getting people from the community who are
01:16:45.660 actually there building relationships and, and knowing who some, a lot of our violence
01:16:51.400 is gang related right now.
01:16:53.360 And in the city, a lot of it is gang related.
01:16:55.580 And so they know the gang members.
01:16:57.700 Some of them used to be gang members that works in tandem with policing.
01:17:04.580 And, and recently an armed robber fled to Minneapolis from St. Paul.
01:17:10.420 There was a chase.
01:17:11.480 He crashed.
01:17:12.580 And our African-American head of the precinct, Charlie Adams, he was there.
01:17:22.260 Other police were there.
01:17:23.280 They're trying to talk the guy down.
01:17:24.740 He said he was going to kill them or himself.
01:17:26.980 So they figured it was mental health.
01:17:29.640 Charlie, because he's from the neighborhood, he had police.
01:17:33.420 He didn't call for more police.
01:17:34.800 He called for some of the violence interrupters that he knew who were from the neighborhood.
01:17:39.680 And he called the kid's mom, the young man's mom, got his number because of the connections.
01:17:45.540 And she said, don't kill my son.
01:17:47.180 Don't kill my son.
01:17:47.840 And he said, ma'am, that's the last thing I want to do.
01:17:50.740 That's why I'm calling you.
01:17:52.460 And they were able to, with the police, with some folks from the community, actually talk
01:17:59.280 him out of that situation.
01:18:01.280 Right.
01:18:01.700 But the violence prevention folks weren't going to be able to do it by themselves.
01:18:06.300 And the police were able to de-escalate the situation with having some people there.
01:18:13.320 Now, that is a perfect scenario.
01:18:17.400 But you have to have policing.
01:18:21.060 That's the thing.
01:18:22.140 You have to have both and.
01:18:24.000 You guys have to hold up.
01:18:25.300 Do you ever think about running for office, one or both of you?
01:18:28.140 Yeah.
01:18:30.460 Seriously.
01:18:31.060 Megan, people ask us that all the time.
01:18:35.040 They're like, could one of you run?
01:18:37.080 Yes.
01:18:37.760 Do it.
01:18:38.840 Come on.
01:18:39.900 We need more practical solutions-based people out there instead of the far extremists.
01:18:47.340 You know, I don't want to listen to the lady in the Lululemon anymore.
01:18:50.660 Right?
01:18:51.260 I want people who are living it and actually trying to solve it out there at the pointy end
01:18:56.760 of the spear, trying to set policy.
01:18:58.640 Why did you get off the city council, Don?
01:19:00.080 You've got to get back on the city council.
01:19:02.060 And Sandra, yeah, I want something more city council.
01:19:04.900 I ran for mayor.
01:19:05.600 I had to get off the council to do that because both races are simultaneous.
01:19:09.840 Yeah.
01:19:10.300 Well, how do we get rid of Jacob Fry and get you in there?
01:19:15.620 We're actually, because Jacob is pro both and, we are supporting him.
01:19:21.760 Well, I'm not supporting him.
01:19:22.840 I want you.
01:19:23.880 Okay.
01:19:25.600 He's the same person in the room.
01:19:28.000 Yeah.
01:19:28.320 Do you guys have, in all seriousness, do you have any sort of, you know, pamphlet or
01:19:32.800 written materials on how you're doing this that people in other communities could see
01:19:37.740 so they could learn?
01:19:39.220 Yeah, because people have been calling and asking us.
01:19:42.600 And in fact, even in Minneapolis, there are other groups who want to sue the city.
01:19:48.220 Want to sue the city.
01:19:49.320 Yeah.
01:19:49.600 Because it seems to be now the only, when you're elected representatives ignore you.
01:19:57.360 Right.
01:19:57.660 It seems as if the only other choice is the law.
01:20:00.760 Right.
01:20:01.200 Right.
01:20:01.480 Until you can get them unelected.
01:20:03.240 Right.
01:20:03.780 And so we are, we are working passionately to get sensible, balanced people.
01:20:09.180 It's about being balanced.
01:20:10.960 Yeah.
01:20:11.280 Both and sensible.
01:20:12.880 We're not against anybody.
01:20:14.340 We're for people and for life.
01:20:16.420 Well, how can we help in the meantime, though?
01:20:19.040 Because as you say, they're going to appeal the ruling.
01:20:21.020 In the meantime, you don't have enough cops.
01:20:23.080 And I was just, I was talking to Larry Elder about Cori Bush, this representative out of
01:20:27.080 Missouri.
01:20:27.600 She's a defund the policer and just came out that she spent $70,000 on her own private
01:20:32.720 police force.
01:20:33.660 No.
01:20:34.000 It must be nice.
01:20:34.900 It must be nice.
01:20:35.860 No.
01:20:35.940 But you guys, I'm sure you don't have an extra $70,000 to hire a private security force
01:20:41.540 to control your neighborhood.
01:20:42.400 Where is this, Megan?
01:20:43.800 Cori Bush out of Missouri.
01:20:45.360 You know, she's a representative out of Missouri.
01:20:47.020 Yes.
01:20:47.840 She's big on the defund police.
01:20:50.100 Three of our city council members did the same thing, Megan.
01:20:53.540 They got private security.
01:20:54.860 They got private security.
01:20:55.580 On taxpayer dollar.
01:20:57.960 It's so infuriating.
01:20:59.140 When they felt threatened.
01:21:00.440 Yeah.
01:21:00.920 Oh my gosh.
01:21:01.580 Doesn't that drive you crazy?
01:21:03.120 Yeah.
01:21:03.340 Oh, no.
01:21:03.500 Yeah, it is crazy making.
01:21:04.660 Um, the, the big thing, Megan, is we, um, we're open.
01:21:08.380 We even had some folks from Portland call.
01:21:10.360 I haven't, um, we haven't had the meeting yet, but, um, yeah, people from all around the
01:21:15.180 country are asking how they do it.
01:21:16.920 We have a law firm, Upper Midwest Law Center, and want to give them a shout out.
01:21:21.400 They did our case pro bono, by the way.
01:21:24.080 And, um, and so they are talking to other people, but the main thing is that you get together
01:21:29.840 and we have to work on two fronts.
01:21:32.040 We work in terms of the law.
01:21:33.880 If you're, if your elected officials are not, um, working with you, then you have to find
01:21:39.320 a law firm that will support you and you just move, you know, you just, you just get it
01:21:46.200 going.
01:21:46.660 And by the way, we've talked about the people who lost lives, businesses, our economy is
01:21:54.040 imperiled right now, Megan.
01:21:55.880 And, and, and the people who are hurt first are the local black businesses, right?
01:22:03.540 Right.
01:22:04.140 Who can't stay open after the rioting and looting.
01:22:08.040 I mean, they have cried for George Floyd square to be reopened.
01:22:12.460 Corporations are leaving downtown Minneapolis.
01:22:15.300 They may not come back.
01:22:16.840 And again, it's a, it's a, uh, uh, uh, conspiracy of both COVID, but also the violence and knowing
01:22:23.620 that they have a city council that is saying, we don't care if you can't protect your employees
01:22:30.380 downtown, we're moving to abolish.
01:22:33.460 And we don't care, we don't care if you have to close your, your business, we don't care.
01:22:39.040 We don't care.
01:22:40.020 Yeah.
01:22:40.480 And, and in fact, but de facto, we don't care if your three children have to die.
01:22:46.280 That's just a collateral damage.
01:22:47.700 Yes.
01:22:48.120 We don't care for our economy.
01:22:49.720 And we, I mean, we're just going down, Megan, on so many fronts.
01:22:54.180 So, so the business community joining in, and we are partnered with the business community,
01:22:58.780 the chamber of commerce, um, joining in and really doing an all out.
01:23:03.580 If you are balanced, you have a balanced approach and you are middle of the road people, because
01:23:08.480 we don't want extremes on the right, nor on the left.
01:23:12.100 Right.
01:23:12.720 And, and Megan, the middle of the road people, we have to find those folks again and join with
01:23:19.280 them so that we save not just our cities, but our entire democracy.
01:23:24.340 And to hold up that middle, that sensible middle.
01:23:27.360 That sensible middle.
01:23:28.160 So that people can see that, oh, oh, there is a sense, sensible, sensibility out there.
01:23:35.720 There is a balanced voice.
01:23:38.120 There is something to come back to.
01:23:39.940 I am ready to fund your campaign.
01:23:41.880 I think we should go for the governor's mansion.
01:23:43.880 I don't think we should stop the mayor.
01:23:45.780 I love you too.
01:23:47.860 This is, it's so wonderful to just have such a bomb of sense dumped on us.
01:23:51.980 You know, it's like, usually I listen to the partisans who say like racial justice,
01:23:55.140 and then they're hurting people in the inner cities.
01:23:57.140 And you're like, well, I kind of want to object, but I don't want to be called mean names.
01:24:00.680 And then, you know, you hear people on the other side saying like Derek Chauvin did nothing
01:24:03.960 wrong.
01:24:04.320 And it's like, well, it's just so, it's so nice to hear you guys put it in terms.
01:24:10.800 Everyone can understand and get behind.
01:24:12.300 You just need a bigger platform.
01:24:13.600 You got to like, at least start a podcast, do something.
01:24:16.180 We need more of you.
01:24:19.000 Oh, you're kind, Megan.
01:24:20.220 You're very kind.
01:24:21.180 We appreciate it.
01:24:21.780 Yeah.
01:24:22.360 Good luck.
01:24:23.000 God bless you guys.
01:24:23.820 I'll continue to follow.
01:24:24.720 We'll continue to follow it on the show.
01:24:26.320 We'll say a prayer for that little boy too, still in the hospital and for all of you guys
01:24:30.180 in your community.
01:24:31.480 Oh, thank you, Megan.
01:24:32.500 Thank you very much, Megan.
01:24:33.000 All right.
01:24:37.620 Continuing with our daily release of these podcasts, we're gearing up now.
01:24:41.040 We're doing four a week.
01:24:42.340 Tomorrow, we've got another show for you and we're going to focus on what's happening in
01:24:45.440 Cuba.
01:24:46.360 And what about Hong Kong, right?
01:24:47.860 What about these pushes for independence and try to get rid of these oppressive regimes
01:24:51.880 over these countries?
01:24:53.540 Are they going anywhere?
01:24:54.540 And do you understand them?
01:24:56.420 I'd like to understand them better and I'm going to walk you through it.
01:24:58.560 We're going to keep it at 101.
01:25:00.240 So it's sort of a primer on both of those situations.
01:25:03.000 I think you'll appreciate it.
01:25:04.100 I hope you do.
01:25:04.940 And we'll talk then.
01:25:07.420 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
01:25:09.380 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
01:25:14.300 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.