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Oct. 17, 2025 16:02-16:46 - CSPAN

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Washington Journal Rafael Mangual

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Every year to put out reports.
		And I think it's that overwhelmingly we spend money on representation.
		But look, I understand what you're saying about, you know, being sick and tired of politicians on each side.
		But what you're talking about in terms of that period of time and the people like Jonathan Haight and others who have been studying this in terms of social media, they've seen that since screens have basically taken over in 2010, that we have lost the competition with screens in terms of our kids.
		And that's what we're trying to fight.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Randy Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and her new book is Why Fascists Fear Teachers, Public Education, and the Future of Democracy.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Randy Weingarten, thank you for talking to our viewers this morning.
unidentified		Thank you so much.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Joining us this morning is Rafael Mangual.
		He's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book Criminal Injustice, here to talk about the Trump administration's efforts to fight crime.
		Earlier this week, the president and FBI Director Kash Patel, along with the Attorney General, gave an update on crime prevention across the country.
		How would you describe the administration's overall approach nine months into this administration?
unidentified		Well, I think it's been relatively sound.
		I mean, I think the administration is taking lessons learned throughout the last several decades and reapplying them in American cities.
		But I also think that they are learning a little bit about the limits of taking a sort of federal government first approach to crime fighting.
		And what I've been really encouraged by is what the federal government seems to be doing to encourage states and give states the resources that they need to have their local law enforcement agencies do the job of crime control first and foremost.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What's the limit?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What limits are they learning?
unidentified		Well, I think the limits that they're learning is that, you know, there is a capacity limit for one, right?
		I mean, the federal government is only so big.
		There are so many American cities with so many different problems.
		They can't be in all places at once.
		You know, the lessons that were learned in Washington, D.C., I think, were, you know, illustrative for what states should be doing.
		I mean, you know, Washington, D.C. saw a massive decrease in crime when the surge occurred.
		I think overall crime was down something like 17%.
		But because of the temporary nature of that surge, one of those lessons was that we started to see crime rise back up after the surge ended.
		So the hope is that the federal government can kind of illustrate these lessons and give states and local law enforcement agencies a roadmap to follow and then ideally enjoy those same results in their own jurisdictions.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Take a look at a poll that was conducted by the Washington Post and Ipsos.
		They found, this was from September, 47% of Americans disapprove and 37% approved of his actions here in D.C. 46% opposed the idea of sending troops into other cities and 42% support it.
		Your reaction.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I think that shows that the country's pretty evenly divided on a lot of these questions.
		But there's no question that Donald Trump ran his campaign on doing exactly what he's doing now.
		So to the extent that he's following through on a campaign promise, I think that is being faithful to the promises that he made as a candidate.
		And I do think that the voters who supported him are likely the ones that are expressing the most support for that.
		But again, I think one of the other lessons learned here is that the federal government has limited jurisdiction.
		And so what that means is that there's only so much that they can do at the state and local level.
		What I was most encouraged by, I think two of the most important efforts done by the federal government were not boots on the ground efforts, but were actually illustrated by the executive orders that President Trump signed earlier this year.
		So in April, there was an executive order on policing that directed the federal government to set aside more money for local police recruitment and retention, for providing more excess military and national security equipment to local police departments.
		And he also directed his DOJ to stop pattern and practice investigations of local law enforcement agencies based solely on racial disparate impact and enforcement statistics.
		And I think two of those two developments have been incredibly important and will prove to be important and lasting, unlike some of these boots on the ground efforts that are only going to have limited impacts.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Earlier this month, as you know, judges blocked the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago and Portland.
		So what legal authority does the president have to deploy troops to cities?
		And what is your response to these judges and their decision?
unidentified		Look, I think that, you know, again, this is one of those areas where the federal government is sort of testing the waters and learning some of the limits of its jurisdiction with respect to things like National Guard deployments.
		But there are other jurisdictions where governors are going to request the help of the National Guard.
		And that is where I think the administration should focus those efforts rather than litigating these questions where they are deploying over the objections of the governors.
		I think that the legal requirement for that kind of deployment is significantly higher.
		The bar is higher and probably hasn't been met in a place like Chicago.
		That doesn't mean that what Chicago is doing or that the approach that the state of Illinois has been taking to these issues is the right one.
		I would say it's absolutely the wrong one in a lot of different ways.
		But once again, I do think that the federal government should focus its resources most heavily on the places where they are going to have the cooperation of local authorities because that's where you're going to be able to maximize the potential benefits of these efforts.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Rafael Mungwell, what are you, who is committing the crimes that the president is trying to limit or stop in these cities?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Who are the criminals?
unidentified		I mean, the same people that have been committing the crimes in cities, you know, over the course of American history, right?
		I mean, you know, every American city has a crime problem, right?
		There's never existed a human society in which predation didn't exist.
		And so, you know, what I think we have to recognize is that that crime problem has always been very hyper-concentrated among a very small number of offenders.
		What I think the federal government is most concerned with is this problem of repeat offenders, where you have this low-hanging fruit in the form of individuals who have 10, 20, 30 prior arrests, multiple prior convictions, active criminal justice statuses like probation or parole or open cases, and yet are out roaming the streets.
		I think this is where the federal government is trying to make the biggest impact outside of the immigration context, which is, of course, where the federal government has devoted a lot of its resources.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The Brenton Center has this headline, debunking the myth of the migrant crime wave.
		They say data shows, does not support claims that the United States has experienced a surge in crime caused by immigrants.
		And in their reporting, they say the research does not support the view that immigrants commit crime or are incarcerated at higher rates than native-born Americans.
		In fact, immigrants might have less law enforcement contact compared to non-immigrants.
		Rafael Mangual?
unidentified		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		So, I mean, I'm familiar with these claims, you know, and I think it's important to sort of parse them out, right, and understand what they are and are not responsive to.
		I don't think anyone's saying that immigrants writ large as a group are a criminal group, right?
		I mean, and just as Americans as a group are not a criminal group, there are subsets of every population where crime concentrates.
		And one of the things that I would say just in response to listening to you read that Brennan Center piece off is that one of the things you have to do is sort of disaggregate that group of immigrants, right?
		What does it mean to say that immigrants commit crime at lower rates than natives?
		Okay, well, that might be different from what it means to say that illegal immigrants commit less crime than natives.
		And then what about male illegal immigrants?
		And what about male illegal immigrants who cross the southern border illegally as opposed to, say, overstaying a visa?
		You know, and when you kind of dig down, I do think that you'll find some evidence that there are some subsets of the illegal immigrant population that do commit crime at a significant enough rate to warrant the kind of attention that the federal government has been directing toward this problem.
		And at the end of the day, I think a lot of Americans have sort of gotten to the point where they say, well, we don't really care what the crime rates are in the aggregate to the extent that we have a massive illegal immigrant population that resulted from an open borders policy and that some subset of those individuals are committing crimes.
		Well, those are crimes that definitionally we should not be experiencing had we done our job at the border.
		And I think the president is being responsive to those concerns.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's get our viewers involved this morning.
		Republicans, dial in at 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003.
		We'll go to Vicksburg, Michigan.
		John watching there, an Independent.
		Hi, John.
unidentified		Hi, how you doing?
		Morning.
		I think that this whole crackdown on crime is misplaced.
		I think that the crackdown on crime should be aimed at Wall Street and the federal government.
		I think that would solve a lot of situations.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		We'll take a look at some numbers put together by the Washington Times on Operation Summer Heat.
		Nearly 8,700 arrests of violent offenders in three months.
		2,200 firearms have been seized.
		557 missing children found.
		And 45,000 kilograms of cocaine and 421 kilograms of fentanyl seized.
		This is from the Washington Times reporting on Operation Summer Heat.
		Rafael Mangual, would you say that those are successful numbers?
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, I absolutely think that all of those numbers represent positive developments, right?
		I mean, fewer illegal guns on the street, fewer repeat offenders on the street, less drugs on the street, all of that.
		It matters and will make a difference in the aggregate.
		But again, this is a large country, right?
		I mean, we are a country of 350 million people with many thousands of counties and somewhere on the order of 18,000 law enforcement agencies.
		There's only so much that the federal government can do.
		What I hope, what I really truly hope, is that local law enforcement agencies and state law enforcement agencies are now taking their cues from this approach and understanding that by reasserting themselves and retaking a sort of more aggressive and proactive posture to the kind of crime that really matters for everyday Americans, that that will provide lasting benefits.
		And if that happens, then I think the federal government's efforts will be even more successful.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We're going to hear from Henry, who's in Michigan.
		Democratic caller.
		Hi, Henry.
unidentified		Hi.
		I'd like to try to clear up a couple of things from a previous segment.
		Greta, your assessment of the shutdown and the Democratic position, you said that the Republicans want a clean CR.
		That's only partially right.
		The other part of that is the Democrats don't want to vote for it because they don't trust the Republicans that once the government reopens to discuss the health care issue.
		And it is $40 billion to Argentina.
		My question for Mr. Manguel.
		Mr. Manguel, I'd like to know how you feel about a Department of Justice that has its fealty to the President of the United States and not the Constitution.
		And my example of that are the frivolous charges that have been brought against Mr. Comey, against Ms. James and Attorney General James, and the looming charges against Mr. Bolton.
		And I'm seeing that the Department of Justice is actually carrying out the president's revenge tour that he said he was going to do, which is another promise that he made.
		And Greta, to help you with the definition of fascist, if you have a government that has departments that are doing their loyalty towards the president and a president who is doing illegal things like eliminating departments willy-nilly, laying people off illegally, you have a fascist society.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Henry.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Manguel?
unidentified		Rafael Manguel?
		I guess the response that I would give is that I just don't buy the premise of the question.
		The idea that the DOJ should not be loyal to the president or follow his directives, I think, would upend the constitutional order.
		The Constitution vests the executive authority in a president.
		So it is exactly right that the DOJ follow the orders of the president because the president is the head of the executive branch and the DOJ is an executive branch agency.
		Now, I have not looked into the details of the indictments against James Comey or Letitia James, but I do trust that our judicial system will do its job, that those claims will be investigated, litigated, and that if those individuals are guilty, that they will be held accountable for their crimes.
		And I suspect that there are a lot of people who just heard that question and are trying to roll their eyes back into their head, given all of the lawfare that was engaged in against the president of the United States in the lead up to this last election.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Rafael Manguel is our guest here this morning.
		He's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and also author of the book Criminal Injustice, talking about the Trump administration's crime fighting efforts.
		We're going to hear from Edward in Burbank, California next, and Independent.
		Hi, Edward.
unidentified		Yeah, can you hear me okay?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We can.
unidentified		Okay, it's interesting that when an illegal alien commits a crime, the media notifies the public that this is an illegal alien from Mexico or wherever they're from.
		But when a U.S. citizen commits a crime, they don't notify the public that this is a U.S. citizen who's committing a crime.
		So it's almost like they're trying to hide the fact that most crimes in this country are committed by U.S. citizens.
		Most people in prison are U.S. citizens.
		And most of the mass murders that we've seen taking place are by U.S. citizens, but it's not highlighted in the reporting that this was a U.S. citizen who committed the crime.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Manguel.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, I don't know anyone who rejects the idea that the vast majority of crime in the United States is committed by U.S. citizens, given that they constitute the vast majority of the population within its borders.
		So none of that would be surprising to me.
		I do not see any effort to hide that.
		I think it's very plain in the data that the vast majority of crime is, in fact, committed by U.S. citizens.
		But that does not mean, I don't think, that we should leave immigration enforcement off the table.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Arthur in Washington, D.C., or excuse me, we'll start with Sandy in California, Democratic caller.
		Arthur, you're next.
		But Sandy, go ahead first.
unidentified		Thank you, Greta.
		Good morning.
		I am calling because this gentleman mentioned that crime is concentrated in certain areas in large cities.
		Basically, yes, that's true.
		Most of crime, most of the crime in the country is committed in areas that are poor.
		president is governing by fiat.
		Most of the executive orders, which are not law, only Congress can initiate a law and then he can sign it.
		But he cannot in and of himself create laws out of thin air.
		And that's what he's doing.
		I don't want to live in a police state, which is what's being created by violating the Posse Comitatus Act.
		And I know you're going to disagree with that, but it hasn't quite been fully litigated yet in terms of what he's doing and sending troops onto our streets.
		But I don't want to live in that kind of a society.
		I don't want to live in a society where your every action is scrutinized.
		I have to show my papers when I try to go up and down the streets going about my normal business.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Sandy, let's get a response from Mr. Manguel.
unidentified		Yeah, so there are a couple of points that I would respond to there.
		I mean, the first is that I have been going about my daily life and walking the streets in the city of New York and the suburbs of New York.
		Ever since this president took office, I have not ever been stopped or asked for papers, nor does anyone I know, nor has anyone I know been stopped or asked for their papers.
		I don't think that under any version of events, we could say that we live in a police state.
		I mean, just take the case of Irina Zarutska, the young woman who was murdered on a North Carolina public transit in the public transit system in that state.
		I mean, she was killed by a man who had 14 prior arrests.
		If we lived in a police state, someone with 14 prior arrests would be in prison.
		They would not be walking the streets free to kill.
		And unfortunately, that case was not an outlier.
		This is something that we see in cities across the country in places like Chicago.
		The average number of prior arrests for a homicide or shooting suspect is 12.
		In Washington, D.C., it's 11.
		In Baltimore, it's 10.
		So the idea that we live in a police state, I think, just doesn't hold any water.
		But there was a mention of the fact that the places in this country in which crime concentrates are also where poverty concentrates.
		And that's something that we often hear a lot as a response in a lot of debates about criminal justice policy.
		And I would just say that the evidence on this just goes in the other direction.
		It is not the case that poverty causes the kinds of violent crime that this administration is concerned about.
		And there are a couple of examples I can give to just bear this out.
		I mean, take New York City, for example.
		In 1989, the year before New York City peaked in terms of homicides with 2,262 in 1990, the poverty rate was actually slightly lower than it was in 2016, which is the year before New York City hit its valley for homicides with just 292 in 2017.
		Now, how a city declines the number of homicides by violent crime, I'm sorry, the number of homicides by 90% without doing anything about poverty, I think really just pokes a massive hole in that argument.
		And there's other really good data.
		I mean, studies showing that natural experiments where individuals lose public subsidies or welfare benefits and what we see in terms of the crime that those populations commit in the aftermath of those events show that there's really no connection to serious violence.
		Some connection to property crime, but marginal, not significant.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Arthur in Washington, D.C., Independent.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Arthur, did you support the president having the National Guard here?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		Every time I'm in a bad area where it's dark and a little scary, I usually see military now, and they're usually smiling.
		I say hi, and I thank them for being here.
		I just wanted to ask you this morning, thank you.
		Love the show, and we have red stars and our flags here.
		I watched the debate in New York last night, and Momdani has this red star on his back on his latest Instagram post.
		I just want to understand how does socialism affect crime, and does it have anything to do with social media?
		How does that tie into socialism?
		Yeah, I mean, I don't know that the doctrine of socialism would have any immediate impact on crime, but I can tell you that the policies that Zomra Mamdani has espoused will absolutely affect crime and in the worst way possible.
		You know, he has, he was the only candidate on stage yesterday who declined to offer a plan to increase the number of NYPD officers.
		That department has gotten down to just about 33,000 officers when it was at about 40,000 at the turn of the century.
		It is a department that is struggling with recruitment and retention.
		He doesn't seem to have a plan for that.
		He did not mention, nor did any of the other candidates mention Rikers Island, which he has previously expressed support for closing and not replacing.
		So I think that those policies, to the extent that we see a lot of overlap between the people who support the decarcerationist and depolicing policies that Momdani has espoused and people who support socialist policies, maybe there's a connection there.
		I don't think that there's something inherent about socialism that necessarily leads to a higher crime, but I do think that many of the sort of more notable socialist candidates or Democratic socialist candidates like Zohra Momdani, AOC, have espoused policies that will absolutely make our cities less safe.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And if you missed the New York City Mayor debate, you can find it on our website at c-span.org, sponsored by WNBC and Politico, and you can find it there.
		If you go to c-span.org, we want to thank them for letting us show you that debate here on the C-SPAN networks.
		Laura in Texas, a Republican.
unidentified		Yes, Lou.
		I am very concerned because I feel like what's happening was a setup by the Biden administration.
		So many illegal, so many people were misled by the Biden administration to come here.
		And they were extorted by traffickers.
		And they paid a lot of money, a lot of them did, to come to the United States under the false impression that the Biden administration would keep them and let them live here forever.
		But unfortunately, with those, there were a lot of good people who really just wanted a better life, but there were also a lot of bad people.
		And it's just created chaos.
		So when you're lawless, when your administration is lawless, then you set up a condition that creates chaos.
		And the next administration either has to clean it up, which is what Trump promised to do, or the next administration has to deal with it and possibly make it worse.
		So we're dealing with Biden's import of millions of illegals.
		We saw it every day.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Laura, I heard your point.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Mangwald, do you agree with her?
unidentified		Yeah, look, I mean, I do think that the Biden administration's policies at the border absolutely invited chaos.
		And I do think that it created a lot of unfortunate situations where people from around the world took a good part of their treasure to take a chance on starting a new life in the United States of America, which is still the greatest country in the world, which is why so many people want to come here.
		Unfortunately, many of those people have had that investment completely zeroed out.
		But that is just a natural consequence of the disorderly way in which the Biden administration went about this.
		I mean, the United States is still one of the most generous nations in the world with respect to legal immigration.
		But a country cannot be a country if it does not have any rules about who gets to cross its borders.
		And what the Trump administration is doing now is unfortunately trying to clean up the mess that was left by the prior administration.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Jerome in Lorain, Ohio, Democratic caller, question or comment here for our guest.
unidentified		Okay, hi, and thanks for taking my call.
		I do have a question now.
		If there were so many millions of dollars taken away from federal law enforcement agencies that their specific job is to deter crime, I don't understand where he's saying that he's going to bring in a temporary military force that's not going to be stable.
		And if the military force is only going to be temporary, where is that going to have a lasting impact on the crown rate?
		If he's really trying to solve crime, wouldn't he directly want to work with federal professionals that their whole career is structured around law enforcement and trying to target crime and work with the actual city professionals?
		I don't understand where he's actually, if he's actually targeting crime, why isn't he working with career professionals to really systematically, systemically take care of these so-called high-crime cities step by step?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We'll take your question, Jerome.
unidentified		Yeah, no, I think that's a good question, and it's something that the administration is actually doing, right?
		If you look at the surge in Washington, D.C., I think I would say that there's probably as much of a crime suppression effect from the deployment of other federal agencies like HSI, FBI, DEA, ATF, as there was as a result of the deployment of the National Guard.
		I don't think that the National Guard is sort of seen as the first and foremost crime suppression tool that the federal government is trying to deploy.
		The policing executive order from April of this year that I mentioned earlier, one of the components of that executive order was actually to redeploy joint federal task forces through Homeland Security to work with local law enforcement agencies on suppressing crime where there is concurrent federal jurisdiction.
		And we have seen a re-emphasis on charges like those under Title 18 of the United States Code under Section 922G, which affects prohibited possessors of illegal firearms.
		So there's been sort of a rededication to pushing that, to pushing drug charges, to doing gang sweeps, where dozens of gang members are sort of taken up in the same arrest sweep for federal charges where the predicates are often drugs and guns, where there's jurisdictional overlap.
		So I absolutely agree that that is the better approach.
		But I do think that there are problems in some parts of the country where the National Guard can help, right?
		For example, securing federal facilities that are consistently under siege and just having a presence that can have a short-term deterrent effect.
		But you're absolutely right.
		That is one of the limiting factors of this kind of approach, which is that to the extent that people can't be everywhere all at once all the time, when they leave, the impact will not be lasting.
		But the hope is that it sets an example that states and localities can follow, and that could be lasting.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Laurel, Marilyn, Bruce is watching there, an independent.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning, Bruce.
unidentified		Morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I have two quick points.
		First, I watched you when I interviewed when you did a debate with Radley Balco.
		And as of someone on the left, I was impressed that you seemed to have the honest side.
		But I was reading the debate first.
		You said, and you thought Jimmy Kimmel lied, so he should be gotten rid of.
		The same thing, Comey's on trial, but we know he has no reason for that.
		I just don't think those are things that write my other statement, which you may agree with.
		I mean, take going to cities.
		We know that getting a lot of cops in crime cities lowers crime.
		So the fact that Trump is doing that is going to work, but it doesn't seem like the right way to do it.
		He's cherry-picking the cities.
		Plus, he'd rather give money to the police.
		I don't know, maybe you agree with that, but I think that's the way to do it.
		Thank you very much.
		No, I absolutely think that directing more federal resources to police is a good thing, and the president has committed to doing that.
		Again, his April executive order, one of the first things, components of that order is to direct federal agencies to identify funds that can be sent to local law enforcement agencies specifically for the purpose of recruiting and retaining police officers.
		So that's absolutely a number one priority.
		And I suspect that the president is going to be working with Congress at some point during the course of this presidency to do the same on a much larger scale.
		I do appreciate you watching the debate with Mr. Balco, who I haven't heard from in a long time.
		I hope he's well.
		But thank you.
		I appreciate the support.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Karen in Ohio, Republican.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Karen, with your question or comment.
unidentified		My comment is that I'm really glad that somebody is cleaning up the streets in D.C.
		A lot of school groups go to D.C. for their history club trips or civic trips, and they should be able to walk around the streets without fear.
		Whenever my daughter went in 1993, she was followed into the restroom by a homeless man, and she had a bad scare.
		Luckily, she came back home alive.
		But yes, my granddaughter is going in the spring, and I'm thankful that Mr. Trump is cleaning up crime in the city.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Mr. Manguel?
unidentified		Yeah, I think a lot of Americans feel the same way.
		And not just, you know, people who are hoping to take advantage of cities like Washington, D.C. as tourists, but also residents, right?
		I mean, Washington, D.C. is a city that has been struggling, particularly in the Eastside wards, with serious crime for a long time.
		And to the extent that those communities are able to get some sense of relief, I think can be a significant improvement in daily life.
		And I hope that those things continue.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ted in Boston, Independent.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Ted.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Three points here.
		Greta, I think I've watched you since your first day on Washington Journal, and I don't ever say this, but thank you for your service.
		And it reminds me of the days past where C-SPAN would have high-quality guests, sometimes even from both sides.
		And it brings me to my next second point of three points, and I'll try to keep this short, where, you know, this guy lost me after he tried to link crime increase after the pandemic to immigration.
		The data doesn't agree with that.
		And listen, I don't care if you want to fix this supposed influx, or I'll give you credit.
		You know, there was an influx after the pandemic.
		Okay.
		But if you're going to sit here and be disingenuous and use these mouthpiece talking points and waste my 9 a.m. on a Friday, you know, it really just feels like a degradation of quality and being genuine.
		And I really want to communicate that to the guests because I've watched them ever since that comment over the last 20 minutes.
		And every single thing is the same thing.
		You know, someone, this third point, someone called in talking about the police state of New York.
		And this guy's response is, well, they didn't do it to me.
		And you know what?
		Listen, we all see this with our own eyes.
		And you're not going to pull this over on us.
		Okay.
		So my request is if you're going to sit here and do that to us, go find another profession.
		Do something more productive and have a backbone.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Well, Ted, let's let our guests give a response.
unidentified		Yeah, so I think I'll keep my current career path where it is for now.
		And I think you may have wasted your own 9 a.m. hour because I think if you go back and read the transcript, you'll see that I never said that the post-COVID crime increase was driven by immigration.
		And I didn't say it because that's not something that I believe.
		I think that the post-COVID crime increase was likely driven by depolicing and decarceration.
		We saw both the prison and jail populations decrease very, very sharply in a very short period of time.
		We saw the number of arrests and stops being affected by local police departments plummet through the floor.
		And I think those things had a much more significant explanatory power for the post-COVID crime increase.
		However, that does not mean that we should not be doing immigration enforcement, which, you know, I think those laws are justifiably enforced on their own merits, irrespective of whether and to what degree it contributes to overall crime rates in American cities.
		That law is the law.
		It's there for a reason.
		I think Americans wanted those laws enforced, and I think they should be enforced.
		As for the police state, again, I mean, just, you know, take a recent example of New York.
		And we had a horrific murder in our subway system in Brooklyn just about a week ago, where an individual with 33 prior arrests beat a 65-year-old man to death, according to police.
		So, you know, again, if we actually lived in a police state, we would not have individuals who, you know, are walking the streets right now with criminal histories more extensive than Americans could possibly imagine.
		So I just reject the premise entirely.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ron in Maryland, Democratic caller, you're next.
unidentified		Good morning, and thanks, C-SMAN.
		In the 80s, Australia had a worse crime rate than the United States.
		And they got rid of all the guns.
		And the crime rate now, if you check Australia now, the crime rate is all gone zero.
		Now, the only way we're going to clear crime up in America is stop these Republicans from putting all these guns in our cities.
		Now, they got one manufacturer in the United States that manufacture Glock guns.
		And I don't know, but the most Americans probably don't know.
		Glock guns don't even have a safety on them.
		And they got all these guns going to all the major cities like Baltimore, New York, Chicago.
		And, you know, if you keep putting all these guns in the major cities for these kids to use, you're going to have crime rates.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Ron, let's take that point about guns.
		Mr. Mangua.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I think, you know, the biggest hole in that argument is what happened to gun crime between 1990 and 2015 or even today.
		You know, Democrats love to tout the fact that as bad as crime got post-2020, it was never as bad as it was in the 1990s.
		And that's true to some extent, although I don't think that matters very much to a lot of the people who were experiencing the brunt of that spike.
		But the reality is that between 1990 and 2014, America saw its homicide rate plummet by 15%.
		That was a period of time in which gun rights were significantly expanded in 2008, 2010, and then Bruin.
		You had the number of guns in private circulation increase by the millions over that period of about 30 years.
		So the idea that we need to get rid of guns in order to control crime, I think, has just been belied by what the data show us.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Michael is down in Austin, Texas, a Republican.
		Good morning, Michael.
		Your turn.
unidentified		Howdy.
		Okay, so a few things I want to say, and my ideas on this have not been fully fleshed out as the political landscape is always fluid.
		I do want to say that I did vote for Trump, and I am having and experiencing a bit of regret as it relates to it as his administration begins to fold.
		So a lot of the callers have expressed sentiments about the police state.
		And the panelist that you have on, no disrespect to him, I don't think he's understanding people's angst because this is a very real thing when you kind of have some foresight.
		Just look at Larry Ellison, who is now worth $35 billion, excuse me, because of him injecting AI into Oracle.
		His goal, and he's had stated this expressly on record, that his goal is to put all data into one place under an AI model.
		That does equate to absolute power.
		AI trained on full-spectrum personal data.
		It does enable behavioral prediction, risk scoring.
		You can ask it questions.
		They want to take our fragmented data of health, finance, communication, biometrics, and inject it into a unified AI model.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Michael, tie that back to what we're talking about here.
unidentified		People are concerned about the police state.
		Now, my dissonance, my cognitive dissonance, is that, you know, we say this is wrong, but we don't provide an alternate solution, which is why I did vote Republican this way this time around because the Democrats were not presenting a better alternative.
		But I am very concerned at the Trump administration.
		Yes, he is the commander-in-chief.
		He has control of the National Guard and all of the military.
		I do understand that.
		But the way Trump is moving, it does feel like that is the direction we're going to a police state.
		I know we're not having to check our papers now, but we're not in Nazi Germany.
		We shouldn't have to worry about all of our data and anything we say and do online being monitored to the point where we're being scored on that.
		Got it.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Michael, Rafael Mangual.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, I share the sentiment.
		I do not want to live in a country in which every single aspect of my life is being scrutinized by the federal government and decisions are being made about what I can and can't do on that basis.
		But I don't think that we're there or that we will be there.
		I trust in the strength of our Constitution to ensure that our liberties are protected.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		David, South Carolina Independent.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		Thank you for having me.
		Just to start out, I'm generally in agreement with your guest on most things, and he is impressively eloquent and pragmatic.
		But I guess I disagree in one sense in that he feels that we should stay with have National Guard go to cities where we're invited, basically, for the reason that it would make more sense.
		I think we should go into those.
		We should leave the cities that have high crime rate and let them deal with it themselves, and if we go into other cities and clean them up, then it will make the sanctuary cities even more likely to get more.
		We're going to leave this here for live coverage of Ukrainian President Zelensky speaking to reporters near the White House following his meeting this afternoon with President Trump, live on C-SPAN.
volodymyr zelenskyy ▲ ● ▼		So, thank you so much.
		We are very thankful to President and his team for invitation again and for our meeting.
		We had productive meeting, long meeting yes, because we wanted we have a wide plan of topics and questions and so, in any way, thank you so much.
		Thanks to United States team spoke about air defense.
		It's important for us.
		You know, even now when we speak with you yes, a lot of drones in Ukraine.
		They attack our civilians, attack our families, our children.
		We decided that we will work more with productions and etc.
		And yes, you know that the question is with all these, you know lines and orders with the time schedule.
		So this is very difficult question.
		So we will try all our teams will try, try to manage how to change the order of one country.
		Which systems are ready already with our orders, so it's difficult process in any way.
		This, I think, positive signal that we will work on it.
		We understand the number, what we need, and we understand where to get it, and it's a pity.
		We understand the challenges, how to get it.
		Then we spoke about also about long range, of course, and I want not to make statements about it we decided that we don't speak about it because nobody wants.
		You know, I mean this United States doesn't want escalation and etc.
		So I mean this, we will be out of the questions about it, out of the answers, sorry about it.
		And also we spoke about Budapest.
		President shared with me their dialogue with Russian side.
		So we understand, for us all the signals from Russians.
		They are not new, but we count on President, on his pressure on Putin to stop this war.
unidentified		Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, please.
		Mr. President, Mr. President Trump now has, on four different occasions, set deadlines for Putin to enter into either a ceasefire or agree to meet with you, and Putin has not met those deadlines.
		Do you still trust that President Trump is serious about taking action against Russia?
volodymyr zelenskyy ▲ ● ▼		We trust United States.
		We trust President that he wants to finish this war.
		And it's difficult, it's very tough solution.
		It's understandable why, and for us it's essential our land and our country, because it's about, it's a part of our independence, not just you know yeah, just Mitras or yeah, this is very important.
		It's about our sovereignty.
		So we we think that that it was also difficult to manage the in the situation in Middle East and if President was successful in it, I hope that he will manage this situation.
		Please don't forget to introduce yourself.
unidentified		Mr. President, can you confirm that you just completed a phone call with European leaders?
unidentified		Yeah.
volodymyr zelenskyy ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, we just, I just, I'm so sorry that I'm late, you waited, sorry, and we had just after meeting with President and his team we had now conversation with our strategic partners.
		I had phone calls, common phone call with our group.
		The.
		The main leaders of the coalition of the villains.

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