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May 16, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
41:28
Why can’t we find some Solutions
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, it's Doug Collins.
Glad to have you back on the Doug Collins Podcast.
We've got a great friend coming back in today to be on the podcast, Jason Pye, New Process Institute.
I've known him for many, many, many years that we go back from Georgia politics to DC politics, everywhere in between.
But I wanted to bring Jason back in today.
There's a lot going on in the D.C.'s front, and it's not just in legislation, but it's also in this election cycle.
As you probably realize, listen to this podcast, watching this podcast going on, election cycles tend to make politicians do sort of different things, and it's a lot of pressure going on.
And I'm not criticizing that.
I've been a part of it, a lot better part of it.
You have to sort of find what works.
As a guy who's worked on my campaigns, consulted for me forever, Chip Blake says, he says, elections can be about everything you want them to be, but at the end of the day, the voters have a say in what actually goes on, and that's true.
But one of the areas that is so important that I wanted to bring Jason back in We're good to go.
The idea that I saw Republicans moving forward in what should be a really conservative issue combined with others, and they seem to be taking some steps back.
So, Jason Pyle, welcome back to the Doug Collins Podcast.
Doug, thanks for having me.
It's good seeing you, as always.
And I was going to say, everything you're talking about in terms of criminal justice, there are things that Republicans should be running on and should be proudly proclaiming.
And Doug, you're Your work on the First Step Act in Congress, you should wear as a badge of honor.
And unfortunately, Republicans are going towards This tough-on-crime rhetoric that was so prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s is frustrating.
Well, it is, and I think that's the part.
Now, I wrote an op-ed a couple weeks ago.
We put it out, and it was really hitting at that, you know, the whole idea that, you know, look, if you're conservative, you know, this idea, and then there's a lot going on.
And let's just go ahead, and I'm going to hit it head-on, and I know from your perspective, There's a lie going on in the Senate right now, in particular, the U.S. Senate.
And one of the purveyors of that, I'll name a name, is Tom Cotton and others who have said that the First Step Act was part of the reason for this crime wave right now.
I mean, Jason, I mean, there's a lot of things you could say about the First Step Act.
Okay, I'll take some criticism, both sides.
You know, we'll look at it.
No legislation is perfect.
But that's just an outright lie.
Yeah, I'm glad you used the word because if you didn't say it was an outright lie, I was going to.
I was going to say it was at best disingenuous.
At worst, it's an outright lie.
The Justice Department recently put out a report, and it's a progress report on the First Step Act.
And that progress report found that the rearrest rate, this is rearrest.
Rearrest is the worst barometer of recidivism.
The best barometer of recidivism, from my view, as an advocate, someone who studies this issue, is probably reconviction.
But rearrest rate for individuals released under the First Step Act, this is about 10, it's just under 10,000 individuals, was 15.9%.
For comparison, the Bureau of Prisons says that the recidivism rate for the general population is 43%.
15.9%, 43%.
You can't even compare the two.
First step has been a success, and Republicans should be out there proclaiming it.
It worked.
It worked.
We have the proof.
It's worked.
Now, this is a short-term recidivism rate.
I'll concede that much.
But 15.9%, that is really something to be proud of.
And Doug, you should be proud of it as someone who authored the bill in the House and helped guide its passage back through after it had cleared the Senate.
This is something we should all, any one of us who worked on this bill.
I lobbied on this bill.
I spent more time talking to Doug and his old chief of staff and his counsel than I want to admit.
But everyone who worked on this bill should be proud of that.
And for Tom Cotton to go out and say that the First Step Act caused this new crime wave is Blatantly false.
Blatantly false.
Well, and again, and this is what I guess, you know, I'm being philosophical here.
Maybe it's just because, you know, we're taping this one in the morning and I'm being philosophical over a separate cup of coffee, but it's like, you know, why did, I mean, why is it that when we make progress that there seems to be, especially, and it comes up in an election year, you know, the halfway point to a presidential year, you know, it's one of those things, and I say this, you know, jokingly as someone who, you know, tried to be in the Senate, you know, Every day there's 100 people in the world who wake up and believe they should be president.
They're all found in the United States Senate.
But why is it that we seem to always, especially as Republicans, And some Democrats, frankly, if you look at it, go back to this idea that the only way to solve some of these societal ills is to go to a process we know really doesn't work and cost us money.
When you're talking about the criminal justice system, that is.
It's just this throw away the key mentality, lock them up no matter what.
You don't have a second chance.
You don't have a third chance.
You don't even have a first chance if you listen to some of the rhetoric.
I mean, it works to a point.
It's like negative ads.
I mean, they work to a point.
But at a certain point in time, truth needs to prevail out.
And it's really frustrating at this point in time that you're seeing this rhetoric because we know this rhetoric doesn't work.
I mean, I flip those numbers around the other side.
Look at the 85% that haven't been rearrested.
Look at the...
Those are large numbers to say, look, this is working as we go forward.
A disturbing trend, though, I'm seeing in elections, and I saw it in my election in the Senate race.
I was, you know, vilified by the sitting senator, Ms. Lafler, by her team for being a defense attorney, for actually have represented, you know, clients in our confrontational system.
Wow, actually upholding the Constitution.
Shocker in that regard.
What was even worse is, is the ads run against me were not even clients of mine.
They were actually my partners.
But, and has Hispanic faces.
We'll continue on.
Again, but that goes to the heart of this sort of scare tactic that goes on.
But now we're starting to see it again.
But there is some hope that it's not working.
I know you're familiar with the candidates in Indiana.
One had helped on criminal justice.
It was three candidates in the race.
The third one who had had no background at all actually ended up winning this primary.
So it was that.
But what I thought was interesting was, is the two Republicans, both...
You know, legislative backgrounds.
One had been helpful on bail reform and other things in Indiana.
The other one attacked them for that and came in a distant third.
Do you see some of this with the proper discussion and political will, if you would, winning out, or do we still have a ways to go?
It's really hard to say right now.
And speaking more to your race, because I watched that race, And I've never hid this publicly.
I voted for you in that race, Doug.
I actually had a yard sign of yours in my yard, too.
But in your race, it was pretty interesting because of the spinning that both the Leffler team and others were trying to do.
Because they were saying that Leffler was saying, oh, I supported First Step Act.
It was the Prison Reform and Redemption Act that we opposed because that was the predecessor bill to First Step.
And they were hitting you on that.
And it's like there is no difference between these two bills.
The First Step Act, the Prison Reform and Redemption Act was the predecessor bill to the First Step Act.
Look, what are you talking about here?
And there was even some conservative publications that were going on the attack for that, too.
And we were saying, like, advocates like myself and my friend Joe Lupino Esposito, we were saying, no, no, no, they're the same bill.
And the spin was quite amazing.
But in terms of political will, I think, you know, It is an election year.
Republicans are using this issue of crime as well as inflation and others, and inflation obviously is absolutely terrible right now.
It's something I've been feeling in addition to every other American, both at the pump and at the grocery store.
But the The Republicans see this as an opening in the quest for political power.
No topic is off limits when you're trying to take back control of a chamber.
Republicans smell blood in the water universally across the board when it comes to everything with Democrats and President Biden.
And they look at some of the issues that have turned their head in the past two years.
And they're trying to capitalize.
And a lot of that has to do with racial animus.
Obviously, we saw what happened with the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and those led to a wild overreaction that turned into this quote-unquote defund the police movement that was largely echoed by Black Lives Matter and other And other individuals, and Republicans are taking that and running with it.
And it's no surprise to see them doing that, given how Republicans handle how they campaign, especially in tumultuous times like this.
So I'm not real surprised, but in terms of political will, it's like you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
And that's what, unfortunately, I think Republicans might be doing.
Is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
And we have legislation in the Senate right now that could pass tomorrow if Leader Schumer puts it on the floor.
The EQUAL Act being one of those bills that could pass.
And it's just quite frustrating to see the lack of political will that's there to move bills like that forward and get them across the finish line.
Well, and it's disturbing to me because I'm a very big supporter of the EQUAL Act.
We have been working on that before.
It goes back to some things that have been done.
And it's really disturbing to me now.
It's parody, folks.
I mean, just say, if there's any staffers on the Hill listening to this, it's got to be one-to-one.
There's no excuse for anything else.
And I believe it was Senator Grassley's office now to come back and try to add it.
Again, it doesn't make sense here.
Again, this is an opportunity aside from anything else to make a step.
If you're on the left, it's a step toward, okay, look, let's take out what everyone has perceived as the racial inequity here of this disparity.
We've known it from day one.
A lot of history there, which we could probably spend two hours going into that actually showed why that was true, but it is a disparity.
Left could come up on that.
The right could come up and say, look, we go to fairness.
We go to the constitutional objective.
It's a stretch here, but to not say that they should be equal is implying that there's a difference in these two.
It goes back to you're punishing the instrumentality again.
This, I think, is an interesting issue, and from a right perspective, it's almost going back to the pushback that I've had and others about this issue of even hate crimes legislation and other things.
You're punishing a thought or an instrumentality.
Instead of actually saying, okay, let's put this equal and get it out to the, you know, to make the system fair.
Yeah, no, and that's, I mean, in terms of the grassy proposal, it's this two and a half to one sentencing ratio.
They want to lower the powder thresholds for powder cocaine.
They want to lower the thresholds for powder cocaine.
And they want to have this weird resentencing procedure.
Doug, I could go on and I could point out the hypocrisies to you in this bill by comparing it to Chuck Grassley's own legislation in this Congress, if you wanted me to, but it's actually quite astonishing to see, because Because, you know, he's got legislation to make the First Step Act, two of the sentencing provisions of the First Step Act retroactive.
And I support that.
I support that.
I support that.
But, you know, one of those is the three strikes, the three strikes, because it used to be that after your third strike, you got life.
Now you get 25 years.
So he wants to make that retroactive.
Fully on board with it.
You know, the change we made to the 924C, which is a firearm possession sentencing enhancement, because it used to be that prosecutors stacked those on top of you.
Yeah, the stacking provision out there.
To make those unnecessarily long sentences.
You have a situation like someone like Weldon Angelos got 55 years in a single indictment, for a three-count indictment, and they stacked that penalty on top of one another.
So again, but it's a firearms sentencing provision.
And that would be retroactive under a section of law that basically says judges can re-sentence.
By looking at the nature and circumstances of the offense, the characteristics and criminal history of the defendant, and so on.
But he wants to add this extra layer that would require the Attorney General to certify a resentencing for a crack cocaine offense.
It makes no sense!
And then lowering the powder quantities, there is no justifiable policy-based reason to do that.
The number of powder cocaine trafficking offenders has declined.
Like precipitously over the past several years and the number of crack cocaine traffickers have declined precipitously over the last few years.
And oh, by the way, there is no justifiable reason that these two substances should be treated unequally.
They should only be treated equally.
And it makes no sense whatsoever.
And I think the whole thing, the whole thing has backfired on him because he introduced this bill with three Republican co-sponsors, one of whom is on the Equal Act.
And he's still going to vote for the Equal Act.
And then I think he expected to get more support than he's gotten.
And it largely hasn't come to fruition.
And meanwhile, the Equal Act has 11 co-sponsors.
We know we have other Republican votes lined up in the Senate.
This bill would pass tomorrow if Chuck Schumer put it on the floor.
And that's kind of what we're waiting on right now.
But it doesn't make it easy with the rhetoric around crime.
And Doug, it's not just the issues we had in 2020 related to George Floyd's death and the policing issues.
It's not just that.
We're in a time of political tension.
We're in a time of economic uncertainty because we're not only coming off the recession created by the pandemic and the economy is really just...
Theoretically returning to some measure of order.
Also, inflation's high right now, and people are struggling.
I get it.
You get it.
You have friends and neighbors up in Hall County who are struggling.
I have friends and neighbors on the south side of Atlanta who are struggling to get by.
It all makes sense, but you cannot sit here And point to one issue and say, well, we're Democrats, the fund of police, and some of the things Democrats are doing are the sole cause of crime rates.
It's not that simplistic.
If you want to look at the issues...
So I've just named off some of the issues that are probably responsible for the increase in crime.
There's also the fact that clearance rates, which are the percentage of cases that are solved by police for violent crime, have declined pretty dramatically over the course of the past 20 years or so.
20 years or so, it was 60%, 65% the clearance rate for violent crime.
It's in the 40s now.
And people do not commit crime based on the sentence that they may serve.
They commit crime based on their likelihood that they're going to get caught.
They're going to get caught.
Exactly.
Look, I've always brought this up.
I brought this up on the floor of the House.
You remember the wonderful super speeder bill down here in Georgia about, you know, one of the Sonny Perdue's last big gasp.
It's still in effect in Georgia, by the way.
For any of you who believe that laws can be changed really quickly, I give you the super speeder bill.
If you're not familiar with that across the country, if you come to Georgia and you speed 73 on a two-lane or 83 on a four-lane road, you get not just the...
We're not going to hit you just in the speeding ticket.
We're going to send from an agency...
I think it's $250 fine, a civil fine on top of it that, by the way, if you don't pay, then can take your license.
I mean, just a whole crap shoot.
But one of the things I said on the floor, and I'll never forget this because Glenn Richardson got so mad at me.
He was a former Speaker of the House down here.
I went to the floor and...
And just, you know, spoke out against this bill.
And I made the comment, I said, the reason you slow down is not because a sign on the side of the road says 55 miles an hour.
The reason you slow down is because there's an officer sitting 50 feet behind it with a radar gun.
That's why you slow down.
I'll never forget this, Jason.
I mean, I went on it.
And in Georgia, you've got 20 minutes if people ask you questions or you want to talk.
Well, I just said any questions.
Well, one question begot another question begot another question.
I had Democrats.
I had Republicans.
And I went the full 20 minutes.
The governor's floor leader at the time, he's now went on to be the athletic director down at Mercer.
He's a great guy.
But he was back there just sitting with me.
After I went back and sat down, I get this, you know, this shows you how politics works, folks.
You're getting some good behind the scenes on the Doug Collins show here.
I'm sitting back in my seat and I get this come to the podium where the speaker calls you up to the dice, unlike the U.S. House that is actually interactive in Georgia.
He comes up and Glenn Richardson, who was a speaker at the time, he looks at me and he says, what in the hell are you doing?
I said, what are you talking about, Glenn?
It's a bad bill.
You know it's a bad bill, Mr. Speaker.
He said, I know it's a bad bill.
He said, but dang it, Doug.
He said, I promised the governor we'd pass this thing.
And so...
I mean, so he has to leave the...
He sends me back.
I mean, he just says...
And he's sort of grinning at the same time because he knows it's just dumb.
But he made the promise to Governor Perdue that he would do it.
So he has to then go to the floor, to the well, which is not an unprecedented...
But it only happens maybe once or twice during a session where the speaker would actually go to the...
And had to actually resurrect the bill and get it passed.
But this...
It's a great story.
It's amazing.
I mean, it was after lunch, and so it was just like, oh, well, this is going downhill quick.
But it shows what happens when people...
I think that paper determines outcomes many times when it comes to law enforcement, it comes to these issues.
But it's the enforcement side that you brought out that makes the real difference here.
And if I know I'm going to get caught, or even going back into it, if you want to take it to a family situation, maybe if you're in a relationship or you're married or not married, it doesn't matter.
And you know that if you do something that's going to make that other person upset, then you're Typically not.
At least you're going to do a better job hiding it if you go ahead and doing it.
I want to get back to that because I want to dive into it, Jason, just a minute.
I want to dive because we've talked about this offline before, the DA judges issue here.
And I think this is something that everybody in this election year, how many times...
And realistic, how many times have you heard everybody talk about the congressional races, the Senate races, the possibility of a primary for president in 2024?
And then you may hear about a governor, maybe even a lieutenant governor, but when it gets down to the local county commissions, DAs and judges, you just don't hear a lot.
And I want to dive into that in just a minute, but I want to take a detour because you brought up something that was interesting.
I don't know if you caught this.
This was just a couple of days ago.
Alabama's parole board shot down every single case denying relief to 28 eligible people.
Including this man, Michael Bettis.
He said he has served, hear me, served 12 of 20 year sentence for marijuana possession and distribution.
He served 12. He sat at a minimum security work center where they worked him for $2 a day.
Turned him down.
Now it's costing you folks, just to let you know out there, probably upwards of between $15,000 and $30,000 to house him for a year.
The older he gets, the more expensive that gets.
Okay?
This is the part that is really, I think if we emphasize this kind of, now I'm not going to go into that, because again, to get a 12 of 20, it's marijuana possession and distribution, you know how those charges will work.
But there's nothing else here that indicates that 12 years is not more than sufficient to have him even on supervised probation, whatever it may be, but to get him out.
But they turned out all 28 eligible, not a one.
I mean, is this a case where, honestly, the headlines are affecting what should be non-attributable boards?
I don't know of a better way to put that.
I don't want to say partisan because of the way they are, but are political boards.
What would have caused something like this?
And again, it may come out that there's something he did, but he wouldn't be eligible.
Now, think about this, folks.
He wouldn't be eligible for parole.
If they had not satisfied everything else in his sentences taken into his past to get the sentence that he's currently on.
It's kind of mind-boggling because, I mean, I think, you know, and look, I'm not trying to be mean here.
I am from Georgia.
But this is Alabama, which is a notoriously tough state when it comes to Alabama.
When it comes to crime, but even Alabama has taken some steps in the right direction when it comes to like prison reform.
I mean, I remember there was a state, I think state Senator Cam Ward there who helped usher through Alabama's prison reforms back in, I don't know, like six, seven, eight years ago.
And that was at the time when DOJ had filed a lawsuit over prison conditions in Alabama.
But it's unfortunate and it's frustrating because there had to have been one person deserving Of some sort of parole who they reviewed.
I hesitate to say that the politics of crime and the crime increase that we've seen in the past few years had something to do with it.
Then again, at the same time, you have to be real about it and say that it probably did.
Just on that This is more of an overview point of the topic.
The crime rates we've seen, and I'm not trying to downplay that.
I understand that it is bad in some parts of the country, but we're not talking about return to the 1980s or early 1990s here.
The violent crime rate is on par with what it was in 2012, 2014, something like that.
We're not talking about, you know, you're still safer walking down the street than you were in the 1980s.
It may not feel that way.
But, and look, I'll go ahead and say this.
I mean, I feel like I've probably said this on your show before, Doug.
But, you know, the media has a vested interest in selling you bad news.
And politicians also have an interest in selling you bad news.
And that stuff has a marketplace, and it drives people to, you know, it drives people to it.
And whether it's political turmoil or violent crime, whatever the case may be, and people consume that.
You know, and whether it's your local news, you know, or cable news, and With the exception of the recent stuff in Ukraine, I haven't watched cable news in like eight years, and I feel like I'm better off for it.
You walk into my house, I'm watching ESPN or something like that.
Or random YouTube videos.
But it's...
When you get old, it'll be a weather channel like me, okay?
When you get old, it's just a weather channel.
Even though that has gotten into the part now where it's hard to watch at times.
But it's frustrating.
You cannot tell me that one of these people was not deserving of parole.
In this particular case, I did see that instance.
And it just reminds me of how...
Because we talk about the quantities, the quantities that you have to traffic...
At the federal level, and for marijuana, it's ridiculously high.
You know, because in most states, marijuana is now legal recreationally.
But at the state level, states that have not legalized or decriminalized marijuana, the quantities are pretty low.
And it's easy to get a trafficking charge, even if you weren't trafficking, per se, or you're just a low-level dealer or something like that.
And it's unfortunate.
Well, I'm wondering if there's not some enhancement here from some prior possessions and stuff like that.
And look, I mean, but I think you just highlight, one political note before we move on on this, and this is, you know, because for anybody listening to this podcast, I want you to understand, you know, look, I am advocating for this, but it also, for those out here who are just the pure politicians of the world, the pure, you know, hey, what works, what don't work, let me tell you, you know who flagged this and sent this to me?
My 23-year-old son.
That's...
I mean, he said, he said, this is, he said, dad, this is crap.
That's the...
He said...
That's the thing that if I were a Republican political consultant or a Republican politician, I would be paying attention to because I'm 41 years old, and I realize I'm in middle age at this stage of my life.
But I grew up playing music.
I still own 11 guitars, so I still play music.
I own too many guitars.
Actually, there's no such thing as too many guitars.
And I realize I'm not the stereotypical middle-aged person because of my background.
But if I'm a Republican consultant, I'm looking at this and looking at the trends and saying, we're losing an entire generation of voters over stuff like this.
Because I think at this stage of my life, I have more friends who have smoked weed than not.
And probably still smoke weed.
Personally, I think it should be legal, but I don't personally partake in that stuff.
I'm a terrible libertarian, Doug.
I don't know if I've ever told you that before.
Yeah, that's terrible.
Well, it goes back to the, I think what you're hitting though is this, is not me either.
And I think, you know, from the perspective, because we grew up, you know, frankly, even at 41, I mean, me being in mid 50s, 55, it's still, I had the marijuana advocates one time really convinced us, you know, we need to decriminalize all this.
And they said they just couldn't understand why, oops, we just couldn't make it happen.
I said, look, I said, no matter what you have, number one, it's not necessary enough.
Number two, there's not a way to test it on the road, okay?
It's like alcohol.
I think that's your big difference.
And I hear that's coming.
But also, number three, you've got to understand that for 75 years, our government has said that this is bad for you without really giving you a lot of other details.
So, I agree with you, but it's an issue that works.
That's why I brought it up.
My 23-year-old is the one who sent this to me saying, Dad, really?
He's already served 12 years for this?
And it's going to be 20?
That brings me, though, to the next part of this conversation that I want to have a few minutes discussion before we get gone this morning.
And that is that really the crime rates, and I'm going to posit this.
I believe some of the crime rates, especially in the big cities that you're seeing, and let's just name the big ones, Portland, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, others, and Miami to an extent, that you're seeing this not based on what, you know, the First Step Act, but no uncertain terms, that ain't happening.
And it's based on what I believe is a wrong view of criminal justice.
And this is what I believe for those of us who are fighting for true criminal justice for them, And that is the belief that criminal justice reform is an equitable or equity situation in which we're just not going to prosecute crimes because of our own feelings of past inequities, typically racial or socially.
And so what you're seeing is DAs and judges, but I'm going to focus on DAs for a second, being funded, and this is not A Doug Collins conspiracy show or anything else.
It's actually documented.
George Soros funding DA races, which are normally underfunded races that only can be attorneys.
And so it's a very small pool to start with.
And you're seeing cases.
You mentioned the non-solved.
Well, it was just out just this past week.
The sheriff in L.A. County, Gascon, is the DA out there who's up for right now being recalled.
There's like 14,000, I believe it was, cases that have not been prosecuted.
So there's a disconnect between law enforcement and DAs, and everybody can take a look at what's happening in LA. As someone who's been on the ground, grassroots, I mean, you've done this before, talk about for a second how it should concern people on both sides of the political spectrum, if in these lower level races, and I don't mean their lower level not importance, they're just lower level on the ballot.
All of a sudden you see a high influx of money.
I mean, DA races, I mean, you've hit the hammer on the head.
I mean, DA races, typically speaking, are lower ballot, the lower down ballot races that nobody pays attention to.
And, you know, I even heard rumors from Henry County, where I went to high school, and that there was a Soros candidate in Henry County, Georgia, who ended up winning.
Look, there are some steps that have been taken.
As is the case with everything, nothing is black and white.
That said, as is...
If you're talking about first-time offenders, Georgia has taken steps to address first-time offenders.
The prosecutor opts not to prosecute, or they push them into a diversion program and address whatever issues they have that way.
That's typically with drugs.
But when you're talking about someone like a guy who bum-rushes Dave Chappelle while he's doing stand-up at the Hollywood Bowl, and thousands of people see it, And this guy has a knife, a concealed knife at that.
And you charge him with a misdemeanor rather than a felony, there's a real disconnect.
And ultimately, I think that's one of the frustrations.
I had a House chief of staff call me, a House Republican chief of staff call me, someone you know as well, call me a few months ago and say, you know, we got a problem.
And he's like, this was, you know, this was, you know, He was really concerned because his boss typically supports criminal justice and supports a lot of the stuff we do.
He always votes for this, voted for the Equal Act.
And he's like, progressive prosecutors are destroying any hope for bipartisanship that we have in criminal justice.
And I had a call.
I hope these two guys, I'm not going to name them, but I hope these two guys don't mind me telling this.
On Friday, there were two guys who I work with who are progressives.
And we were...
They were wanting feedback on various things.
And they eventually asked me, they said, is bipartisanship dead on this issue?
And I said, it's not dead.
It's becoming increasingly hard for conservative Republicans to work on the issue without being vilified or for having it to come up in their races.
I mean, you know this better than most.
And I was telling them, they were like, well, what's the issue?
I was like, I understand the times we're in, and there's just been this escalation in politics and policy issues that is, frankly, to a point where it's untenable.
And it's not just on criminal justice.
It's across the board.
And some of this is the culture wars, and some of this is other things.
But I said, there needs to be a de-escalation, and there needs to be a return.
One of my least favorite things about Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, I'm sorry, Doug, was messaging bills.
Messaging bills.
Because all the time, you know, because all the legislating that actually happens, happens under suspension.
I realize this is inside baseball, but it's suspension of the rules.
That's the bipartisan bills.
Those are the bills that aren't controversial.
And those things get pushed through the chamber with relative ease.
No real opposition.
But it's the rule bills, the bills that are partisan, that, you know, get voted on by almost party lines.
Messaging bills are...
It's like the...
It's just...
It's clickbait legislating, is what it is.
And you have these guys, these lawmakers who bring their bill, it's a good bill, blah, blah, blah, blah, but only Democrats vote for it, or only Republicans vote for it.
And this is what has...
it's starting to infect the criminal justice movement as a whole.
And it's predominantly because progressives believe that this is their issue.
They should be running on it.
So they're pushing things that scare Republicans away because they think that they own the issue.
They want to run the issue.
They want to talk about the issue.
And conservatives and libertarians have no business being involved in it.
And that's precisely the attitude that's going to destroy any hope of any future bipartisanship if it continues.
Now, I'm hoping that changes in political winds will restore some sense of sanity and that we can be able to sneak some things through in the next Congress under Republican control, assuming that happens, whether it's in the House and Senate or House or Senate.
But, um, But we've got to understand that we have to de-escalate.
We have to work in a way that might make us uncomfortable, which means putting some of the...
Like Van Jones did when he was working on First Step.
He doesn't agree with us on...
On most issues, Van at one time dabbled in communism.
He's a good guy, but one time he dabbled in communism.
He served in the Obama administration for a short time.
But he put the disagreements he had with us aside on other policy issues and worked with us to advance something that was good.
That was the first step back.
And we've got to keep that in mind.
It may take us out of our comfort zone.
It may take us out of our safe space.
But it's something that has to be done in order to advance good policy.
And I said this when I was at FreedomWorks to a lot of people's surprise, my previous employer, FreedomWorks, to a lot of people's surprise, was the most I got out of my job When I was at FreedomWorks, or anywhere for that matter, is the bipartisan work.
Whether it was criminal justice or civil liberties issues, whatever the case may be, the bipartisan work was what was the most fulfilling side of my job.
Because I knew that no one could take anything away from me by saying, well, that was just the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act being a Republican-only bill.
It took away the controversy around it.
And we've got to find a way, progressives, conservatives, libertarians, myself being of the latter persuasion, to work together and put partisan differences aside and do things that are going to improve people's lives.
Because there are too many people sitting in prison.
Who can be taxpaying citizens?
Productive taxpaying citizens.
And for us, we're making them stay in prison longer than they need to because we can't get our act together and get along.
I can't think of a better way at this point than we could go on forever.
That's a great way to end it.
And bipartisanship is at the end of the day.
Again, it's not giving up your liberalism.
It's not giving up your conservatism.
It's not giving up your libertarianism.
It is saying, look, I'm going to find the best that doesn't violate my moral principles, my base beliefs, to say, look, we can get something done for the betterment of this country.
Folks, Jason Pye, if you don't follow him, follow him on Twitter.
He works at Deprocess Institute.
He's been just one who's been around for a long time.
And he'll be back on here to talk about this as we get past the primary season.
We'll see where this goes into the general.
But these criminal justice forms are real.
They actually make sense.
As Matthew Charles, who's been on this show before, one of the first ones who was released under the First Step Act...
Someone you could expect or maybe wanted to attack the system, he simply said this.
He said, criminal justice reform simply means that you take the crime and you match a punishment and you get the best results.
I mean, I can't think of somebody who was in prison for many years.
That was his philosophy.
And he's been out there making a lot of production since then.
So, Jason, thanks for being a part of the Doug Collins podcast today.
Thanks for having me, Doug.
I appreciate it.
It's good to see you.
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