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Feb. 7, 2024 - Epoch Times
40:29
[FREE EPISODE] Julio Rosas: Destruction of Law & Order in America—From Crime Crisis to Migrant Chaos
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HHS has lost track of around 40,000 kids.
I mean, think about that.
We have no idea where they are.
We don't know who they're with.
We don't know what they're doing.
Today I sit down with Julio Rosas, a senior writer for Town Hall and a U.S. Marine in the Reserves.
Since 2020, he's been traveling to the middle of the action to report on chaotic and often dangerous situations.
These are big stories, and we can't rely, unfortunately, on the rest of the media to accurately relay or tell the story.
We discuss his book, Fiery But Mostly Peaceful, The 2020 Riots and the Gaslighting of America.
There's so many parallels between the border crisis and the crime crisis, because just like with the cartels, the criminal elements are more emboldened than ever.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Julio Rosas, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
So I have to call you a genuine field reporter, right?
Whenever I see your work, you've gone somewhere right into the middle of the action and you're reporting from there.
So I guess to start, tell me, what is it that drives you to do that?
What is your kind of operating principle here?
So, one of the reasons why I do it is because I see field reporting as one of the purest forms to do actual journalism.
And one of my heroes is Ernie Pyle, who was a combat correspondent during World War II. I mean, he was super famous back then.
I mean, the joke was that you would have rather get a feature by him in the newspaper than get a medal.
I mean, that's how cherished his work was, that's how important his work was, because it wasn't just about the combat, it was about the actual person, about the American GI that was actually fighting.
And so, I see his work, and the work that's being done today, largely, and it's just, it's so completely different.
And so when it comes to chaotic situations, stories that are uncomfortable to or inconvenient to get to or to report on, you know, people get lazy.
Major media gets lazy, generally.
And so for me, I like that town hall allows me To get to the heart of it, to actually see what's going on for myself so that I can have a better idea of how to relay it back to our audience.
It doesn't matter whether it's riots back in 2020 or what's happening now at the border.
These are big stories and we can't rely, unfortunately, we can't rely on the rest of the media to accurately relay the importance of it or tell the story and so then therefore it's going to have to be conservative media to pick up the slack.
So, you know, I can't help but notice that you were a Marine, looking at your lapel pin here.
So how does that figure into, I mean, maybe I was thinking about it too, as you were describing this hero of yours, the military reporter, the embedded military reporter, but how does that figure into your philosophy here?
It's embrace the suck.
I mean, don't get me wrong, some of the work that I've done has been tough, taxing mentally, physically.
But it's one thing that we're always told, especially during boot camp or whatever, they always say, someone has it worse than you right now.
And I think today you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
And so, I mean, that's especially true, you know, just going to the border.
I mean, there are, you know, sometimes you do five, six drives back-to-back, wake up early, go to bed really late, just because there's different things happening at different times, and so you can't slack off.
You've got to actually put in the work.
Or else then you're wasting a trip.
You're there.
Do the work.
You can rest later.
Being a Marine definitely, I think, made me maybe want to do the more crazy things because obviously you have to be kind of crazy in order to join the Marines in the first place or want to willingly go through something like that.
Well, you went down to the border just recently, and you were actually reporting on something a little less chaotic this time, which were this, I think, the first House Judiciary hearings at Yuma, at the border.
So tell me about that.
So this is kind of like actually a bit of a different play for you, isn't it?
Yeah, well, and that's because we've had Democrats who obviously weren't going to do something like that.
And so, yeah, the House Judiciary Committee had their first field hearing in Yuma, Arizona.
It's a place I've been to many times.
It's a community that's been heavily impacted.
By the influx of illegal immigration.
And none of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee showed up.
It was only Republicans.
The Democrats said, well, they didn't consult us on the trip, which is a lie.
The GOP side was telling them about it for over three weeks.
They didn't want to see the reality of what was happening.
But one of the things that really stuck out to me was that the hearing was held at the Yuma City Hall Council Chamber.
And it was open to the public.
They reach capacity from the local community because that's how obviously invested they are.
One of the things I've always heard, time and again, from Texas to Arizona, is that the locals feel abandoned by the federal government.
And they're accurate, or they're right, to a certain extent.
They've been abandoned by the executive branch.
And so, to them, to have Pretty prominent figures like Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Dan Bishop come to their town and talk to them about this issue that they've been raising an alarm about for over a year and a half now.
I mean, that means a lot to them.
It's a small gesture to say, you know, we're here, we want to help you fix this problem, and we're going to do our best, and we're going to come to you.
To try to solve this problem.
And, you know, I talked to a few of the residents and they were very happy to have Congress.
Because I understandably that people can be cynical about congressional hearings.
Because, like, yeah, in the past we've had hearings and, you know, they've made a big scene and then nothing's done about it afterwards.
That might happen.
So this is my next question, right?
So it seems like the people appreciate it, but Congress doesn't have a hugely good reputation of action at the moment, certainly in the mind of the populace.
And so, I mean, on my panel today with the Homeland Security Committee, Chairman Mark Green from Tennessee, he was saying that they got the most conservative border security bill.
It's ready for markup by the end of March, and they'll put it on the floor by April.
There is going to be follow-through.
I think the Republican Party really understands that they can't waste this moment.
They can't waste the small amount of goodwill that they got from the midterms.
And so they're going to actually make an effort to solve the problem.
What I will say is, unfortunately, because obviously of how the Senate elections were decided, but also even if it was, let's say, a slim majority of Republicans, the issue didn't stem from...
I don't think anything's going to be solved until there's a change in the White House.
But then at the same time, we can't just, well, we're going to wait until 2024, because if 2024 doesn't go Republicans' way, well, then things are going to continue.
So it's a tough...
It's a tough topic.
It's a tough challenge.
We'll see what happens.
But I can just tell you that the locals really appreciate politicians getting out of D.C. and seeing the problem firsthand.
But there were some powerful testimonials which were given.
Maybe tell me about some of those that you witnessed.
Yeah, so the Yuma County Sheriff, he told them that, hey, we've always had problems with cartels, but it's gotten worse than it's ever been in our county history.
The president of the local hospital, the only major hospital for many miles around, they're out $26 million because of medical care that they've had to provide to illegal immigrants, but they're not paying them back.
The migrants.
And so they're losing out on all this money.
And because they prioritize care on who needs to see it the most, a lot of times the illegal immigrants get the priority.
And so that has caused a lot of frustration, understandably, with the local community.
And the hospital system is only designed to accommodate a population size of around 140,000 between Yuma, St.
Louis, and Gadsden.
Over 300,000 people illegally crossed into Yuma since late 2021.
I mean, so almost three times the number of people, and a lot of those people needed significant medical care.
And we're not even talking about broken bones and bumps and bruises and some dehydration cases.
We're talking about people who need heart surgery.
We're talking about mothers delivering, taking up space in the maternity ward, and then their babies need to be in the NICU. Because they didn't have prenatal care during their pregnancies, because obviously a lot of the places where they're coming from, there's just no opportunity to.
And that's the thing.
We're a compassionate nation, and as we should be.
But we also shouldn't forget the fact that it's also negatively affecting the taxpayers, the people who actually are American citizens.
And we need to also make sure that we're not leaving American citizens behind either.
So it's a balance, right?
But they've had to contend with that while, you know, the Biden administration just says, it's not a big deal.
Hello, everyone.
I just want to take a moment to introduce you all to this incredible magazine that we produce every month at the Falk Times.
It's called American Essence, and it celebrates American excellence and showcases the best of America, past and present.
The magazine is filled with incredible stories of iconic Americans, breathtaking American landscapes and historic architecture, and a celebration of American innovation and enterprise.
It's a magazine for everyone who loves this country, including me.
I always tell people that I'm a rare Canadian American exceptionalist.
You can check it out at AmericanEssence.com Just a few days ago, as we're sitting here, the New York Times actually published a piece about the children that were in the cages, so to speak, during the Trump administration.
And then they talk about how a lot of these kids are now basically doing child labor, as a matter of course.
And it's a kind of a scathing process.
fascinating to read this piece because let's just say as you know there haven't been many yeah on this topic or anything related remotely related uh uh criticizing the administration's border policy so what do you make of that i i just think it became too big of a problem for even the mainstream media to ignore uh
I mean, it's insane that Secretary Mayorkas in 2001, he said, and I believe it was from the White House, from the White House podium, he said, 2021, he said, any child that comes by themselves to the southern border, we're not going to turn away.
Well, what do you think happened after he said that?
Parents willingly separated themselves from their kids to send them on a very dangerous journey, if they made it, to the southern border.
Then they continue to get exploited after they get released because HHS and DHS, they're not doing the full background checks.
They're not checking up on them.
Tom Homan, former ICE director, Trump administration, who was on the panel today, he said that HHS has lost track of around 40,000 kids.
I mean, think about that.
We have no idea where they are.
We don't know who they're with.
We don't know what they're doing.
And so, yeah, some of them have ended up in pretty dangerous jobs, you know, working in meat processing plants, working in packaging facilities.
And honestly, and as bad as it sounds, those are the lucky ones because the alternative is sex slavery.
And that's why I get so fired up about the issue because it didn't need to be this way.
I mean, of course, if you say we're not going to turn away unaccompanied minors, yeah, they're going to send them by themselves.
I've seen kids as young as seven, six, by themselves, crossing the border with other parents, going who knows where, to who knows who.
And it's just the gall that the Biden administration has to say that this is a more humane approach to the border, to immigration.
It's a complete lie.
It is not humane in the slightest.
It's avoidable, but they're like, nope, we're going to do it this way.
What are the options, right?
I feel like this article kind of intimates that the state should be taking care of all these kids.
That's another curious thing.
It's because, again, they think that their way and their approach to trying to help the less fortunate is the better way.
And again, I have to go back to with how the ripple effects that this will continue to have for years.
I mean, even if they were to completely reverse the border policies that they've been pursuing now, starting today...
It's still going to be the secondary and third effects.
They're going to be with us for a very long time.
We're going to be basically another DACA. Another DACA fight because we already had the Dreamers from the first go-around back during the Obama administration.
There's been so many kids.
Who have been born during this new surge.
So now there's going to be another fight about what about this next generation of Dreamers and all this other stuff.
It's so self-inflicted.
That's why reporting on it is important because I've been covering the board since 2019 and things were radically different moving forward about this issue.
It's a matter of what's the political will, right?
And obviously that changes as easily as the wind.
And so we're setting ourselves up for more dysfunction.
We're setting ourselves up for more polarization about this issue.
And obviously the Biden administration is willing to take those political hits because they think that this is what needs to be done.
So I don't know what the future is going to hold when it comes to, but this is going to be something that we're going to have to deal with for a very, very long time.
How do you view the incentive structures from all the reporting that you've done that are basically getting so many people to be coming across using all these different mechanisms that exist?
Well, so it's everything from start to finish, where if you illegally cross, you're not going to be turned away.
You'll get released.
You'll get processed and released.
You'll get a work permit.
And even if you lose your asylum case, We're not going to deport you because you're a low priority to us under this administration.
I really don't fault people for taking advantage of that because, of course, you're right.
It doesn't even have to be Latin America.
I met people as far away as Uzbekistan, as India, Russia, China.
When I was in El Paso in December, I met a family from China.
So yeah, they're just responding to the incentives that the Biden administration has put forth.
You can skip the line, you can get in, and yeah, you probably won't be deported.
To a lot of people, that's a no-brainer.
And I feel bad for the people who went through that very lengthy, very expensive process to come the legal way.
Because now they're thinking, well, what was the whole point of all that?
It's not just about Americans who were born here.
It's also about the Americans who actually did it the right way.
I think a lot of people don't understand just the traumatic reality that a lot of the people that are coming through have to face at the hands of these coyotes and, again, all the cartels and so forth.
I've gotten some pushback from the left.
They're like, what about your family?
You're just like one of those people who slams the door once they get in.
For me, the reason why I think illegal immigration shouldn't happen is precisely because of what happens to the migrants.
I mean, they, you know, at best, they just get into massive amounts of debt that they have to pay off to the cartels.
At worst, they have to go into slavery.
The vast majority of the people that are coming across, they're not coming across unscathed.
They get victimized in some way.
I was in Eagle Pass, Texas, and I found it was a spot where people had been picked up by Border Patrol, and so they just, you know, they discard most of the things that they don't need anymore.
And one of the things I saw was a used package of birth control pills that someone had used.
And it's because they know that they were probably going to get raped on the way over.
You know, there's been...
National Guard's been.
There's been Border Patrol who have been shot at from the Mexican side, which, I mean, that is a really big indicator that the cartels feel more emboldened than ever.
And the reason why is because they know that if they were to actually shoot or kill a member of the military or American law enforcement, they know that we're going to come down hard on them.
But they don't have that fear.
And why should they?
The Biden administration's not going to do anything.
I mean, some of these organizations, they've shifted their focus from drug smuggling to human smuggling and human trafficking.
Because with drug smuggling, there's a chance that your product's going to be interdicted, so you lose out on that money.
So now they've got, I mean, from a business standpoint, again, who can fault them?
They're making money, right?
So they're going to do the thing that makes them the most money.
And so, again, it's very telling that Some of these groups, they realize the value in shifting their focus from drugs to people.
Well, and not to mention this reality that when there is a flood of people coming across, it makes it a lot easier for the drugs to come across.
Yeah, so, I mean, one of the talking points from the Democrats is like, well, most of the fentanyl that's seized, it's seized at the ports of entry, and it's mostly being smuggled by American citizens.
Statistically, that is true.
But why is it true?
It's because, of course, when you have a controlled access point that's monitored with technology and agents 100% of the time, yeah, you're going to interject more people and drugs that are trying to sneak in.
But when groups...
Send out 500 people at one time in one area.
So that border patrol that's already stretched thin has to then focus on that group to take care of the transport and process them and takes them off the line from the rest of the area.
I mean, there's hundreds of miles that are being unpatrolled.
What do you think the cartel is doing with that open border?
They're smuggling the people who are paying to not get caught.
We're not talking about giant sacks of marijuana, which still happens, don't get me wrong.
We're talking about something that can fit into a backpack and make more money than a giant bundle of marijuana.
I mean, fentanyl has completely changed the game when it comes to drug smuggling.
They make more profit.
It's more powerful.
It's not limited to a growing season.
And so, of course, the numbers are going to be skewed.
Although recently, for this fiscal year, Border Patrol has been able to...
Border Patrol, not customs agents.
Customs agents are at the ports of entry.
Border Patrol is between.
Border Patrol has been able to seize dozens of pounds of fentanyl this fiscal year.
So, because they've been able to get agents back out into the field, they've been able to do more of their job than processing people.
So that's why fentanyl seizures have gone up, because they're back on the line.
So, this idea that, oh well, the fentanyl smuggling and the human smuggling, those are two separate issues.
It's like, no, they're one and the same.
It's dumb to think that they wouldn't take advantage of an unsecured border.
You wrote a book not too long ago about your coverage of the fiery but mostly peaceful, I mean that's the title of your book actually, protests from that infamous CNN chyron.
Now in the subtitle you talk about the gaslighting of America.
What do you mean there?
I mean, it was just the fact that we had cities on fire.
We had mass chaos in major American cities.
And the mainstream media and Democrats were saying, well, it's mostly peaceful.
I think the stat was something like 8% were violent or something like that.
I can't remember exactly that.
So, like, 93%, 92% were peaceful and 7%, 8% were violent.
So, you know, the overwhelming majority were peaceful.
And it's like, you know, I say thank God that only 8% were violent.
I mean, we had billions of dollars.
I mean, when you talk about the money aspect, billions of dollars in damage.
That were caused by these riots.
Could you imagine if 50% were violent?
I mean, oh my goodness, that's probably like Civil War level of destruction.
But again, it's skewed because all it takes is one riot to massively set back a city.
Look at Newark.
Look at Detroit.
I mean, the riots happened back in the 60s.
Are those places any better to live today?
No.
I'm not saying it was just because of the riots, but it certainly didn't help.
It certainly didn't help the quality of life in the aftermath.
So you take a look at Minneapolis right now.
The epicenter of it all.
What's happened since then?
I mean, I have sources within the department.
That, I mean, I don't even know how they still do their jobs because, I mean, they are quite literally unable to do any enforcement.
I attempted to do a ride-along.
That was a whole story.
Because City Hall, I literally got to the unit and City Hall said, no, he can't, despite my getting approval.
But anyway, they have these, what they call enforcement days.
That happen every couple of months.
And it's the only time the Minneapolis Police Department is actually able to go out and do proactive police work.
The rest of the time of the year, the majority of the time of the year, they're always reacting.
And they're super short-staffed.
Wait a second.
You're telling me in the inner city, there is no proactive policing, basically?
Is that what you're saying?
No.
And it's not just Minneapolis.
It's Chicago, Portland, Oregon.
Isn't proactive policing the critical thing in these communities?
Yeah.
I mean, because when you're constantly reacting to a shooting, because someone was arrested, but then they got low bail or no bail, or, you know, they pled down to a misbe- And so the issue today isn't defund the police.
That was an issue back in 2020, because actually since then, take Minneapolis, they went from wanting to abolish their police department to increasing funding.
But the problem is the messages have already been sent.
So now no one wants to be a police officer.
So the issue is manpower now today, from Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles.
I mean, the issue is manpower, but now the primary issue is just the progressive DAs.
Who are source-backed.
That's not a conspiracy.
That's a fact.
He's backed all these soft-on-crime district attorneys.
They're letting out these criminals on the street who commit serious crimes.
We're not talking just taking a candy bar for the convenience store.
We're talking about shootings.
We're talking about carjackings.
We have fewer officers making fewer arrests because the DAs aren't doing anything to prevent these people from going out and commit serious crimes.
And so, I mean, Philadelphia, oh my gosh.
I mean, I covered a few riots in Philadelphia, and they were bad.
And now, just like everyone else, they're also short-staffed.
And you've got one of the worst district attorneys out there.
So this is what I'm talking about, where it ripples.
And that's why I wrote the book, because it helps explain to the nation how we got to where we are today.
Because back then, people were saying, oh, it's not that big of a deal.
Yeah, there might be some violence, but the broader message is justifiable.
That's just collateral damage.
Well, no.
I mean, businesses move out.
I mean, Chicago, the Magnificent Mile, not to say it's a ghost town, but it certainly has more vacancies in terms of business and leasing spaces than ever before in recent history.
I mean, so the quality of life in these cities could be so much better, but they're not.
Because Democrats think, well, equity and, you know, we have to atone for our racism that, you know, that happened a hundred years ago when there's real problems today that they should be focusing on that they're ignoring because, well, that's racist to try to crack down on crime, which is like, what?
Really?
No, I think preventing black people from being shot is like the most non-racist thing you could do.
We just lost the plot.
What's it like reporting from one of these riots?
It's a lot of fun, actually.
It's a lot of fun.
I mean, people are going crazy, you know, but it's also pretty stressful.
I mean, we saw a total breakdown of what we know to be a civilized society back in 2020.
And sure, yeah, it caught a lot of people off guard.
But as time went on, the response from these democratic cities were very lackluster.
I give Minneapolis a little bit of leeway because they were the first one to experience the riots.
So okay, yeah.
They might have needed more, update their plans, get their things in order.
But then when something like Kenosha pops off, I mean, the Democratic governor, he said, well, the only reason why we deployed 150 National Guardsmen initially is because that was the size of our quick reaction force.
That's all we had.
Why was that?
You didn't think to update your plans?
You didn't think, like, hey, maybe we should increase and lessen the time it takes to...
Have a quick reaction force deployed out?
Because Minneapolis is right next door to you.
And that happened three months prior, two months prior.
I mean, what are you doing?
Right?
So, as time went on, I mean, there was no excuse.
I mean, you look at January 6th.
I covered that.
That's in the book.
January 6th was the most preventable riot out of all of them.
Everyone knew the date, the time.
They knew how passionate people were about this issue.
And yet...
Leaders in D.C., they were like, no, we're not going to take the steps necessary to protect the Capitol.
There's sort of these after effects.
These riots are kind of seemingly past.
Of course, a lot of these cities became blown out in lots of ways.
I mean, to my eye, New York hasn't recovered.
It definitely looks very different.
You mentioned how people don't want to be police officers anymore, for example, in Minnesota, in these cities, Minneapolis.
What other after effects are there now?
Criminals have no fear.
They don't have any fear of facing repercussions.
So what we're seeing is, you know, before it was a high intensity breakdown of law and law back in 2020.
And now it's like a low intensity.
So instead of, you know, 500 people looting stores, it's now organized theft rings, smash and grabs.
That hit all these cities.
I mean, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago.
It's happened here in D.C. fairly recently.
And they're doing it because who's going to stop them?
Store employees?
No, they can't.
The cops?
No.
Just like, I mean, there's so many parallels between the border crisis and the crime crisis.
Because just like with the cartels, the criminal elements are more emboldened than ever.
I was reporting in Memphis about the whole Tyree Nichols case.
During my time there, I found out there's a significant problem with smash and grabs.
There were 8,000 vehicles that were stolen in Memphis in 2022.
Compared to?
Compared to just, I mean, you know, a couple thousand before.
I mean, it's no coincidence that after these riots, with all the anti-police rhetoric, and I'm not saying the cops are perfect, but But we need them.
I mean, they are a necessary force to have any semblance of the quality of life that we are able to have.
I mean, I always chuckle when people complain about corruption within police forces, which I'm not trying to downplay, but I was just like, you know how bad it is in places like Mexico?
And other countries?
I mean, obviously, yeah, we should focus on making sure that our police forces are the best that they can be, but There's a night and day difference compared to some of these other places.
I mean, that's why we have a border crisis, right?
People are trying to flee some of these areas.
So I think we've lost perspective.
I joke that the Biden administration's...
My approach or solution to solve the border crisis is just to make America unlivable so that people stop coming.
That's kind of what I joke.
But I mean, it's not just crime, right?
It's inflation.
It's the economy.
It's cost of living.
Foreign affairs.
I mean, the way that we pulled out of Afghanistan.
I mean, it's just everything that they've seemed to try to fix or try to address, they end up making it ten times worse.
And a lot of times I think it's deliberate.
Other times it's just because of incompetence.
I've been reading this book by James Lindsay, The Marxification of Education.
And what he explains in the book is that we're living in the...
In the educational system of Paulo Freire, the stated goal is to teach people arithmetic and reading and writing and all that, but the real goal is to help them achieve a kind of class consciousness in the Marxist sense.
Do you see some kind of analogy here in this context?
Yeah.
Stop doing the things that work because they're racist, so therefore we're going to do these other things that don't work, but we're going to do it because we want to feel good about ourselves when it comes to equity and when it comes to racial tensions and divides.
I don't know where we're going, but it's obviously not anywhere good.
What's the end goal for all of this?
We're in a very scary spot right now as a nation.
And I hate to kind of sound like the end times cardboard sandwich board preacher, but it's only because I've just seen the worst of humanity when everything was just a free-for-all.
I mean, it doesn't take much for things to go south very quickly and for people to go into their fight-or-flight situation.
Survival mode.
I mean, people will do pretty crazy stuff for just another day to be alive.
And to be there collectively as a nation like that, that's not a recipe for success.
I have the feeling like you do, like things are really out of hand in a whole range of areas, right?
On the other hand, we still enjoy a level of freedom that Most people haven't had the pleasure of enjoying in history or today.
And that is still the reality.
I don't know if you agree.
So there's this terrible reality that you're describing, but there's also this beautiful reality.
For me, we can be in a much better spot.
We've been to the moon and back.
We have gone through very turbulent times.
This is one of them.
But we've also had some pretty triumphant times.
And it's because of the American spirit and the hope that it brings.
And a lot of progressives, they hate that.
And so that's why they're trying to root it out of the next generation through multiple ways.
So I'm not saying that it's over.
We're done.
But we've got to do a lot of things in order to kind of correct the course that we're currently on.
You've said that media have played a role in stoking these racial tensions.
Explain to me what you see there.
What is the level of media complicity in all of this?
You see it all the time.
One of the worst examples, and I write about this in the book, is the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
What happened?
A video went viral of a black man being shot by a white cop.
The media just ran with it.
Unarmed black man, shot by a white police officer.
Over and over, over and over.
There was no time to figure out the context.
There was no time to figure out what actually transpired.
It was just, this is what happened.
This is just like George Floyd.
Jacob Lake was violating the protective order that the mother of his children had taken out against him for allegedly sexually assaulting her.
He was in the process of kidnapping.
The two kids in the car.
I mean, they were in the backseat.
Because, I mean, that was one thing that never made sense.
I'm like, wait, why is there this situation with two kids in the backseat?
It's because he was trying to take the kids away from her.
The mom called 911 and saying, you know, he's going to take my kids.
Police respond on the way they find out he has a warrant out for his arrest.
Obviously, he doesn't comply.
He gets combative.
They tried the non-lethal options, tasering.
None of it works, Mace.
It doesn't work.
And he wasn't unarmed.
He had a knife.
And he was getting ready to get in the car and drive away, and the police wanted to prevent a chase with two kids in the backseat.
So obviously that changes the circumstances quite differently, right?
It wasn't just cops just pulling up to a random guy and just start plugging away.
But what happened?
Riots broke out.
$50 million worth of damage was created in only a few days.
The whole Kyle Rittenhouse thing was born out of that because of the absence of law and order.
He was innocent, by the way.
He was shot in self-defense.
And for what?
Because the media thought they had, oh, we got another thing that we can capitalize on.
As another example of how racist this country is.
And working class Americans, minorities, in a town that they don't even care about.
I had to deal with their rhetoric.
You think CNN has ever apologized for any of that?
I mean, the title of my book, right?
It's from that riot.
Kenosha, fire mostly peaceful.
Like, what?
So that's the worst kind of example.
But then you look at the recent BYU alleged case where, you know, they were saying that the BYU student section was yelling the N-word at this black volleyball player.
No evidence of that.
All investigation proves that she made it up.
She might have actually misheard what was being said.
And even still today, they still be like, oh yeah, this is a racial hate incident that happened.
What?
I mean, look, say what you will about Mormons.
Those are some of the nicest people I ever met.
And actually, the student, or the person that they temporarily banned to try to appease the mob, BYU, was a fan who was mentally disabled.
Like, congrats.
You got your sacrifice.
And he didn't do anything wrong.
The media just stokes the flames all the time, big and small ways.
It's not healthy for a nation.
For me, being a minority, obviously, I'm not a victim.
Of white America.
I don't have a college degree, and yet I've managed to carve out a career for myself.
And that's not to brag or anything, but if I were truly oppressed, I wouldn't be where I am today.
And the reason why I don't play up my heritage is because that's not what makes me a good reporter.
That's just a happenstance, something I was born with, something born as.
What matters is the work that you put out.
Is it accurate?
Is it fair?
Is it honest?
That's what matters.
Well, so what is the cost of so many media basically turning to what I call narrative enforcement, like say some of these racial narratives, right, versus truth-seeking, which is what I hope all media would be?
I mean, it's just what we're seeing, the divide.
I mean, that's what's being...
They want to talk about, for example, stop Asian hate.
Yeah, we should.
Who's carrying out these crimes?
It's not MAGA Republicans, right?
But they're pushing this narrative over and over to try to, again, just segment people.
And it's this whole issue of duality.
I mean, duality is such a big problem.
And this is getting a little, like, another kind of probably discussion for another time.
But it's like, again, for being of, like, Mexican heritage, they're like, well, you have to be for this because you're – It's like, what?
No.
I mean, like, first off, my people are Americans.
You know, the oath that I swore to protect and defend the Constitution wasn't the Mexican Constitution.
It was the U.S. Constitution.
That's not to say I don't appreciate my heritage.
I'm very proud of it.
I love many aspects of it.
But at the end of the day, I'm an American.
And that comes with certain responsibilities.
It comes with certain rights.
And so I just hate that because they want to segment me because of the color of my skin.
I mean, isn't that what they're supposed to be against?
The result is just that they're trying to...
Pit us against each other.
And it's working.
It's all balanced.
I mean, again, that's not to say racism doesn't exist.
It does.
It will always exist.
There's humans.
I mean, there's always going to be problems with humans, right?
But that doesn't mean that we then have to completely swing the pendulum the other way to try to make things worse for the rest of the country.
But that's what they're doing.
And it's sad.
Any final thoughts?
You've got to be informed.
Read at Town Hall.
Read Epoch Times.
Watch our stuff because we're up against billions of dollars of industries that have this groupthink.
If you want to make sure that the truth gets out there, support us.
Well, Julio Rosas, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you all for joining Julio Rosas and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.
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