Ep. 628 – We Are All Conspiracy Theorists Now dissects James Comey’s Capitol Hill testimony, exposing his partisan bias—granting Clinton immunity while prosecuting Trump allies like Flynn—and ties it to the CIA’s 1967 "conspiracy theory" smear tactic against JFK critics. Adam Plantinga, a San Francisco sergeant, debunks racial bias claims in policing, linking crime to poverty and media misrepresentation, while praising The Wire for its realism. The episode then pivots to transgender inclusion in Miss Universe, with Andrew Klavan questioning its societal value amid rising regret rates among transitioned individuals, framing it as left-wing ideology over freedom. Ultimately, it frames institutional corruption, policing realities, and cultural shifts as interconnected battles for truth in an era of manufactured narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Former FBI Director James Comey was on Capitol Hill yesterday, where he testified behind closed doors that he was unaware of any poor behavior at the FBI, that he did not know why he and everyone under his command at the FBI had been either fired or demoted, that he only found out he had been FBI director when he read about it in the newspaper like everybody else, and that he was not James Comey, or if he was, it came as a surprise to him.
Comey, who since leaving the Bureau has been working full-time as a sanctimonious crap weasel, later emerged from the testimony to tell reporters, quote, those screws will never lay a finger on me, see, because the cop hasn't been born who can out-noodle Big Jim Comey.
And anyone who says different, better not walk down any dark alleys or he might find himself sinking to the bottom of the East River in a pair of cement overshoes, unquote.
Comey then went on to say he was there to speak out for the rule of law.
When asked if he was at all responsible for the decline in the FBI's reputation among Americans with a conscience and whether that decline was perhaps related to his treating Hillary Clinton with kid gloves while going after Donald Trump with the flimsiest excuse and the ugliest tactics, Comey responded, quote, that's ridiculous.
How can I be responsible for the downfall of the FBI when I am like unto a god?
Except, you know, all corrupt and stuff, unquote.
Comey then struck one of his patented self-righteous poses, the same one featured on the t-shirts of himself he was selling at a nearby stand, and declared that every Republican of decency and integrity must allow his reputation and fortune to be utterly destroyed in order to ensure that Democrats are elected in the next election.
Why asked why Republicans should do that?
Comey replied, quote, because otherwise I'll end up in jail where I belong.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped dipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
CIA And Conspiracy Theories00:03:19
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
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You know, the term conspiracy theory was not invented by the CIA, as I have sometimes heard.
It was older than, it was a 19th century phrase, but the CIA used the term conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorist, to undermine claims in 1967 that the Warren report was misguided in deciding that only one person, Lee Harvey Oswald, had assassinated John F. Kennedy.
The fact was the CIA had been hiding information from the Warren Report, and they basically sent out an order to people, especially their friends in the press, telling them that anyone who said the CIA was doing what they were doing, hiding information, should be called a conspiracy theorist, and that would be a way of dismissing them.
Well, today, the New York Times, a former newspaper, went back to that old playbook and echoed his friends at the CIA and branding any conservative who talks about the actions of the so-called deep state against Donald Trump, calling them conspiracy theorists and calling those conspiracy theories.
But the fact is, under the current condition of our government, conspiracies of deep state actors largely sympathetic to the Democrat Party and largely hostile to the Republican Party and seeking to preserve their power, that's not just highly likely.
It's not just highly likely that they're doing that, but it's organic through the way the government runs, and it is virtually inevitable that it'll happen.
Yesterday's incredibly arrogant and sanctimonious and I thought despicable performance by former FBI director James Comey was one more piece of evidence that the deep state is real, that it's not a conspiracy to say that they acted against President Trump for the preservation of their own power.
And I'll talk about that and I'll explain why I say that in just a minute.
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Flynn's Treatment Matters00:15:45
It is K-L-A-V-A-N.
No ease in Clavin.
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So here's why I say a deep state conspiracy is not just a conspiracy theory.
It is virtually inevitable.
We live in a republic, right?
This is the thing the conservatives are always saying.
Whenever anybody says, oh, we live in a democracy, conservatives always leap up and say, no, we live in a republic.
What does it mean?
It means that the sovereign power, the supreme power, is with the people, but it's exercised.
The power is exercised by their representatives.
That's not hard to understand, right?
We go out and we vote for people to represent us, and they go and do the job for me in a way that I feel is kind of like what I would do if I had their expertise and their skill.
And that means that I am free to go off and do my job, drawing, you know, pictures on people's walls, whatever it is, my job with my expertise and my skill while they take care of the government, right?
That is representative government.
That is living in a republic.
But what happens?
What happens when elected guy who's there to represent me is in turn represented by thousands of unelected guys who are carrying out not his wishes, but his wishes as they interpret them and they see them, see how they should be.
All right, so we've got one guy who is elected to represent me and then thousands of unelected guys.
That's the state of our nation, right?
That is the state of our nation where the EPA can say, oh, yes, the representative passed the law, but the law means this and we're going to interpret it this way and the courts will back us up on our interpretation, even if it has nothing to do with the intent of Congress.
At some point, those thousands of unelected guys who are working outside of the realm of that elected guy are going to say to themselves, gee, our jobs are protected by civil service rules.
We're not going to get fired.
We can do pretty much anything we want.
And anybody who gets in our way or tries to take our jobs away is the enemy.
Who becomes the enemy?
Obviously, conservatives, people who want small government, people who don't trust government, obviously the Democrats who talk about government this, government that, who always know that the solution to every problem is government, are going to be the PALs.
So you're going to have a large, large contingent of unelected people who do not represent the people plotting and defending their position against Republicans for Democrats.
And because the news media is largely composed of Democrats, you've got them backing it up.
So listen, none of this, none of this is to defend any action by Donald Trump.
I'm not going to defend any action by Donald Trump.
As I speak, James Flynn, Michael Flynn, the former National Security advisor, is in court.
I think they've just delayed his sentencing.
They've just said they're going to delay his sentencing for a while.
At first, the judge came in and ripped Flynn and said you could have been charged with treason because you were a non-registered representative of Turkey while you were serving as NSA.
Then the judge came back and said, oh no, I misspoke.
You actually weren't because two other guys have been charged with that.
But Flynn was no longer representing Turkey when he was working for Donald Trump, so that wasn't true.
So it was all kind of a mess in there.
We don't know exactly what happened, but we do know.
We do know the way James Comey has acted.
We do know he treated Hillary Clinton one way and treated Donald Trump an entirely different way.
And we do know he hates Donald Trump and leaked information after he was fired to get Donald Trump investigated by special counsel.
He's testified to that because he was so bitter about being fired.
This arrogant, sanctimonious crap weasel, this guy who has been making speeches about, oh, someone must speak up for the rule of law.
And why, why, oh, why aren't Republicans standing up against Donald Trump?
This guy, he was once again testifying on Capitol Hill about Hillary's emails and the Russian collusion investigation.
He was there, I don't know, a week ago and over 200 times said he didn't know anything.
He didn't recall.
He didn't know how the FISA warrant got the steel memo.
And he didn't know why OPPO research by Hillary Clinton was used to get a FISA warrant to bug people in the Trump campaign.
I mean, this is incredible, incredible malfeasance and overreaching on the part of the FBI, the same FBI that gave immunity to anybody who had ever shaken hands with Hillary Clinton.
I mean, you got immunity basically if you were the shoe store salesman who sold her shoes from this guy's FBI.
But then he went after guys like Michael Flynn, and he went after Trump as if they were the Dalton gang.
And now he comes out and he talks to the press.
And it was a display of arrogance and monarchical privilege that was just appalling.
It was a point.
Remember, this guy is J. Edgar Hoover.
This guy was J. Edgar Hoover.
He was the FBI guy.
He's not supposed to be in charge of our politics at all.
So let's just look at the open.
He comes out and he makes this opening statement.
So another day of Hillary Clinton's emails and the steel dossier.
This while the President of the United States is lying about the FBI, attacking the FBI, and attacking the rule of law in this country.
How does that make any sense at all?
Republicans used to understand that the actions of a president matter, the words of a president matter, the rule of law matters, and the truth matters.
Where are those Republicans today?
At some point, someone has to stand up and in the face of fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement, but stand up and speak the truth.
I find it frustrating to be here answering questions about things that are far less important than the values that this country is built upon.
Let me translate that for you.
How dare they question my actions when they should be basically going after the people I don't like?
That's basically what he's saying.
How dare they ask me about the Clinton email?
Here we are talking about the Clinton emails again.
I mean, he mishandled it.
The inspector general says he mishandled it.
The inspector general says he overstepped his authority when he went out and cleared Hillary Clinton after a very, very vague and lackadaisical investigation into the mishandling of classified material and then went after Michael Flynn, set him up essentially, ambushed him, set him up for a process crime.
And he's lecturing Republicans.
He's lecturing Republicans about this because Democrats will defend the jobs of the deep state.
It's just that simple.
I should mention, by the way, that Sarah Sanders tweeted out, Republicans should stand up to Comey and his tremendous corruption, from the fake Hillary Clinton investigation to lying and leaking to FISA abuse and a list too long to name.
The president did the country a service by firing him and exposing him for the shameless fraud he is.
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K-L-A-V-A-N.
No E's.
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So does Comey take any responsibility?
The FBI leadership has been decimated.
When you look at the FBI and what has happened to it, it is an organization that has been through a scandal.
The only difference is that the scandal has not been reported anywhere but on Fox.
And of course, you heard Comey, he hates Fox.
The one station, the one place.
And listen, I know Fox is biased in their commentary, obviously.
They have the best news show on television, the Brett Baer Show.
But why is it the one station that's not a supporter of the Democrat Party, that's not a corporate spokesman for a corporate government and the Democrat Party, that's the enemy of men like arrogant guys like James Comey.
So they ask him about this.
This is cut four.
They ask him, has he got any responsibility here?
The FBI's reputation has taken a big hit over the last year.
Do you share any of the responsibility for that?
No.
The FBI's reputation has taken a big hit because the President of the United States, with his acolytes, has lied about it constantly.
And in the face of those lies, a whole lot of good people who watch your network believe that nonsense.
That's a tragedy.
That will be undone eventually, but that damage has nothing to do with me.
He's nothing, nothing to, no, no, no way.
You know, the 302 was finally released that they've been stonewalling Congress for, this 302 about the interview with Michael Flynn.
And it's written months after the event, and there was one apparently written right after the event, but they haven't released that yet.
But it does show that when they walked out, they did think that this guy was not lying, and then Mueller came in and thought, I can use this and go after him, and he did.
And, you know, he won.
I mean, Flynn says, I was lying.
But I want to play this a slightly longer, well, it's a longer cut of Comey, this sanctimony saying, basically, don't look at my corruption.
Look at what I want you to look at.
This is cut number five.
People who know better, including Republican members of this body, have to have the courage to stand up and speak the truth, not be cowed by mean tweets or fear of their base.
There is a truth, and they're not telling it.
Their silence is shameful.
Of the Republicans who are remaining in the House next session, do you see any taking that mantle, coming up and defending the FBI, taking on the president?
Not yet.
To my view, to their everlasting shame, I hope they'll overcome that and realize someday they've got to explain to their grandchildren what they did today.
In recent days, the way that the Flynn investigation has been interviewed, has been carried out has come under a lot of criticism.
In your view, should that have been handled any differently?
How do you defend from the criticism that this interview is happening?
Think of what's happened in the Republican Party.
They're up here attacking the FBI's investigation of a guy who pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
He should have been warned you shouldn't lie.
He should have been told you can have a lawyer.
Think of the state of affairs we've ended up in.
That's nonsense.
I'm very proud of the way the FBI conducted itself.
Agile, flexible, thoughtful.
Pursue the leads where you'd want us to.
Oh, and now they're criticizing me because we didn't read him his Miranda rights.
You go up there to lead a guy into crime, and it does seem like they did that.
It does seem to me that it wasn't, I don't think it's entrapment.
I don't think that it fulfills that legal definition, but it does seem to me they meant to lead him into a crime, and they did not read him his Miranda rights.
I don't know.
You know, he's going to get sentenced whenever he gets sentenced, but that doesn't mean that his sentence will stand up.
It doesn't mean he can't appeal.
It doesn't mean he can't appeal on process as well.
But just that sanctimonious language he used.
They're going to have to live with this.
They're going to have to tell their grandchildren, oh, how can they sleep at night?
You know, all this stuff.
When it's him, it's all him.
He did this.
He brought this on himself.
He brought this on the FBI.
He did a bad job.
He did an arrogant job.
He went after a guy in the absolute certainty that Hillary Clinton was going to win, that the deep state was safe, that his job was safe, and he got screwed and exposed.
And now all this verbiage, and again, this is not defending anything about Donald Trump, any actions he might have taken, but still, still, is this what we accept from our government?
Really?
Really amazing to me.
And the giveaway, two giveaways.
I want to play them both.
I want to play both of these pieces.
First, Comey is questioned by a reporter on the fact that when he released information to get back at Trump as a vengeance, to get back at Trump for firing him, he released information in the hopes that were fulfilled that the deep state would now put in place a special counsel to go after Trump, that he might have released classified information.
Now, listen to this exchange with a reporter.
And remember how they attack Trump for attacking the press.
Listen to the disdain.
Listen to the arrogance, the way the guy is standing on a hilltop looking down at the press and saying, free press, be gone.
This is cut seven.
My understanding is that when you shared your memos with your legal team that there was a follow-up for a classified containment operation by the Bureau, was there a spill of classified information when you shared those memos?
Yeah, I'm not going to talk about something like that.
Well, it's important to talk about whether classified information was mistaken.
Whether you think it is or not, I'm not going to talk about it one way or another.
Now, whether you think it's important or not, I'm not going to talk about it.
Buzz off.
Buzz off, sister.
Take your press card and get out of here.
But the whole thing, really, the entire thing was spoken by Lindsey Graham 2.0, who pointed to the big point about all of this.
The big point about all of this is just as with the press, it is not the ferocity they bring to bear against Donald Trump.
It is the puppy dog passivity they brought to Obama, followed by the ferocity they bring to Donald Trump, right?
It's not just one.
If they treated everybody the same, they wouldn't be the dishonest, corrupt organization, enemy of the people that they are.
Same thing is true of James Comey.
If this was the way, if he treated everybody like a skell, the way he treated Michael Flynn, if he treated everybody like a criminal organization, the way he's treated the Trump administration, that would be one thing.
But the way he treated Hillary Clinton was absurd.
And Lindsey Graham puts it perfectly here.
The whole purpose of Mueller being around is to find out: did the Trump campaign get an advantage from colluding with the Russians from stolen emails from the DNC and Podesta?
Phoned-In Investigations00:16:13
The answer thus far is no.
But the one thing that jumps out at me is that they phoned in the Clinton investigation.
They were in the tank for her.
They hated Trump.
They liked her.
They wanted an insurance policy.
And the same folks that were in the tank for Clinton are the ones on the trail of Flynn and all the Trump folks.
There's a certain unevenness here about how you investigate campaigns.
No, no, you're certainly going to be right about that potential, but I'm learning.
You know, you can't, you're not an honest man if you only do an honest job for one side.
That's not honesty.
That is corruption.
That is the deep state.
And Comey is arrogant now because the Democrats are coming into the House.
They're going to bury the investigation into what he did.
They're going to do everything they can to protect him because they and the deep state are natural allies.
Again, you know, we talk about conspiracies, but this is not guys in dark hats meeting in corridors, murmuring to each other, although there may have been some of that in this case.
There may certainly, it is simply the organic nature of unelected people gathering together to protect their jobs and protect the power that they have acquired because of the system.
The system needs to be changed.
This is a structural problem.
The regulatory state has to be held to account.
Our legislators have to be forced to make legislation and stick by the legislation, and the courts have to say that the legislation means what the legislators say it means, not what the regulators say it mean, because this has created a deep state.
And this is the problem that we're dealing with.
All right.
It is almost time for our next episode of the conversation.
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We have a great guest coming up, however, Adam Plantinga.
Am I pronouncing that right?
Adam Plantinga, right?
He is a veteran cop.
His books for guys like me, crime writers like me, have become Bibles.
So we can write about police officers and police work realistically because he writes so well and so deeply about what cops know.
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All right.
Adam Plantinga is an Agatha Award-nominated and Silver Falcon Award-winning author.
Those are both very, very prestigious awards.
He is also a sergeant with the San Francisco Police Department.
His new book, Police Craft, deals with police shootings, racial profiling, community relations, and every other aspect of policing.
It is out now.
It is a really good read.
So is his other book, 400 Things Cops Know.
Adam, it is great to finally meet you.
How you doing?
I'm doing fine.
Thanks so much for having me.
It's a pleasure.
It is a pleasure.
I've been using you as a source for years, so it's nice to actually see you.
This book, first of all, it's a fascinating book, and you write really well and really clearly.
But it's clearly a book, it's not, I wouldn't call it politically incorrect.
It's a book that is indifferent to whether it is politically correct or not because you're trying to tell people the truth about what it is to police the streets of our cities.
Let's start with this.
Under the Obama administration, there were all these charges of widespread racism among the police.
How do you feel about that?
Is there any truth to that, to the idea of constant racial profiling, racial bigotry among the police?
Well, one of the things I talk about in police craft is in my time on the job, about 17 years, I've heard another officer use the N-word once, and that was a decade ago in Milwaukee.
The vast majority of the cops that I know treat people with respect.
You know, I think sometimes there's this impression that the cops are at the station house rubbing their hands together and gleefully cackling about arresting a black male.
You know, as a cop, you go to where the crime is.
And the vast majority of our calls happen in sort of lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, housing projects.
And those are predominantly black and brown neighborhoods.
So that's sort of the nature of the playing field.
I will say this.
We had a sort of recent texting scandal on the San Francisco Police Department where several officers made racially inflammatory texts.
And I got to say, maybe that's naivete on my part, but I was really taken aback by that.
Those are not the cops that I know.
The ones that I know, they do the job the way it's supposed to be, which is equal justice under the law.
You know, I went up to San Francisco.
It's years ago now, but I was writing a series of detective stories that took place up there, and I interviewed police detectives.
And one of their real frustrations were, and I don't mean to, I don't want you to talk about your department specifically, but one of their great frustrations was that there were techniques that they felt that they should be able to use that were restricted, that kept them from helping people, especially people who are out on the streets, especially people who might not be totally sane.
Do you feel that the rules that restrain police are basically hurting the public?
Well, when I think of that question, I think of the mentally ill.
San Francisco has, my guess is as much as any city in the nation, a severe problem with mentally ill folks on the street.
And as a cop, if you deal with someone who is a danger to themselves or others or gravely disabled, you can put a 5150 hold on them, which is just basically a short-term hold where they can be assessed by someone in the mental health field.
But sometimes you'll put that hold on someone and you'll see them back on the street in four or five hours.
There are people out there who simply cannot function in our society, and we're not doing them any favors by giving them their freedom.
And there's more of a push now to do sort of a conservatorship where someone is put in a setting and that's where they get care and they don't have the freedom to leave.
But I think we need more of that because I've seen people that are, you know, they're just suffering.
And as a cop, you look at that and you shake your head because, you know, for whatever reason, these are folks that they have shown time and time again that they cannot be among people.
When you said before that a lot of the neighborhoods where the crime is are black and brown neighborhoods.
When you go into those neighborhoods, what is it that you see that you think, I don't want to say causes that crime, but maybe is connected to the high crime?
What are the behaviors, attitudes, problems that you see on the street that need to be addressed that maybe go beyond what the police can do?
Well, you know, drug abuse and abuse is behind just a glut of crime.
You know, the person that's breaking into your car and taking the spare change in your counsel is probably addicted to something.
A lot of prostitutes are out in the street, not because they're addicted to sex, but because they're addicted to street drug.
And then you have, unfortunately, sometimes you have generations of families who are maybe living in a low-income neighborhood or in the housing projects.
And that's not what the housing projects are for.
They're to give someone a sort of a leg up, but you don't want to have a grandfather and a father and a son living there because then you just have some of these generations of poverty.
And you have parents that teach their kids to hate the police and their kids teach their kids and so it goes.
You know, as a cop, you know, we can't arrest that we have a drug problem.
It's not even close.
You know, there's one of the sections in Policecraft that I just loved.
It was just incredibly poignant, touching.
It had an element of dark comedy to it, as so much police work does.
But you talk about the culture that becomes evident as you listen to people make their phone calls after they've been arrested, as you hear people speaking in cells after they've been arrested, that an entire culture seems to grow up out of this that's related, even when people aren't black, it's sort of related to black culture.
People start to speak in black terms.
What is it that you see?
I mean, you're a sergeant now, so I assume you spend a lot of time in the station house.
What is it that you see that what does it tell you about the world out there that is causing so much crime?
Well, yeah, it's pretty depressing because you have people who seem to grow up and they expect to go to jail, or they expect to have their friends go to jail, or they don't have a job and they don't know anyone who has a job.
It's sort of, you know, you have people that they have sort of low expectations of themselves and of their friends.
And, you know, I sort of compare it to my own background growing up.
I grew up the son of a seminary professor and a fourth-grade Christian school teacher.
And my house was filled with classical music growing up.
And my parents were, I don't remember them having a loud argument.
I grew up in an atmosphere of sort of reason and stability.
And a lot of the folks who deal with it cops as cops grew up in a neighborhood where, you know, if they're trying to do schoolwork, they're interrupted because there's gunshots outside.
Or, you know, they're trying to go to the bus stop and someone punches them in the face and takes their phone.
It's a very different kind of lifestyle.
I've got to ask you this.
I mean, it's a professional matter.
And I'm sure you're asked it all the time, but what do you see on television and in the movies?
I mean, if there was something you could erase from the depiction of police in television, the movies, what would it be?
Oh, there's just so many things.
I think the thing that I was thinking of recently is I was watching one of these law and order type shows, and the cops were kicking down the door looking for a bad guy.
And there's a couple of them, and they go in, and after about four seconds, one of them says, clear, you know, like the whole apartment is clear.
And I thought, you know, there's about 14 different rooms and crevices you haven't checked yet for the suspect.
But for the sake of the drama, they don't want to take the time to show them doing all this check.
So, you know, some of that is par for the course.
You know, you want to streamline a little bit to keep the audience's attention.
So I understand that.
What about in terms of the personal lives of police officers?
I mean, when you see, is there a TV show that you like?
Or was there a TV show that you like that you thought was pretty accurate?
I thought the HBO show The Wire was the gold standard.
I think that's not only the best cop show I've ever seen, but probably the best show I've ever seen.
There were some smart minds and smart writers behind that, and they really thought they really got it.
They really captured a lot of sort of the cop dynamics and the drug dealer dynamics and how those two sort of bounce off each other.
What about in terms of movies?
Is there anything that you see in the movies that you have ever thought like, yeah, that's pretty much a cop's life?
Those are the things that I deal with.
I thought the departed got a few of those things, right?
I enjoy that movie.
Let's see what else.
Personally, I think the great cop movie still has to be made.
So I'm waiting for it.
All right.
Now, if somebody went out, I mean, I've done drive-alongs with the police and all this, but if somebody really went out and was given unfettered access, I mean, that was one of the things that made The Wire so good, was that he had written that book, Homicide, a Year on the Streets, where he had unfettered access.
If everybody could do that, what do you think would change in the country?
What do you think would be different about a country in which everybody, you know, you have that great quote in police craft from Thucydides, I think, about the fact that the intellectuals don't fight and the fighters don't think.
But what do you think would change if people rode along with the police for, say, a year and really saw what went on?
What do you think would be the main revelations?
Well, I think there'd be a lot of revelations.
One of them is I think that people would be, I think, pleasantly surprised by how decent and civil cops are when dealing with incredibly difficult people.
You know, if you're a cop and you're doing the job right, you have a long fuse.
And we need that because we're dealing with folks that are, you know, that are irrational, that are strung out on dope, that, you know, you're not catching them on their best day.
The other thing is I think, you know, people watch movies and shows and they see the protagonist cop knocking someone out with one punch.
In real life, it is really hard to get someone in a handcuffs that doesn't want to go in handcuffs.
And I've been in situations where we had a woman who was five feet tall and 90 pounds, and it took four cops to get her into custody.
That's sort of the norm.
Hey Cop, Record It00:02:36
Right.
I mean, it takes more people to bring somebody down without hurting them, I guess, you know, than it does.
I mean, obviously, if you shot somebody, that would be the end of it.
But if you're not going to do that, you really need to, it takes a lot of force to do it.
And it's ugly to look at.
It's ugly to see.
And I think people get confused by that.
You know, I guess as a final question, is there something?
I mean, I personally felt under the Obama administration that police were mistreated and were spoken about in a way that was unfair.
Is there something that, is there some way that the communities that are at odds with the police, black communities, black people who maybe don't have problems with the police themselves, but hear about the problems or have friends who have problems, is there something that you could tell them that would set that straight?
Is there some way that they could maybe change their opinion?
Well, I think there's two things that come to mind when you ask me that.
The first is a lot of departments, including the San Francisco Police Department, have body cameras now.
And that goes a long way to sort of setting the record straight.
Interesting.
So for instance, you might have a shooting and the word on the street is, hey, the cop shot this guy for no reason.
But then the police chief can show the bodywork on camera footage and it shows a suspect wheeling around and pointing a handgun at the officers and the officers have to fire for the sake of their lives.
So that's sort of a tangible record that you can show people and say, look, what the cops are telling you is what happened.
The other thing that I think of is I think a traditional police weakness is we're not always that good about explaining ourselves.
So we might make an arrest on sort of a hot corner and now you have people with their phones out and they're videoing it.
And it used to be the cop response was, hey, get out of here, you know, or you're next, or you're coming with me next.
Those days are over.
We need to be better about explaining ourselves.
So again, if the people in the corner are saying, hey, the cop just arrested the guy for no reason, then I, as a sergeant or a police officer, can say, look, this guy has a parole warrant.
So he had to come with us.
And it's so simple, but it's so direct.
And I've actually seen that get good results because then you have people saying, oh, okay, I get it.
It doesn't always work, but it's worth a shot.
Miss Universe Controversy00:05:11
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's funny what talking to people that can do.
You're absolutely right.
Adam Plantinga, the book is Police Craft, What Cops Know About Crime, Community, and Violence.
Really well written, really clear.
If you want to know what police see and what their lives are like, it is very well worth ordering and reading.
Adam, thanks for coming on.
I hope we'll talk again.
Thank you.
And I'd just like to say I've really relished your writing over the years.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks very much.
I appreciate it.
Coming from you, that's a compliment.
Thanks a lot.
You bet.
All right.
sexual follies.
So Miss Universe contest went on.
And I'm probably breaking that news to you.
The only way you would have heard about it, because nobody cares about it, nobody watched it, was the fact that Miss Spain was actually Mr. Spain.
It was a transgender, I don't even know.
I can't even remember how to describe it.
There was a guy who had molded his body into a girl's body, looked great, was really nice looking, and lost, I think, in the first round.
The winner was Miss Philippines Catriona Gray.
But what really struck me about this was the celebratory coverage of this in the press.
Here is just a little take from our friends at Newsbusters.
This is from Good Morning America.
We are back now with that groundbreaking night at the Miss Universe pageant.
Miss Spain making history just by being there and Miss Philippines winning the crown.
Lara's got all the details.
Good morning.
Good morning to you all.
Yes, it was quite a night.
Lots of pomp and pageantry.
A few stumbles along the way as well.
But it was also a night of firsts.
The first all-female judging panel, as well as the first transgender contestant.
Overnight, history made at Miss Universe.
Spanish model Angela Ponce becoming the first transgender woman to compete in the 66-year-old pageant.
The audience greeting her with a standing O.
So he really does look like a pretty girl, you know, and certainly a pretty girl is like a melody.
But here's my question.
That was a very celebratory report.
A lot of the reports were like that.
So my question is, what's good about this?
Why is it good?
Shouldn't they have to answer that?
I mean, is it good?
Who is it good for?
Let's say it's good for this guy.
You know, is it good for everybody else?
Is it good for women?
Is it good for all the other contestants?
If a guy can be a better girl than a girl, is that good for girls?
And so I guess, as always with the left, as always with the left, my question is, what do they want?
You know, I begin a lot of, when I go and make speeches, I begin a lot of speeches just by saying what I want.
What I want is for people to be free.
I want people to do what they want.
And I explain that that entails letting other people be free.
It means if you want to have a gay relationship and not be bothered, it means that a guy has to be able to disapprove of your relationship and not be forced to cater your wedding.
If that's something that goes against his conscience, freedom is an interchange, right?
Freedom is something that we have to give to each other in order to have it ourselves.
So obviously, I have said many, many times, I think it's a very sad and painful thing to be in a body that you feel uncomfortable with.
Sex is so basic to our identities that if you are a man but you feel like a woman, as the old song goes, then that must be incredibly painful.
But why is it a good thing?
Why is it a good thing that women who are women, who are born women, should suddenly be in competition with people who are shaped by surgeons, people who are designed and not made to be what they are?
I'm not sure why that's such a good thing, and I don't understand what it is that they want.
Complete fluidity where your body doesn't mean anything?
Do they want to encourage people to have these operations that result so often in suicide and misery?
What is it exactly that the left is fighting for here?
And I guess, you know, again, I don't care who wins Miss Universe.
I don't care if the person who wins Miss Universe versus an actual guy.
It doesn't matter to me a damn bit.
But it does matter to me that our society is honest and speaks the truth and doesn't have to force people into saying certain words instead of other words in order to keep an illusion alive.
That seems to me to be sacrificing freedom for a fantasy.
And I think I'm just so interested.
I'm so interested that the left celebrates this.
And by the left, I mean the media, which is the same thing.
I'm so interested that they celebrate this without explaining to us what is good for everybody, for society.
I can understand why this fellow feels great being up there pretending to be a woman, but I don't understand what is good for society about this and what it is they want from society to look like that it doesn't look like now.
I think they should be forced to explain that.
Mailbag Questions00:01:32
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Hey, everybody, over on the Matt Wall Show.
Today we'll be talking about a piece in the New York Times that makes the case that the planet might be better off without the human race.
The author's considering whether the mass suicide of the entire human race may be the remedy.
Also, the normalization of child sexual abuse continues as an 11-year-old boy was filmed dancing in drag at a gay bar.