John Cardillo’s May 2018 episode dissects Netanyahu’s 2018 JCPOA revelations—50,000 pages and 183 disks exposing Iran’s nuclear warhead plans—while criticizing the Obama administration’s alleged complicity in the flawed deal. It ties this to millennial Republicans gaining traction in midterms, driven by tax reform and frustration with presidential politics, per Washington Examiner editor Lauren Cooley. The episode also debates Second Amendment policies: the NRA’s Dallas convention ban on private firearms near Trump/Pence, Dr. John Lott’s argument against armed interference during high-profile protection, and legal battles like Indiana’s Kistie Janin case, where a legally armed civilian faces wrongful death claims. Media bias is highlighted by Nashville mayor David Brilly’s misguided AR-15 ban post-Waffle House shooting, while Trump’s CPAC stance on armed teachers is praised. Finally, it contrasts left-wing gang threats against Kanye West—over his Trump ties—with Cardillo’s past denial of self-defense rights as law enforcement, framing extremism as a double standard. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey, and off the Cuff Dee Classified, we discuss Israel's outstanding intelligence operation, proving that Iran lied to the world about their nuclear weapons program.
Washington Examiner editor Lauren Cooley joins me to discuss why millennials are moving toward Republican candidates in the 2018 midterms.
Dr. John Lott is with me to discuss the host of Second Amendment issues.
And is the Crips gang after Kanye West because of his support for Donald Trump?
We're going to talk all about that.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a bombshell, pun intended, on Iran when he revealed during yesterday's press conference, or last night's in Israel, that, and his slide said it, Iran lied about their nuclear weapons program.
Now, this was one of the most successful intelligence operations in history, in history.
What Israeli intelligence, obviously led by the Mossad, but I suspect, we're going to get into it a little bit later in the segment, in partnership with our CIA, our NSA, I expect the Jordanians, possibly even the Saudis.
What they were able to glean, the information they were able to capture, is nothing short of groundbreaking.
What Israel got, if you weren't following any of the news on this or Netanyahu's press conference, they obtained 50,000 pages, hard pages, actual binders full of written material, published material, from a storehouse that looked like a shack in a district of Tehran, an industrial district of Tehran.
In that little building were safes.
They looked like good-sized gun safes or small bank vaults.
And the Israeli intelligence services were able to glean, or capture actually, tangible evidence, 50,000 hard pages, another 183 computer disks containing an additional 50,000 files.
And within those files, blueprints, documents, photos, videos, schematics, plans, irrefutable, conclusive evidence that Iran has been lying to the world about their nuclear weapons program.
Now, this program goes back to the 90s.
It's called Project Ahmad.
Iran then decided to conceal this under the guise of science.
And Netanyahu's case was made brilliantly and beautifully.
He said, how do we know these were not centrifuges for medical research?
Well, you don't bury experimental medical centrifuges that when you're experimenting with nuclear medicine, you don't bury those in a bunker underground.
That's for weapons-grade plutonium production, uranium production, things of that nature.
Now, there were also other indicators.
Most of the documents that all were written in Farsi, but some things simply didn't translate.
In one slide, Netanyahu showed us, you know, Farsi, written Farsi, but then 10 kiloton TNT.
Once translated, that was referring to Iran's desire to develop five warheads, each with a yield equivalent Equivalent to 10 kilotons of TNT.
Now, that's equivalent, that's equal equivalent to about four to five times the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You don't have to be an intelligence specialist.
You don't have to be a brilliant analyst to understand that those weapons were being developed to most likely be used on Israel, which leads me to believe that somebody very senior in the Iranian government realized how insane Iranian President Rouani and Supreme Leader Khomeini had gotten that they were actually trying to develop these nuclear weapons,
that the Iran deal was falling apart, and that if they did, in fact, even hint that they had these weapons, let alone use one on Israel or Jordan or another nation in the region, or even try to use one on the United States or Europe or worse, give that material, that nuclear material to terrorists to be used in a dirty bomb, Iran could very well find itself eradicated off the face of the earth.
It would be a joint international effort.
Russia would have to abandon them.
It would be the U.S., Russia, China, NATO, and every other developed nation on earth against Iran for giving nukes to terrorists.
Somebody in the Iranian government understood, hey, this is a pretty bad idea.
Rouani and Khomeini are now unhinged.
Why Iran Hid Nuclear Files00:09:34
And I believe, and there's really, I've analyzed this, I've been fascinated with this.
I've been reading everything I could find on it since it broke yesterday.
I watched that in Yahoo's press conference live.
I firmly believe that someone senior in the Iranian government opened the door to Israeli intelligence and said, enough's enough with these lunatics here.
Come on in, guys.
You got to get this information out to the world.
This was an exhaustive, an exhaustive operation.
Now, interestingly, this evidence is revealed a day after Secretary of State knew Secretary of State and former CIA director Mike Pompeo visited with Benjamin Netanyahu.
I absolutely love the renewed alliance between the U.S. and Israel, the renewed alliance between the U.S. and France.
The world is much stronger now that Obama, the Muslim, sympathetic little communist boy doormat, is out of the Oval Office.
He grew up a little Muslim kid.
He was still a man-child, very insecure, very immature, a doormat of the world, sympathized with terrorists, which also, which also begs many, many questions.
Was the Obama administration complicit in helping Iran lie?
Valerie Jarrett's born in Iran or family close ties to Iranian hardliners.
Was the Obama administration complicit in helping Iran lie?
Or was the Obama administration the most inept group of morons to ever lead the United States of America?
And I'm bringing them all in.
Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, James Comey, John Brennan.
Oh, geez, who did I leave out?
I don't even know who I lie.
I had to leave somebody out.
But the list goes on and on.
And if you want to find any of them, especially Ben Rose, former Deputy National Security Advisor, one of Obama's biggest apologist hacks.
Now, Ben Rhodes would tweet every single day criticizing Trump and Trump's foreign policy, Trump's foreign policy team.
He said Trump's rhetoric, well, it was going to cause World War III starting on the 38th parallel in Korea.
A couple of weeks later, North and South Korea holding hands, best of friends again.
Well, not best of friends, but you get what I'm saying.
The optic is there's some movement there.
They've agreed to end the war.
Seven decades of war.
Ben Rhodes has been dead wrong about literally everything.
And Ben Rhodes, who was tweeting every day, hasn't tweeted since April 27, since the day North and South Korea decided to end the Korean war.
He's been dead silent.
Ben Rhodes has disappeared, as has Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Eric Holder, Laura Lynch, and all these other morons in the Obama administration.
You want to find them.
Sources tell me that they're hiding on the wrong side of history.
So go over there.
You'll probably be able to find them over there.
Now, that all being said, I do believe that the reason French President Emmanuel Macron did that 180 at that Rose Garden press conference, when he got up there and he said, well, it's a bad deal and I'm open to renegotiating the deal.
I believe he did that because President Trump showed him this intelligence in the Oval Office.
Macron had a decidedly different position.
Even his posture, when he was talking about Iran, things were just very different than it had been in the past.
I believe Trump sat him in the Oval Office.
And you all have got to show you a couple of things.
Showed him part of this intelligence.
Certainly couldn't share 105,000 pages with him off the bat.
And Macron said, wow.
Wow.
Did we make a mistake?
This is not good.
Okay.
This is a massive game changer.
I'm not so sure Trump showed Angela Merkel.
Or maybe he showed Merkel just enough to get her nervous because if you recall, it was Germany that sold Iran those binary chemical weapon components that were used in the gas attack in Syria that led to us striking Syria.
So Merkel is now between a massive rock and a very hard place.
She just gave chemical weapons to Iran.
Now we have conclusive proof that Iran lied about its nuclear weapons program.
Where else are they using those chemical weapons components that they bought from Merkel?
How do we know they were all used in the gas attack in Syria?
Did Iran give those to terrorists to use in dirty bombs against Western targets?
Either way, Merkel looked very, very nervous, very unsettled during that press conference.
I didn't understand why she looked so nervous.
She's been a world leader for a long time.
She's not intimidated by Donald Trump.
Well, this information Netanyahu released yesterday certainly shed some light on possibly why Merkel looked so nervous.
She probably saw a small piece of this or was given a heads up that it existed.
And this is a game changer for the world.
So what does Iran do next?
Iran has been shamed in front of the world community.
Rouani and Khomeini have been embarrassed.
They've been called liars.
Now, clearly, what they're going to do is say, Israel and the Jews, the great Satans, they lied.
They made all this up.
This is a Zionist Jewish conspiracy against us wonderful Muslim hardliners.
They made it all up, enabled by their horrible friends, the other big bad Satan in the United States and the CIA who just wants to kill us all.
But there's too much evidence.
This is irrefutable proof.
Now, you've got the alt-right morons and the libertarian morons out there saying, this is all made up.
It's a Zionist conspiracy.
It's not made up because our very own CIA vetted.
Our very own CIA vetted this.
In fact, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement.
I wish it would be shared more.
It's not.
He was formerly director of the CIA.
Let me read you his statement in its entirety.
I normally don't read full statements, but I need to.
You can also find this on state.gov, the State Department's website.
Secretary Pompeo generated this statement yesterday.
It reads, For many years, the Iranian regime has insisted to the world that its nuclear program was peaceful.
The documents obtained by Israel from inside of Iran show beyond any doubt that the Iranian regime was not telling the truth.
I have personally reviewed many of the Iranian files.
Our non-proliferation and intelligence officials have been analyzing tens of thousands of pages and translating them from Farsi.
This analytical work will continue for many months.
We assess that the documents we have reviewed are authentic.
This from the sitting Secretary of State, who was until a couple of weeks ago, our very active and outstanding CIA director.
Secretary Pompeo goes on to say, the documents show that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program for years.
Iran sought to develop nuclear weapons and missile delivery system.
Iran hid a vast atomic archive from the world and from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Association agency until today.
Among the flaws of the Iran deal was the whitewashing of Iran's illicit activities related to its military nuclear program.
Iran had many opportunities over the years to turn over its files to international inspectors from the IAEA and its nuclear weapons work on its nuclear weapons work, or admit it.
Instead, they lied to the IAEA repeatedly.
They also lied about their program to the six nations who negotiated the Iran nuclear deal.
What this means is that the deal was not constructed on a foundation of good faith or transparency.
In other words, the deal is null and void.
It was built on Iranian, on Iran's lies.
Iran's nuclear deception is inconsistent with Iran's pledge in the nuclear deal.
That, quote, quote, that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons, end quote.
Secretary is saying many, many times he used the words, lied.
I'm going to tell you what I think that means in one second.
I'll read you the last paragraph.
We are therefore assessing what the discovery of Iran's secret nuclear files means for the future of the JCPOA, the Iran deal.
Allowing restrictions on Iran's nuclear program to sunset was a mistake.
One is to ask, why exactly was Iran hiding half a ton of nuclear weaponization files while implementing the Iran deal?
Oh, we know why, Mr. Secretary.
They wanted to make a fool of the world and then pop up one day and say, ha ha, we're a nuclear power.
And we got all you morons.
Jokes on you.
It is worth recalling that from 2006 to 2015, Iran was prohibited by Security Council resolutions from enriching any nuclear material.
Now that the world knows Iran has lied and is still lying, it is time to revisit the question of whether Iran can be trusted to enrich or control any nuclear material.
He means for scientific research, medicine, for any reason.
As the president's May 12th deadline to fix the Iran deal approaches, I will be consulting with our European allies and other nations on the best way forward in light of what we now know about Iran's past pursuit of nuclear weapons and its systematic deception of the world.
And that says it all.
The U.S. Secretary of State is saying, in short, Iran lied.
The Iran deal was predicated upon lies and in bad faith.
The Obama administration got played like fools or they were complicit.
The world knew Iran was bubble wrapping its nuclear program and putting a nice pink bow on it under the guise of science.
No one believed it, but the Obama administration shoved it down our throats and sold it to us anyway.
What they did, what the Obama administration did here was disgraceful.
Republicans Gain Ground with Millennial Voters00:14:35
I think the president needs to pull out of the Iran deal, and he needs to place the blame squarely at the feet of every Democrat who pushed this deal in Congress right before the midterms.
Pull out of this disastrous Iran deal, scrap it, bury it in consecrated ground after you burn it, put Iran on notice, ask them for everything, give them nothing, And let's put an end to this globalist nonsense once and for all.
The mainstream media tells us that young voters, especially millennial voters, are almost exclusively Democrat.
But a new story in the Red Alert Politics section of the Washington Examiner is telling us something different.
It's titled Republicans Gain Ground with Millennial Voters.
Stories being shared pretty widely with titles ranging from its original title to Democrats losing ground with millennial voters.
Let's make sense of it all with the person who wrote the piece, my good friend, Lauren Cooley, Red Alert Politics Editor over at the Washington Examiner.
Hey, Lauren, how are you?
Good.
How are you, John?
Good.
So I'm really, really encouraged by this piece.
And I love it from friends of mine, right?
Pieces like this so I can call them and say, hey, is it accurate?
But give us the background here.
Are Republicans now looking better in the midterms with millennial voters?
Yeah, so this is a Reuters poll that came out just yesterday.
And it was focused on how are young millennials responding to congressional races.
So, you know, this really doesn't say much about a Trump effect per se, but it does show that when it comes to the midterms, Republicans are gaining ground.
And so specifically with the numbers, support for Republicans didn't necessarily overtly change.
Like people who really consider themselves Republicans are about the same between 2016 and 2018.
But the difference is those moderates, the people in the middle who might prefer Republican over a Democrat, there's been a nine percentage point slip there, which shows that Republicans really have an opportunity to win over those voters who may have been voting Democrat in 2016, but are more likely to vote Republican in 2018.
Lauren, to me, everything you just said is far more encouraging.
I'd rather you have told me what you just told me than told me this was all part and parcel to the Trump effect for the simple reason that Trump still has two and a half years to make his case to voters.
Republicans in Congress don't.
Yeah, that's candidates don't, right?
And I think this is a very good gateway.
This is the gateway step into conservative politics for many millennials.
But the most telling thing is those independents, especially that really critical 4% to 7% in the dead center who tended to side elections these days.
I mean, look at Trump's margin of win here in Florida in the general election, 171,000 votes out of an electorate in the double-digit millions.
We're talking about sub 1%, right?
So that 4% to 7%, if you're telling me there's a 9% net gain for Republicans within that group, man, that has to have the Democrats terrified.
Yeah, that's the thing that makes this so notable.
Not only that it's those independent kind of swing voters, but also the fact that it is young millennials, because, look, Democrats take millennial votes for granted.
Republicans have a hard time winning them over.
And most importantly, it's now the largest potential or eligible voting block in the nation for the first time in 2018.
And so if you look at states like Florida, a swing state could go either way.
And you think a lot of people think, oh, it's a place where people go and retire.
Well, guess what?
There are tons and tons and tons of college students in the state of Florida and in other swing states.
And so not only being the largest voting block or potential voting block, right, these students have to go out and register to vote still.
But not only that, you know, they are in mass population in areas that matter when it comes to voting.
I think that this is really encouraging.
And it just shows that things that Republicans are doing with, whether you want to talk about it being a Trump effect or just the policy that President Trump is signing on his desk, you know, tax reform makes a difference for young people.
They actually see that money in their own, I want to get to the causation in a second, but you make a great point, right?
We have massive universities here.
We have Florida State, we have University of Florida, we have University of Miami.
I mean, Florida is home to some of the largest student bodies in the United States.
I would argue, got to be.
How many students are in the state of Florida?
It's got to be in the millions, right?
Voting age college students.
Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
And I mean, we have the second largest bipopulus university in the country, which is University of Central Florida.
People.
But there's tons of college students here.
I mean, if you look at how many college students there are that are in comparison to the ones that are just registered to vote, it's an extreme small percentage.
So, you know, we'll look at the projected polling versus who actually goes out and is mobilized.
But this is kind of an indication for the parties that they need to be spending time on campus, spending time online, trying to reach millennials and not just assuming that they're going to go out and mass and vote because it's really no longer the days where MTV tells people to go vote.
It's going to take a little more courting, but I think that for Republicans, this is a demographic that's really right.
Yeah, and you know, another hidden millennial voting block here.
Most people, when they think of Florida, don't think of the technology industry.
And it's to their own peril.
Two companies that receive some of the largest infusions of venture capital, Magic Leap and Vertical Bridge.
Magic Leap does the holographic technology, and Vertical Bridge is in the cell phone tower connectivity business.
Magic Leap has raised two to four billion dollars in venture capital.
Vertical Bridge, now I was just told, on their third round, $6 billion in venture capital, hiring like crazy, expanding their facilities, all located in South Florida for the tax advantages.
Look, the millennial voters love coming down here, no state income tax.
And so we're going to see, I believe, more younger voters moving into this state as companies like that expand.
Massive data companies down here, right?
LexisNexis, TransUnion bought a facility.
They're hiring the young developers, the young data specialists.
This is something, a trend that I've been seeing for quite some time.
And interestingly enough, not to talk about gubernatorial politics in Florida, but I was at an event with Ron with Adam Putnam, current agriculture secretary, one of the candidates for governor.
And surprisingly, he's been an agriculture guy his whole career, but surprisingly, he discussed this very thing and talked about how he wants to add another 300 to 400,000 technology jobs to Florida if he's elected.
Now, I've got my issues with facts.
A lot of those people might vote blue.
But that aside, there's no doubt the millennial vote in Florida might arguably become the most important voting block in the state.
Yeah, absolutely.
And just to counter your point about a lot of those individuals might vote blue, I would say that those are probably the individuals who have gone through a technical training or a college that hasn't necessarily focused on you there because these companies have money and they're looking for top talent because they can afford to pay for top talent.
Right.
And I think that they're a little, they may be a little older.
And we'll see that as millennials get older, the older end of that bracket are going to be more conservative or right-leaning as well.
So, I mean, this, it's just, this is just one poll, but it shows that if you're looking at data between 2016 and 2018, whether or not those individuals say they like Donald Trump, the things that he's doing and the policy that he's leading the Republican Party with is resonating and doing well with young people.
I think that's a cultural thing.
I think it's a financial thing.
And quite frankly, it could even be a reaction to foreign policy as well.
Okay, that's what I want to get to.
Why do you think millennial voters, to take Trump out of the equation, you travel more than anybody I know right now, especially to college campuses, engaging these millennial voters?
Honestly, I don't know anybody who's out there engaging voters as much as you.
Why do you think it's a two-part question?
Why do you think millennial voters are now all of a sudden focused on congressional elections, something they haven't been really in the past?
Traditionally, they've looked at the presidential.
And B, why are they moving right with regards to those congressional races?
So I think first one, why are they focusing more on congressional races?
It's because presidential politics has seemed so out of touch and out of control.
And what I mean by that is that Hillary Clinton obviously was not a good candidate.
I don't think many young people, even Democrats, wanted Hillary Clinton as their candidate.
And I'd say a lot of young people who are interested in presidential politics during the primary season for Republicans didn't necessarily want Donald Trump.
I think a lot came around to him.
I think a lot like him.
But they weren't necessarily all on the bandwagon for Trump right away.
So to see these two individuals end up being the two main party nominees and then kind of feeling like you have to choose between the two.
A third-party option doesn't really work.
And then see the only way to really continue those bandwagon movements is by going to rallies or going to marches.
I think it's a little out of touch for young people who want to have that genuine conversation, more of a hands-on approach to choosing their candidates.
And so I think when it comes to congressional politics.
And I would guess more accessible candidates, right?
Hell of a lot easier to get close to the candidate, have a personal conversation with them at a rally for a congressional than it is at a rally for presidential with the Secret Service protection and all that, right?
They can get them on the phone, they can meet them, they can talk to them, they can have lunch with them in many cases in the early days of the campaign.
I would guess that to a millennial voter, that matters, right?
Oh, yeah.
I think, you know, the fact that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, in a sense, were caricatures, were kind of these larger-than-life individuals didn't necessarily play well for millennials.
And so, with congressional candidates, they're in your backyard.
A lot of times, they're a local businessman.
They're somebody that, you know, a friend of a friend may even know.
They may even work in your church, whatever it might be.
So, I think that's part of it.
And then, you know, the other thing is just we keep on seeing that there's so much deadlock in Congress.
They can't get anything done.
And I think millennials are sick and tired of hearing that.
And they think that they're just going to vote out whoever's not doing a good job and focus on the midterm.
So, in both ways, I think that focusing on midterm elections, smaller local elections, is only just a way for millennials to become more engaged, which I think we need more of.
And now I'm even more excited to say that, knowing that they're starting to be more open to Republican candidates.
Why do you think that is then?
Part two of that question.
Why are they moving right?
I mean, the bottom line, the biggest one for me, I think is the tax reform.
I talk to people all the time who are not Republicans, who don't identify as conservative.
And they, you know, may be freaking out about the fact that Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
They may not like the fact that he tweets Kim Jong-un, but they have to admit they're making money, more money than they were.
They're keeping their hard-earned money.
They like that.
I know, like, for example, Starbucks just came out with a policy a couple months ago saying that they were going to allow their employees to keep more money in their paycheck through extended benefits.
The Starbucks baristas I talked to are not necessarily conservative.
They don't necessarily have to admit that that's a great thing.
Well, look, Lauren, it's the old saying.
Well, a few old sayings, right?
Jobs, jobs, jobs.
We'll go back to political campaigns over the years.
It's the economy, stupid.
And a cliche that's been around politics is a bipartisan statement forever.
No one votes against their own wallet or pocketbook, right?
I mean, nobody does.
It's not a sexy argument for me to stand here and just say, oh, well, you know, it's tax reform.
But the bottom line is young people are paying off student loan debt.
They're trying to save up money for buying a house, even paying their rent.
You know what?
And it goes beyond that.
Come on.
I was a young guy when I was in a place.
As a young guy, young girl, you want to drive a nice car.
You want to wear nice clothes.
So it's not just the responsible things.
You're working hard.
You just got out of school where you worked your butt off.
You're now in a job that's working you 12 hours a day.
You want to go drive that BMW Mercedes that you want to drive or maybe that new SUV.
You want to be able to go to the mall and drop money on nice suits and nice shoes.
You want to live better.
That extra money in your paycheck matters on both the things you have to do and the things you want to do.
Sure.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I think.
Oh, God.
That's the American way.
God bless.
People like to attack millennials for eating avocado toast and saying it's like $9 for a piece of toast.
And I think, you know what, if you work really hard all week and that's how you want to reward yourself, go ahead and have that.
When people say that, it drives me nuts.
When I got out of college, you know, we're friends, you know this.
I was a New York City cop and I worked a lot of overtime, lived alone, made a good living, worked in a business my family had a few hours a week.
So I had some disposable income.
My friends and I were in our early 20s.
We were foodies.
We liked getting dressed and going to nice, expensive restaurants in Manhattan.
And we made no apologies for that.
It was what we liked to do.
All of us, we all worked really hard.
And that was the luxury we enjoyed.
And we splurged on it.
I can't stand the people who look at someone who got out of college, is working hard, who wants to go to a nice restaurant, drive a nice car, and they, well, that's irresponsible.
No, it's not.
It's exactly the time in your life when you should be doing those things.
Yeah, and I think that there's a lot of times a good balance.
It's not like necessarily you're not paying your, you know, your cell phone bill, but you're driving a car or whatever.
But I do think there are also young people who would also love to drive a nice car or buy expensive clothing that don't even have that opportunity and are just barely getting by.
And I think those are the people that in many cases would be voting Democrat, but because of that little extra money, you know, it's not even a question of if they can afford something nice or expensive or whatever.
The couple extra bucks is literally helping them make cell phone payments.
And I think those and buy groceries, the basic life needs.
But it's really, really interesting how a little bit of money can change one's political ideology considerably.
All right.
So a hypothetical.
Tomorrow, candidate ABC calls Lauren Cooley and says, hey, Lauren, love what you're saying out there on TV.
Love what you're writing.
I need you to get in here.
I need your advice.
Five Talking Points for Millennials00:02:32
I need five talking points to millennials.
I'm a new candidate.
No one knows me.
I'm running against a far-left Democrat incumbent.
What are the five things I need to tell millennials so that I'm on their radar and they vote for me?
I think the first thing is being bipartisan.
I know that sounds so cliche, but millennials specifically are looking for people who can get things done.
And they're very skeptical because they've lived through eight years of President Obama, where they were promised to open change.
They didn't get it.
I mean, now you even have Kanye West coming out and saying, you know, negative things about President Obama.
So it's very clear to young people he was not who he was promised to be.
So I think being bipartisan is something that matters.
You can be principal and still be bipartisan, but I think being bipartisan, being able to get work done, reach across the aisle matters.
Second thing, talking about jobs, talking about the economy.
Third, promising to continue the momentum of the tax cuts.
Fourth, I would say talking about higher education and jobs training in general.
You know, whether that's student loan debt or that's just talking about making a college degree more valuable by what's being taught.
A large percentage of the millennial population is in college and they know that they're taking courses that don't matter, don't teach them anything, and they're paying a lot of money for it.
And then I think the last one would just be talking about, you know, the cultural value of free speech.
People say that young people are so far left, they don't like to hear other ideas.
I would argue that that is a small group of people with a very loud voice.
And more and more young people are waking up to the fact that why can't I have a conversation with somebody without getting in a fight or being offended?
And so I think talking about cultural values is not a bad thing as a candidate.
You just have to pick the right ones that resonate with people.
I'm going to leave it there because that was some pretty good advice.
You know me, I'm not a fan of bipartisanship, but I'm also from a different generation.
And I do think there's something to be said for effectively communicating.
Lauren is always an absolute pleasure.
Lauren Cooley, you can read more of her work at the Washington Examiner in the Red Alert politics section where she's an editor.
Always a must-read for me when I want to look at what the next generation is doing politically.
Lauren's always not saying that's a question.
Thank you.
Judges and Firearms: Safety vs. Second Amendment00:13:02
The Second Amendment seems like it's under constant assault.
Daily, I'm in some kind of debate on social media with people who really want to grab our guns, take our guns away, and create a nanny state where we're subjected to government's will at the point of government's gun.
I'm reading story upon story upon story.
I wanted to bring in my good friend, Dr. John Lott, from the Crime Prevention Research Center, my go-to guy on all things, firearms and Second Amendment to discuss several stories that are trending this week.
First and foremost, the NRA National Rifle Association convention in Dallas is coming up.
The NRA is being excoriated for a statement they put out saying that while Vice President Pence, and now we're hearing President Donald Trump, is going to attend the event, while they're in the room, no private firearms will be permitted.
To me, that makes a lot of sense, having been a former law enforcement officer who worked alongside the Secret Service as a New York City cop on presidential details.
But I wanted to bring Dr. Lott in to discuss why I believe he agrees with me on this, and it is not hypocritical on the part of the NRA.
John, thanks for being here today.
You're going to be at the convention, correct?
Right.
Yeah, we have a booth, and also I'm supposed to give a talk on Sunday at 11 a.m.
Okay, so you and I chatted a little bit before the segment, and I think we agree on this one.
You don't find it hypocritical on the part of the NRA because you see a distinction between public safety and the Secret Service's need to protect one protectee.
Right.
Well, I mean, people know I write a lot about gun-free zones and the danger of gun-free zones.
But what you're talking about in those cases is if, let's say, you have some type of mass public shooting that people try to engage in, if the point is to go and rob somebody or try to kill as many people as possible, you have a chance to respond.
I mean, you may not be able to save the first person who's shot or what have you, but hopefully you'll be able to go and stop it before other people are harmed as a result of the attack.
The difference when you're talking about a president or a vice president speaking is that they're the only targets that are going to be there.
The point of the person trying to kill somebody is to go and kill the president.
And that doesn't give you a chance really to go and respond and stop the person.
And so, you know, it's having lots of people armed if they don't see the person while he's in the process of about to shoot the president.
They only see it once that that's happened.
It's really their ability to respond is kind of beside the point.
Yeah, and I agree because we've set a precedent where at certain events with certain public officials, we've put many, many security measures in place.
And we even bring it down to courtrooms.
The general public can't bring a firearm into a courtroom.
You can only bring a firearm into a courtroom if you're a law enforcement officer.
And some judges don't even want off-duty law enforcement officers carrying in their courtrooms.
They want only those officers who are respondents in the cases.
That's been challenged, and the judges have tended to lose.
But so I don't have a problem with this.
But speaking of courtrooms and judges, there's a piece up on the Crime Prevention Research Center website about judges who carry concealed.
Lots of judges carry concealed handguns.
26% of judges, over a quarter of judges, carry.
2% more are considering, so it's pushing 30% that either are carrying or will carry, and more wish they could, but are actually banned from doing it.
Do you think this is in relation to what they're seeing day in and day out on the bench?
Well, I think they know firsthand violence, and they probably see firsthand how people respond to violence and what ways work to go and try to stop violence from occurring.
And, you know, you may have, let's say, 6.5% of the adult population with concealed handgun permits in the United States.
But, you know, here you have, as you say, 26% of judges, another 2% are considering doing it.
But there are a number of places in the country, a number of states, where judges aren't allowed to carry.
And the survey that was done by the National Committee.
Now, John, real quick, to clarify for the audience, so judges aren't allowed to carry on the bench in those places.
They could as private citizenship.
Sure, no, right.
Yeah, I mean, they could have a concealed carry permit and carry outside the courtroom.
Right.
Outside the court building.
You know, there are eight may issue states where they have to go and get permission to carry.
So they may not be automatically granted in those places, but it probably would in the case of a judge.
But I mean, the issue is here when they're in the courtroom, can they carry for protection?
If, I mean, we hear every once in a while about some type of attack on a court.
Well, let me read these because you have a couple of those attacks on your site.
You cited some reports in the Associated Press.
Last year, a Florida man was sentenced to more than 300 years in prison for trying to kill federal judge Timothy Corrigan in 2013 in what prosecutors said was an assassination attempt.
He previewed the suspect face going to prison for violating probation previously imposed by that judge.
In Texas in 2015, State District Judge Julie Kosarek was wounded by a gunman in an ambush.
In 2006, Reno, Nevada, family court judge Chuck Weller was wounded by bullet fragments and glass after a man fired at him with a high-powered rifle after a contentious divorce over which the judge presided.
And Illinois, it says here, wanted to basically struck down legislation that would have allowed judges and prosecutors to carry.
I'll never understand this, Dr. Lott.
I had a friend back when I was in NYPD.
She was a female assistant district attorney in the Bronx who eventually resigned from the DA's office because of all the death threats she received from gang members for prosecuting them.
She wasn't allowed to carry a firearm.
And at that point, they even took their badges away from them.
So they didn't appear to be law enforcement.
It was almost as if they were hamstringing these prosecutors on purpose.
It never made sense to me.
Well, I mean, the last thing you want for the judicial system is for prosecutors or judges to feel that their safety is threatened by doing their job.
I mean, you don't want them pulling punches and not going after some gang member because they're worried that their safety might be in danger.
You know, one thing to point out is that if they're banned from having guns in the courtroom or in the court building, then their ability to go and protect themselves outside the court building are also restricted because when they leave their car and walk to the court building or travel outside away from the court or to it,
they're not going to be able to go and protect themselves in those situations.
No, that's absolutely right.
It's actually asinine to me.
Good way to segue, even more asinine is another story on your website.
An Indiana woman who used her gun to save a police officer's life is being sued by the criminal's family for wrongful death.
I had to read this story twice to make sure I was getting the details.
This is back from February 2017.
The woman's name is Keistie Janin, and she had come to the aid of a police officer who was being beaten by a criminal.
This all occurred in Indiana, Dearborn County, Indiana.
Now, Indiana State Police conducted the investigation.
I'll read the audience some excerpts.
Suspicious person was parked in an elderly person's yard for an extended period of time, locking her driveway and creating a road hazard.
A police officer arrives shortly after the 911 call.
The suspect resists, and the officer and the man fall to the ground.
A young woman standing nearby on her own property ran to help the officer.
You could see the officer was losing the fight, and as the man reached for the officer's gun, Heisty or Kistie was armed legally with her firearm, shot the man one time, which ended the fight.
And now, this criminal who attacked the police officer tried to grab his gun, presumably to kill him and maybe others, while that person's family is now suing the Good Samaritan who saved the police officer's life.
What's going on here?
I mean, in Florida, this couldn't happen because our Stan Your Brown law eliminates the ability for the criminal's family to sue if the Castle Doctrine was followed, which this would absolutely fall within.
But this to me just seems fundamentally wrong.
Right.
Well, they're just not suing the woman.
They're also suing the officer who is being attacked.
And they're also suing the police department there.
And basically, they're claiming that the officer could have done more in order to not, I guess, put this attacker in a dangerous position.
And therefore, it wouldn't have been necessary for this woman to go and shoot the guy.
You know, it's just, who knows?
It's a wrongful death lawsuit.
But, you know, there's precedent for this.
In New York City, there was a case back in the 90s where a transit, before the New York City Transit Police merged with NYPD, a transit police officer came down the stairway on duty in uniform, sees a suspect beating an elderly man nearly to death with a pipe.
The police officer draws his weapon, fires a couple of rounds.
One of them hits the suspect in the spine, paralyzing him.
And the city of New York gave that guy $4 million.
$4 million.
Had he not been beating an elderly man to death with a pipe, he wouldn't be a millionaire.
But the city saw it as he wouldn't be paralyzed, penalized the police officer in the department, rewarded the criminal.
Things are upside down.
No, I mean, it creates perverse incentives, not only for the criminal in that case, but also for the officer.
I mean, he doesn't want to have a black mark on his record like that.
But, you know, I don't know what to tell you on this stuff, but it's just thank goodness that this woman was willing to go out.
The problem is, even if she's exonerated in the end, the concern is it's going to cost her, you know, $100,000 or more to go and defend herself legally here.
Well, it doesn't appear that she's facing criminal charges.
I mean, it seems like, and I've been poking around the story as we're talking, it appears No, it's a civil suit Yeah, the Indiana state police conducted the investigation.
The Dearborn County, Indiana prosecutor's office said her actions were justified.
No criminal charges, right?
But just last month, April 6th, 2018, Kistie received a summons from Blake R. Mazlin, LLC, Thomas J. Dahl, attorney at law, regarding a wrongful death lawsuit for the assailant.
And like you say, the officer involved was also named in the suit.
Officer responding to a 911 call, being beaten and possibly killed with his own firearm before she intervenes, is being sued for wrongful debt.
I hope the judge throws this thing out on its face.
I really do.
Right.
Well, I hope so too.
I'm just saying the sad thing is, it's a civil suit, but it can cost a lot of money to go and defend yourself on that.
I mean, you have a lot of depositions, discovery, God knows what else.
You know, the other side might hire experts, forcing this woman to go and hire an expert to go and respond.
Look, I hope you're right.
I hope the judge just throws it out on summary judgment.
Sadly, I think you're right, Dr. Lott.
I think you're 100% right.
I think this poor woman is going to have about $100,000 in legal fees.
Now, luckily, her GoFundMe has raised her about $85,000.
So it doesn't look like she's going to be out of pocket.
But God forbid she loses the lawsuit.
She might lose her home.
Right.
It's terrible.
Terrible.
Yeah.
So, you know, whatever costs the legal system, I mean, maybe they're just bringing this as a nuisance suit, thinking that it'll get settled out of court beforehand just to try to make it go away.
Could be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Give us 25 grand and we'll go away.
And she's got it in the GoFundMe.
And as much as I hate to say it, probably for her peace of mind, it might even be worth just writing that check and making the whole thing go away and she can go back and live her life.
Mass Shootings and Gun Control00:06:10
Right.
I mean, she's not going to care.
I mean, if the question is, does she give them $25,000 or spend $100,000 on legal costs?
She'd probably just give the $25,000 and let the guy brag that he got an out-of-court settlement or the family crack.
I'm surprised, and I'm not saying this, I'm not even saying this to be funny.
I'm surprised they're also not suing the homeowner's insurance company on whose lawn the guy was shot.
It's surprising to me they're not doing that.
I mean, this attorney appears to have no scruples.
All right, let's move on to your hill piece.
You wrote a piece in the Hill a few days back.
Waffle Zone shooting illustrates the danger posed by gun-free zone.
There's a statistic in here that jumped out at me.
Over 98% of U.S. mass public shootings since 1950, according to your research, have occurred in gun-free zones.
Right.
Well, just to back up a little bit, the thing that kind of upset me about this story was that here you have yet another mass public shooting in a place where people aren't allowed to have guns to be able to go and protect themselves.
The Waffle House was posted, and yet you can't find one single news story on that fact.
That, you know, you have all these news stories about calls for new gun control laws literally within hours, again, as often happens from these attacks.
You know, they didn't immediately know what type of gun was used.
It ended up being AR-15.
But, you know, it's just the one thing that's probably easiest for the media to go and figure out.
I mean, they're across the street from the woman.
Let me read what you wrote because you wrote it beautifully.
You wrote, the easiest thing to report on is the one thing that the media consistently ignores.
Obviously, with an active crime scene investigation, the media can't go right up to the front of the restaurant.
But they still could easily have seen the gun-free zone sign through their telephoto camera lenses.
A throng of journalists quickly gathered across the street from the Waffle House, but none of them provided a picture of that sign.
And you're 100% right.
Only, only conservative pro-Second Amendment media posted photos of that sign.
I didn't see it in CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC.
Well, as far as I know, I'm the one that's posted.
Oh, that picture of the sign with the brick and the yellow sign on the brick wall was your photo?
Well, I got somebody there to go and stop by and check to see whether it was posted.
It's unreal.
And of course, Nashville's Democratic mayor, David Brilly, said, quote, we can take these weapons of war off the streets of our country.
They know they're lying.
They know the AR-15, semi-automatic AR-15, in no mechanical way mirrors fully automatic rifles used by our military, but they continue to lie to the American public.
This is what's curiating.
Yeah, it's just amazing to me.
I mean, here they say, oh, we don't want to take away hunting rifles.
The thing is, the semi-automatic hunting rifle, as you're implying, functions identically to an AR-15.
I mean, it's a small caliber hunting rifle.
They couldn't even use an AR-15 to go and hunt deer.
Yeah, it's banned in like 30 some odd states for deer hunting because at the end of the day, an AR-15, I'm glad you brought that up, is a 22-caliber rifle.
It's a .22 caliber rifle.
The bore is not wide enough for it to be legal for deer hunting in most states, the diameter of the bullet, I should say, of the projectile.
And I'm glad you brought that up, Dr. Lott.
It's really, really troubling.
Encouraging, though, that we've seen some pushback.
President Trump's speech at CPAC on the Second Amendment was pretty absolute.
What do you think?
We're running out of time.
Real quick, about a minute.
What do you think we're going to hear from Vice President Pence and President Trump at the NRA convention?
Well, I hope they're going to go and talk about these gun-free zones.
And I hope they're going to kind of flesh out the president's arguments for why he supported teachers being able to go and carry guns.
You know, if I were to write his speech, I would go and say, look, enough is enough.
We have to be serious about this.
The types of gun control laws that gun control advocates push wouldn't have stopped these mass public shootings.
Let's do something that would actually matter.
And the one thing that I think would matter is letting teachers and staff be able to go and carry.
We have 18 states that allow to varying degrees teachers and staff to carry on school property.
You know, we have all these discussions about what might possibly be.
Let me ask you.
We don't need to guess.
We can look.
And that's, I hope, I hope Trump and Pence flesh that out.
I agree with you.
And I want to get your last thought on this.
We only have about 40 seconds.
I've always, always, but since this debate has been happening now for the last few months, I've said there's a very simple solution that we had after 9-11, the federal flight deck officer program.
We gave pilots the opportunity to be armed.
And if they so chose to be armed, we put them through a rigid training.
To me, that would work very nicely on the state level, just mirroring the federal model that's been proven to work very well.
What's your opinion on that?
Well, yeah, I mean, that'd be fine.
I don't want to have too much training.
I think it's easy to go in that direction, but I have no problem with training for teachers and staff.
I don't think you could sell it politically without the training component.
Well, there are states right now that have Utah, for example.
You have a regular concealed carry permit or Alabama.
You can go and carry it.
But those are gun-friendly places.
Arming Pilots for Safety00:03:34
You're never going to sell that.
I would have a labor assurance.
I said we're running down time.
You're never going to sell that in New York or California.
I have no problem with him.
All I'm saying is I've heard some things like in Florida, they briefly talked about something like 140 hours of training.
Oh, yeah, it was a bit draconian.
It was a bit draconian in Florida.
And then even that wasn't enough for the governor.
And he insisted that it be taken out completely.
But all I'm saying is you don't want to have something where it's so long that nobody's going to go through the training.
Well, right.
You don't want to put roadblocks.
On that, we completely agree.
Dr. Lott, as always, an absolute pleasure.
I get smarter on these subjects every time I talk to you.
Dr. John Lott from the Crime Prevention Research Center.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
If you need any more proof that leftists are unhinged, just look at what's going on with Kanye West.
The hate that he's experiencing after saying a couple of nice things about Donald Trump.
Kanye West never even said he was conservative.
He just said he likes Donald Trump.
They're friends and he likes some of his economic policies.
And after eight years of Obama, Chicago is still a mess.
It's all he said.
He never said, go out and vote for Republican.
I'm voting for Trump.
I'm never said any of that.
Well, some rapper, some rapper named Daz Dillinger, a former member of Snoop Dogg's Honourage, is calling for Crip gang members to assault Kanye West because he supported Donald Trump.
Now, Dillinger apparently recorded, it says here from the CBS local Los Angeles, Daz Dillinger, who recorded several successful hip-hop records as part of the Dog Pound duo in the 90s, made the apparent threat in a video posted to his Instagram, which was later removed.
One of the things he said was, quote, yo, national alert, all the Crips out there, y'all, F. Kanye up.
What?
He's calling for the Crips to like kill Kanye West because he tweeted.
What is wrong with these people?
Now, this is a thug gangbanger.
People are savages anyway.
But the left is as unhinged.
Now, Dillinger, I'm going to read you from the CBS log.
This guy's real name is Delmore Drew Arnaud.
He also warned Kanye West to stay out of Long Beach and the whole state of California.
It's like when the Hells Angels got annoyed that the Mongols are wearing the California rocker instead of like a rocker where they were, you know, the local town they were from.
These people are lunatics.
Okay.
West lives in Calabasas, though, but they wanted to stay out of Long Beach.
You know, Long Beach and Conte together.
Now you know you're in trouble.
Be careful, Kanye.
He also said, quote, Daz Dillinger to Kanye West, quote, better not ever see you in concert.
Better not ever see you around the LBC, Long Beach.
Better not ever see you around California.
The whole state.
Kanye West is no longer allowed in the whole state of California under threat of Crip gang violence because he liked, they didn't even vote, didn't even say he voted for him, because he said something nice about Donald Trump.
Quote, stay in Calabasas, you hear me?
Because we got a Crip alert for Kanye.
Gangsters used to threaten me all the time.
I love it.
I would just carry extra ammo.
A message reading, quote, F Kanye up, quote, was also posted on Dillinger's verified Twitter account.
This is the left.
This is the left.
If you dare go against their narrative, they don't just shame you at the White House correspondence dinner.
No, they want to send the Crips after you to kill you.