John Cardillo examines a 2018 poll where 56% of Americans, including over half of Democrats, backed Trump’s "animals" remark about MS-13, clashing with Pelosi and Schumer’s defenses. Meanwhile, Harvey Weinstein surrendered amid unprosecuted NYPD cases tied to campaign donations, while NFL protests and ESPN’s leftward shift—like anchor Jamelli Hill’s "white supremacist" tweet—sparked conservative backlash. Privacy fears escalate as Amazon’s Alexa leaks data, raising concerns about corporate surveillance and government ties, like the $950M DoD contract slashed to $65M under Trump. Sports and media now face ideological divides reshaping public trust and engagement. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, on off the cuff declassified, Harvey Weinstein surrenders to the NYPD.
A poll says the majority of Americans agree with President Trump on MS-13.
NFL players are becoming more insufferable and is Amazon buying on us at home?
Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and most likely soon-to-be convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein turned himself in at the New York City Police Department's first precinct at about 7.30 a.m. Eastern this morning.
Weinstein is turning himself in for charges stemming from the complaint of a woman named Lucia Evans about incidents that happened going back as far as 2004.
Now, luckily, New York State has a long statute of limitations on these types of sex crimes and type of sexual predation.
Weinstein apparently forced her to perform oral sex on him.
Now, we know the Weinstein story.
We give credit where due, Ronan Farrow broke that story and did an outstanding job profiling Weinstein's decades, decades of brutal sexual assaults on women.
We just saw Bill Cosby convicted, convicted of rape.
His sentencing is happening sometime in September.
And now new allegations against Morgan Freeman.
The Weinstein case, however, raises really, really troubling questions.
Weinstein was investigated more than a few times by various law enforcement agencies, those out in LA and Hollywood, ones in Europe, in the UK, actually same as Kevin Spacey, which we'll get into in a moment.
But the NYPD, Special Victims Unit, had a very solid case on Weinstein.
Yet Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance wouldn't prosecute.
Well, it turns out that Cy Vance received money for his campaign.
He's a Democrat, from Weinstein's lawyer, from many associates of Weinstein.
New York City and New York State Democratic parties benefit.
They benefit greatly from guys like Harvey Weinstein and associates of Harvey Weinstein, people in the movie industry dependent on Harvey Weinstein to stay very rich.
People that Harvey Weinstein made very wealthy.
Now, this is incredibly troubling.
Money in Criminal Justice Races00:03:35
Look, we know there's money in politics.
We know it.
I have no problem with it.
It's the way our system works.
It makes the world go round.
But I do have a problem when money creeps into the criminal justice system.
Now, money shouldn't influence politics, but the stark reality of the world is that money does.
Money does, in fact, influence politics.
There is, you know, you're never going to change that.
People can scream and yell about campaign finance reform.
Guys like John McCain, who have taken a gazillion dollars from the defense industry.
I always find it beautifully hypocritical when a John McCain cries about campaign finance reform because he is one of the worst culprits in DC.
But this is about Harvey Weinstein.
It is very, very troubling when money creeps into criminal justice type races.
I obviously, you watch the show, you know, I interface with law enforcement around the country and I dabble in helping candidates their messaging.
And I've helped quite a few candidates for sheriff.
They're small races, but it's a passion of mine.
I love law enforcement and very important to me to get the right people elected.
And the last few people I worked with would only take money from either family.
One of them was from a very wealthy family.
They took zero outside donations.
They completely self-funded the race.
They and their dad put all the money into the race or from large donors, individual donors who are very wealthy, but who they know socially.
And so there was a sheriff in a much larger county I knew, and his key donor base were some very high net worth individuals, all retired or had sold their companies.
And they really had no need for a local sheriff.
In other words, they were so wealthy.
We're talking about nine figure and in some cases, they were billionaire net worth.
And they were retired.
They had sold off large auto dealerships and financial firms.
And they were squeaky clean.
These were not people that were going to get in trouble.
It wasn't even going to be about a DUI because they all had drivers and things of that nature.
And so these were people who donated because really what they wanted was just to be able to get a little card that's a special deputy or something like that, or be able to once in a while go out and use the sheriff's department's gun range, which most sheriff's departments here in Florida will open them to the public to use every now and again.
So they weren't asking for any special favors.
So it was a really ethical way for large money donors, rather, I'm stumbling over my words, for large money, high money donors to have involvement with law enforcement.
Many of these people also set up nonprofits like 501c3s that can legally, it's the way you can absolutely legally do it, it's encouraged, they would donate large amounts of money.
And those 501c3s in turn would donate things to the sheriff's departments, new vehicles, bulletproof vests, better firearms, training seminars, things of that nature.
So all good came from their involvement.
These weren't, you know, mid-level business people, small business owners that were running kind of shady businesses and they needed the local sheriff on the take.
And so in that instance, I said, okay, you know, this is also really clean and I'll work with these candidates.
That, to me, is okay.
But when you have a series of donors in a particular industry, entertainment, that has for decades upon decades.
Look, I bartended and waited tables in college in New York City.
And if you know anything about the bartending and restaurant scene, bar and restaurant scene in New York City, the staff, the joke is, you know, you're bartending here.
What audition are you going on?
The Spotlight on Prosecutors00:15:07
It was just everybody's an actor.
Everybody's a model.
Everybody's a singer.
Everybody's a writer.
I wasn't that.
I was a guy just waiting to go into the New York City to graduate college and go into the police academy.
I was an anomaly.
You know, I was like, I was the 1% of the 1% in that world.
And you would hear the stories.
I mean, these are good-looking guys and girls that work there.
And a lot of the girls would just tell me, you know, man, well, that guy was such a creep.
He pinned me down on the couch.
Some of the girls were like, yeah, what are you going to do?
You know, yeah, did you have sex with him?
I had no choice if I wanted the job.
It's just, it was so commonplace.
And the guys that I worked with, it wasn't just the homosexual advances from those in the entertainment industry.
The women, the women, the casting directors, the producers, the directors would be all over them.
It's really an immoral business in many respects.
And so this has been going on since the beginning of the entertainment industry, sexual predation.
I do believe that pedophilia was commonplace.
That's not from crazy conspiracy theories like Pizzagate.
It's from my time working on those cases, working alongside the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, consulting on shows in Hollywood, seeing how this all works.
Now, I told you the story about Kevin Spacey that I'll tell you again in a moment, but back to Weinstein and topic at hand.
And so these donations that went to Cyrus Vance had via the New York State Democratic Party, the New York City Democratic Party, or direct contributions to Manhattan DA, Cyrus Vance's campaign accounts seem, seem to have had an impact on his office's decision to have previously prosecuted Harvey Weinstein.
I will never.
We will never be able to prove that.
That's my opinion.
But the reason it's my opinion is that the New York City Police Department special victims unit is probably the best in the world at what they do.
I would argue they're better than the FBI because of the amount of cases they handle.
New York City's population is so big, and rapes, sexual assaults tend to be local and state offenses.
They simply handle many, many more of these cases than does the FBI.
And they have more experience.
The more you handle, the more experienced you are, the more often you testify in court, the more attuned you become, the more experienced you become in the nuances of that testimony.
You're required to conduct and attend more in-service trainings where you're learning about the latest advances in DNA technology, in psychology of victims, psychology of offenders.
And so the New York City Police Department Special Victims Unit is far and away the best in the world at what they do.
LA's is pretty damn good too.
They're nipping at their heels.
They might be equal.
I'm partial to the NYPD for obvious reasons.
And they had a very good case.
I spoke to some detectives in that unit that I know, two of whom I worked with on the street.
They're personal friends.
And they all tell me much the same that I was told by very close friends in the LA DA's office about the Michael Jackson case.
We know this guy is guilty, but the victims are either paid off or terrified.
And the damn prosecutors won't try to make these cases.
Something's up, but hey, we're just the cops.
All we do is rest.
You know, the prosecutors don't want to prosecute.
That's our system.
Everybody's watched law and order.
It is what it is.
And so what it leaves you with, what it leaves you with, are traumatized victims and really frustrated cops, really, really frustrated investigators.
And so that was the way this Weinstein investigation was going until Ronan Farrow's exposé blew the lid off of it, completely blew the lid off of it.
And Cyrus Vance in the Manhattan DA's office could no longer, they could no longer help push this thing off.
They could no longer push this thing off.
Now you had special victims units detectives whose credibility, I can't remember one case.
Now, I bring you stories of police misconduct when it's warranted, but I mean when I say this, I look back, I called friends, and just from my own anecdotal recollections, I can't remember one instance where a New York City special victims unit detective was discredited on the stand or their evidence didn't hold up because they meet these victims.
And I worked those cases not with SVU, but with child pornography and pedophilia and some other things.
And when you meet the victims, all you want to do is do it right.
You want to cross every T. You want to dot every I. You want to make sure that you don't miss a thing because you want justice for them.
You can't go out and kill the bad guy, which many cops would want to do.
These are some pretty brutal predators.
But you want to have to have them sitting in a cell for the rest of their lives.
And if they murdered, hopefully you'll get them the death penalty.
But you want to leave every stone flipped over several times.
You want to dig three, four, five feet deeper into every hole.
You want to do everything right, then do it again, then go an extra 15 miles because you really want these bad guys in jail.
And that's exactly what SVU did over the years on Harvey Weinstein.
The district attorney's office wouldn't prosecute the cases.
Now with the spotlight on them, they are.
Because the New York City District Attorney's Office is a political entity.
And typically, politicians, whether they be president of the United States, senators, congress people, down to local school board, and often elected sheriffs, elected prosecutors, district attorneys, state attorneys, attorneys general, they don't like political or financial hot potatoes.
So they tend to blow them off until spotlight is on.
And when that spotlight is on them, well, they can no longer blow those cases off.
And that's exactly what Farrow's Exposé. did to Cy Vance's office.
Now, the prosecutor that's on the case is a female prosecutor.
I won't put her name out there because I don't want it like naming prosecutors for security reasons, their own safety.
But let it suffice to say, she's been in the office for a few decades.
She is apolitical.
She is an outstanding prosecutor.
I've crossed paths with her.
I have a couple of friends that had major cases with her.
They said she is one of the best they've ever worked with.
And one of my friends who is, you've seen him on the show, actually, Rob O'Donnell.
He was an incredibly talented homicide detective in the NYPD, now retired, and now he does law enforcement analysis on this show and others.
Good, good friend.
And Rob and I were talking about this particular prosecutor.
And he basically said, Weinstein is effed because she's that thorough, that good at what she does.
And when you combine now, the special victims units detectives who have a particular vendetta against Weinstein, because they know what he's gotten away with.
You have this incredibly talented, successful, high-conviction rate prosecutor and a monster spotlight shown on the Manhattan DA's office.
I have to agree with my buddy Rob.
I think Weinstein is, well, effed.
That all being said, the problem still exists in Hollywood.
Weinstein is just one, you know, symptom of the total disease, one symptom that's presenting that's been discovered and that's now being excised of the total disease.
We've got Morgan Freeman now being accused.
We've got Bill Cosby convicted.
Kevin Spacey.
Now, Kevin Spacey is under investigation by multiple agencies, Los Angeles and the UK right now.
I'm guessing others.
And I've told you the story before, but back in 2009, when I was doing this work, I was also consulting a consulting producer on an NBC show that eventually did get launched.
I didn't make anywhere near the money I thought I would.
So yes, I cut myself a bad deal, but no, it took many, many years and I only had a deal for a certain amount of episodes, but it was fun.
But one of the producers on it, one of the executive producers and I were talking about these types of crimes and we were strategizing.
I'll never forget this.
We're sitting at the Ritz Carlton, Marina Del Rey, myself and these two very, very well-known executive producers.
I won't put their names out there, but they're good guys.
They were family men.
They're good guys.
They didn't get involved in the Hollywood scene and all those trappings.
And they really, quite frankly, thought those people were like nuts.
These guys were very atypical for Hollywood power players.
They were like coaching their kids baseball games and going on family vacations when these other lunatics were having orgies.
And we somehow Kevin Spacey's name came up in another movie and one of them said, I don't know how that guy's not rotting in prison for what he's done to kids.
And the other one goes, tell me about it.
And I said, really?
I said, you know, he always seemed a little creepy.
And they said, it's an open secret.
I said, why, why is the guy not sitting in prison?
They said, you know, same reason Michael Jackson isn't.
The payoffs and the intimidation and families who are more absorbed in getting their kid, making their kids famous than they are in a scandal in Hollywood and being shut down.
So I gave a call to a friend of mine who was a prosecutor in the LA County District Attorney's Office.
And he said, believe me, because I couldn't sit there and not notify law enforcement.
And he worked, particular friend of mine was another consulting producer on these projects.
And he worked with child sex victims and putting away pedophiles.
And I called him up and I said, hey, I got this heads up on this actor.
I don't know if it's true or not.
And he says, oh, God.
He goes, I can't tell you how much information we have on that guy, but that it's your typical Hollywood case.
The victims are intimidated or they're afraid or they're, you know, we don't know, but we feel money was exchanged and quiet settlements.
But now that's all coming to light.
The show House of Cards fired Kevin Spacey.
He won't be on the last season.
And he's now under criminal investigation in both Los Angeles and in the UK for many incidents of both sexual predation on adults and underage minors, as it should be, as it should be.
And I hope he's convicted.
Now, again, all of the things I was told back in 2009 were opinion and hearsay, but the sources were very, very credible.
So do we know conclusively that Kevin Spacey is a child sexual predator and sexual predator?
No.
The evidence hasn't been presented in court.
But am I comfortable saying that if I were still active in law enforcement, based on the sources, based on their credibility, is an investigation warranted as is happening in Los Angeles and the UK?
Absolutely.
Do I feel an arrest will be made?
Absolutely.
Do I feel a prosecution will go down now because of the spotlight shown on all these people?
Very, very optimistic about that.
And that's all a very, very good thing.
Look, Hollywood is not all of a sudden going to become moral.
But if we can make the bad guys think twice, if we can get them to at least consider, hey, I'm going to be publicly shamed and spend a long time in jail.
If I continue down this path, well, then maybe just maybe we can save a few victims from some heartache.
I'm going to tell you something that's going to shock you.
Now, despite Nancy Pelosi defending the divinity and dignity of MS-13 gang members, yes, she did.
A new poll, a Harvard-Harris poll, shows, that was going to blow your mind, that a majority of Americans agree with President Trump, me, many others, agree with you, that MS-13 gang members are in fact animals.
Now, yes, Nancy Pelosi said that MS-13 gang members have divinity and dignity.
Her quote was verbatim, quote, does he not believe in the spark of divinity, the dignity and worth of every person?
Calling people animals is not a good thing.
And God, I hope the Democrats go down this path in November in 2020.
President Trump, of course, said these people aren't, these aren't people.
These are animals.
And he said that.
You remember we profiled this.
We went deep into this on the show.
He said that in a direct response to Fresno, California County Sheriff Margaret Mims, who was frustrated and venting to President Trump that with California's sanctuary state policies, she can't even notify ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, about violent raping, murdering, kidnapping MS-13 gang members in her jails, sheriff's control jails in counties.
And she was venting and frustrated.
And the president basically said, in all paraphrase, I hear you, Margaret.
I hear your frustration.
These aren't people.
These are animals.
And he said it in that context.
and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, all of them had to jump on the bandwagon and defend MS-13.
Schumer said, quote, when all of your great-great-grandparents came to America, they weren't animals and these people aren't either.
So not only is Chuck Schumer comparing our ancestors to MS-13 gang members, he's defending MS-13 because anyone, anyone who can hear understood the president's comments in context.
I refuse, I fail to believe that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer did not.
So either they're liars, they're filthy liars, or they're defending MS-13.
Either way, they lose.
Well, new poll shows that a majority of Americans think it's fair to characterize MS-13 gangbangers as animals.
This from Newsmax via Story in the Hill.
The Harvard Caps Harris survey found 56% of adults think the word was acceptable, while 44% said it was unfair.
And there's a Harvard Harris poll.
It's not a right-leaning poll.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the sample leaned Dems.
Now, 52% went a step further.
They added that comments, any comments which dehumanize MS-13 are acceptable.
Over 50% agree they're animals.
54% and 52% would like to see MS-13 dehumanized.
The breakdown in the poll is 37% Democrat, 32% Republican, five points higher in the Democrat sample, and 29% Independent, 2% other.
Harvard Harris Poll Reveals00:07:44
Now, many of those independents lean left.
So a majority left-leaning survey, still more than half, think MS-13 are animals.
There is scientific proof right there.
A scientific poll conducted within polling standards and norms by Harvard University.
Harvard University shows that the Democratic Party leadership is now so far left, they're out of touch with their own party's base on issues like MS-13, they kill for sport.
And at the roundtable President Trump held earlier this week in Long Island, ICE director Tom Holman said, and I say every day, I wish Tom Holman wasn't retiring.
He defended President Trump.
He said that President Trump didn't go far enough.
And Director Holman said, quote, I told the president yesterday, I know he's taken a lot of hits for the comment, the animals comment, but if you actually think about it, what I said yesterday that animals killed to survive.
MS-13 kills for sport to terrorize.
Homan told that to Fox and France.
He also said something very similar in the room with the president and various law enforcement leaders and sadly, tragically, the families of those two young girls killed by MS-13.
Now, the comment that Sheriff Mims made to President Trump for him to then respond with the animals comment was this, quote, there could be an MS-13 gang member I know about.
If they don't reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it, end quote.
Meaning, if they're not in the jail for murder or human trafficking or drug trafficking, because if it's drug trafficking or human trafficking or theft of a federal facility, in those instances, Sheriff Mims could hand them off to the FBI, to the DEA, if it's weapons trafficking, to the ATF.
Then when they're in the custody of one federal agency, that federal agency, of course, can notify its sister federal agency, its brother federal agency, ICE.
But if they're in there for a DWI, for a shoplifting, for a simple assault, and they're an MS-13 gang member, in those instances, according to California sanctuary state policy, Sheriff Mims would not be able to notify ICE that they had an MS-13 illegal alien gang member in custody.
And I agree with her.
I agree with her.
It's disgraceful.
Director Homan went on to say, quote, the rhetoric right now against this president and those that protect MS-13, well, I wish they, those who protect MS-13, felt as strong about the attacks that these same people make on ICE officers and border patrol agents.
And he's right.
When have Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi ever have, when have they ever defended police, the federal agents who are attacked by MS-13 gang members when they conduct their raids?
When have they ever, as vehemently, as passionately, defended their dignity, their divinity, their honor?
They haven't.
When I tell you the Democratic Party hates America, not rhetoric, not speculation.
It's their own words.
It's their own statements.
We don't make this stuff up.
We don't stay at us on the right.
We don't exist in a vacuum.
I did a very long talk this week with members of the Nassau County Police Department and a couple of members of the Suffolk County Police Department.
These are the two counties, if you don't know the geography, most of you do, but they border New York City to the east.
They comprise Long Island, along with Brooklyn and Queens.
And many, many men and women of the NYPD go to work in those departments because in terms of policing jobs, very, very high paid.
A patrol cop there makes six figures and with overtime closer to $200,000 in many instances.
These are very well-paid agencies, very well-equipped, well-run.
And so the waiting list is very long to get into those agencies.
And typically, many of those candidates are NYPD cops.
And they told me that the MS-13 problem is off the charts.
Yesterday, we spoke about it.
10,000 MS-13 gang members in the U.S. officially made members, according to Director Tom Holman of ICE, 2,000 on Long Island.
And we've heard about the sensational cases, the Mickens and Cuevas families, those families that were sitting on the corners of President Trump and Representative Pete King on Long Island.
But they were just telling me about the routine crime and how MS-13, and I was mistaken about something.
MS-13's activity on Long Island is very different than it is in California.
It's not about controlling the drug trade.
It's about sheer violence.
Rape, kill, control, rape, control, kill.
It's about that.
It's about controlling neighborhoods.
It's not even about the revenue.
A lot of it is sex trafficking, but for the gratification of the members and the dehumanization, the degradation of the young victims.
Many, I would argue the majority of their sex trafficked victims are underage.
These gangs are brutal.
They are demonic.
And that's who Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the Democrats are protecting because they think that they're pandering to a liberal base when they defend raping, murdering gangbangers.
In their minds, they don't believe it, but they believe that their base is going to look at these guys and say, oh, look at them.
Everybody has good in them.
No, they don't.
I learned that on the street.
They don't.
Some people are just defective.
Person who shoplifts, kid who grew up with drug addict parents who gets in some trouble and steals a car and does a petty larceny, uses drugs, maybe sells small amounts of drugs.
They're somebody you can rehabilitate.
They probably have good in them, but they're emotionally damaged.
They're traumatized from a bad childhood.
And they're lashing out, but you can see it in the level of the crimes they commit.
They're minor.
They're typically apprehensive when they commit those.
When you arrest them, they're very nervous and they're shaking and they're apologizing.
They just, they're begging for a little guidance, a little direction, and a little structure.
And I never went too hard on those people when I was in law enforcement.
I saw where they were coming from.
Those are the people you try to help out.
Even, you know, I had a couple of cases where even the store owners who were ripped off felt bad for them.
And they were like, I don't want to see that kid go to jail.
They had a terrible life.
They got 25 bucks worth of stuff.
Got my stuff back when you arrested them.
I don't want to press charges.
And so what you do is you try to get them into some kind of program or you try to get them a social worker.
And most of the time, it falls through the cracks.
But those aren't the people I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the MS-13 gang members who lure teenage girls into wooded areas, brutally gang rape them, and then beat them to death with baseball bats and then hack up their bodies with machetes.
There are no good in those people.
They should be put down like rabbit dogs.
But our system doesn't allow for that because we're a civilized society.
And so we have to put them behind bars.
And the Democrats, rather than being concerned about putting them behind bars, going at them as aggressively as we can, letting law enforcement use every tool, every law at their disposal, the Democrats are worried about their divinity, their dignity.
Sports Fans Rebelling Against Anthem Policies00:11:57
Let's read Nancy Pelosi's statement again about Donald Trump.
Quote, does he not believe in the spark of divinity, the dignity and worth of every person?
Calling people animals is not a good thing.
End quote.
I truly believe Nancy Pelosi is sick.
She doesn't seem well.
She doesn't seem mentally well.
She's an older woman.
She doesn't seem all there.
Because very few things can explain a statement as idiotic as this and is as idiotic as Chuck Schumer's.
Very few things.
These people are completely delusional and clueless.
Even worse, they're dangerous.
But I'm very, very encouraged to see that a majority of Americans, 54% of Americans, even with a plus-five, an adventure in the independence, a plus seven, eight Dem sample.
54% of Americans agree with the animal's comment.
52% agree with using any words, any methods to dehumanize MS-13.
And I think this is just further evidence, albeit anecdotal, that Democrats are in for a rude awakening in the November midterms.
I think their blue wave is now a trickle.
And if they keep down this path, the Republicans might pick up seats in both houses.
Can NFL players be any more insufferable?
Huddled, spoiled brats who want to prove again and again that they hate America and have contempt for the very patriotic fans who watch the NFL.
This from the Hill.
NFL players reportedly already discussing new forms of protest after national anthem rule.
Now, you know, the NFL has instituted a rule that if you're going to be on the sidelines for games, and if you're not a player, if you're the team doctor, if you're a trainer, affiliated with the team, if you're a visitor with the VIP sideline pass, you must stand for the national anthem.
Must stand for the national anthem.
And if you don't want to, you go to the locker room or you go somewhere else.
And the players now are already, already starting to whine and cry.
NBC's Craig Melvin told the Today Show yesterday, quote, I talked to a former NFL player who has said that the players are already talking about other ways in which they can protest.
Ridiculous.
Other journalists, including NFL media reporter Jim Trotter, said he's also hearing some of the same.
Trotter tweeted, quote, while admittedly a small sample size, some players are telling me they're considering staying in the locker room or making a different on-field gesture simply because they feel this new policy is a direct challenge to them.
Before today, they hadn't thought about demonstrating an 18.
I don't believe that.
I don't believe it.
I think that the NFL players are big spoiled brats and I'm sick of them.
Now, Robert Klemko, who's an NFL writer for Sports Illustrated, tweeted something similar.
He said, quote, what I'm hearing from players, those who weren't planning demonstrations for next season, are now back in the conversation discussing ways to skirt the new rules, quote unquote, just to spite the NFL.
Well, that's pretty disgusting because you're not spiting the NFL.
You're spiting the fans.
You're spiting the fans.
Now, if you remember this week, a couple of days ago, the league unveiled a new policy.
Hill explains it, outlawing outlaw.
I'm not going to jail.
The Hill tends to engage in a little bit of hyperbole and outlawing kneeling during the national anthem.
Teams will be fined if their players disobey the new rules.
The NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said, quote, we believe today's decision will keep our focus on the game and the extraordinary athletes who play it and our fans who enjoy it, which is the most important thing.
The fans are the revenue.
Now, Goodell is a pretty left-leaning guy himself.
I suspect Goodell did this because attendance was down, TV viewership was down, and most importantly, merchandising sales were down.
Teams depend on those big TV revenue share checks.
They depend on them.
We're talking a ton of money.
And merchandising sales directly affect the bottom lines of the team, bottom lines of the teams and the players.
Remember, if you buy a New York Jets branded jersey, a Miami Dolphins-branded jersey, the team's making money.
That jersey has a player's name on the back.
The team and that player are making money.
And so this affected everybody's bottom line, which is why the players are morons, why they're morons.
But professional sports has really gone too far left.
It simply has.
And professional sports commentary has gone too far left.
Story from Fox News Media about ESPN.
I cannot watch ESPN anymore.
And I'm not the world's biggest sports fan, but I enjoy it.
And some mornings, instead of throwing on Fox News or talk radio, I would throw on ESPN Sports Center just to see what was going on in sports.
And one or two days a week, just to catch up, stay abreast of it, especially during the championship seasons.
And ESPN, I can't even watch it anymore.
It has just slid so far left.
Now, ESPN's president, John Skipper, apparently had some issues with it.
The story starts, this story, how a weakened ESPN became consumed by politics starts.
John Skipper was furious.
This in the Fox News media section.
One of his star anchors, Jamelli Hill, had sent a tweet calling President Donald Trump a quote-unquote white supremacist.
Mr. Trump's supporters called for her to be fired.
Prominent black athletes defended the anchor who herself is African-American.
Sitting in his office last September, Mr. Skipper, then ESPN's president, lit into Ms. Hill, according to people familiar with the meeting.
If I punish you, he told her, I'd open us up to protests and come off as racist.
If I do nothing, that will fuel a narrative among conservative and a faction within ESPN at the network had become too liberal.
Mr. Skipper chose to spare Ms. Hill.
Mr. Trump weighed in on Twitter saying, quote, ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics, parentheses, and bad programming.
People are dumping it in record, capitalized record numbers.
ESPN. is paying a really big price for its politics and bad programming.
People are dumping it in record numbers.
Apologize for the untruth, meaning calling him white supremacists.
Now, Fox goes on to say the president's tweet was hyperbolic, but it tapped in a real anxiety at ESPN.
ESPN has become unwatchable.
It had become unwatchable for me a while back.
This piece is actually very good.
It says that people at the network had approached Skipper, the then president, saying that there was a problem with balance internally, meaning the political balance.
Linda Cohn, one of ESPN's most prominent female anchors, gave an interview, radio interview in April 2017, opining that ESPN's politics were pushing viewers away.
She'll said the network had paid, overpaid for NBA rights.
This guy, Skipper, called to berate her on both counts, but she was right.
But she was right.
The network is too far left.
I have friends who are diehard sports fans.
A couple of the guys that I, my neighbors, who are my closest friends, diehard sports fans, we're together a few nights a week.
And they are conservative guys and they are patriotic guys.
They love NFL football.
And so they made the decision that they're too addicted to NFL football to give it up.
They hate what the players are doing.
They switch the channel when the players are kneeling during the anthem.
They watch the games because they just love the sport.
They will not go near ESPN.
They will not turn ESP on at home, ESPN on at home.
They won't buy merchandise.
They tend to not patronize the sponsors.
And these guys are kind of really into this that place their ads before or after the anthem.
And so people are rebelling in different ways.
But universally, the fans are not in favor of what the players are doing here.
And when you have a network like ESPN cheering it on, well, they all start to lose sight of what the game's about.
No one tunes in to the Super Bowl, the NBA Championships, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the Masters.
No one tunes in any of that.
Wimbledon, U.S. Open, NASCAR, the Winston Cup, the Etona 500.
We don't tune into those events if you're a sports fan to watch players politicize.
We don't care about their ideology.
We want to watch them play the game.
We don't care about Hollywood's ideology.
We just want them to act in movies.
And these people have become so self-important, they've lost sight of that.
They're so used to being celebrated, to being swooned over, that they lost sight of that.
And that's really, really tragic.
Now, with Hollywood, we expected it was institutionally left, but sports never really was.
Now, ESPN appears to be paying the price.
They've laid off 600 employees over the past several years.
ESPN's relationship with, and I'm sorry, I have terrible allergies.
I told you all this week, it's terrible South Florida overcast damp weather.
It is just wreaking havoc on allergies.
Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible.
But ESPN is having problems with parent company.
Because look, people at Disney, the powers that be at Disney are smart people, make a lot of money.
They know that America does not want these insane left-wing politics.
A woman named Janine Edwards, a longtime ESPN reporter, who retired in December, said, I think the morale there is probably as bad as I've seen in my 22-year tenure.
It's not rocket science to understand why.
Americans are sick of having liberalism shoved down their throats.
Obama worked overtime for eight years to do it.
Americans are sick of it.
I think these NFL players who want to find other forms of protest, and one of the forms of protest they say they'll engage in is staying in the locker room.
Well, that's what the NFL told you to do, but that's hardly protest.
Stay in the locker room.
Who cares?
But I think if the NFL continues going down this road, I think if ESPN and other networks like it continue going down this road, they're going to see bigger hits in their bottom line because Americans are done.
They had eight years of radical progressivism.
They're over it.
They're done with it.
They're watching the economy get better.
America gets stronger.
In many respects, Trump's presidency is an apolitical presidency.
He's not a conservative ideologue.
He's a problem solver.
And Americans are slowly becoming very comfortable with that.
They're starting to love and respect America again.
They're starting to understand the concept of American exceptionalism.
And I think that the more these institutions move left, the more Americans are going to move away from them with their viewership and their wallets.
Amazon's Creepy Devices00:08:14
Amazon.com continues to get creepier.
Now, look, we know that Donald Trump is at war with Amazon over post office rates and a multitude of other things.
And Amazon, to me, has, well, you know, they're pretty left-leaning.
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, which doesn't like conservatives all that much.
There was a big move earlier this year when Amazon.com won a very lucrative and nine-figure contract to store on an Amazon cloud some of our Department of Defense's most secretive data.
Yeah.
And this happened back in March.
Here from Daily Caller.
The U.S. Department of Defense is set to start transferring, and this happened, the March story, is set to start transferring top-secret data to Amazon's secret cloud storage platform after a military command awarded tech giant a large contract.
Now, a couple of things have happened since the original overarching contract was supposed to be about $950 million.
Since Donald Trump's war with Amazon, only a part of that has been solidified, about $65 million worth.
However, Amazon.com is still getting a lot of sensitive U.S. military information.
Excuse me, and I'm never a fan of that information being managed by private contractors.
We saw what happened when Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm, let Edward Snowden near our sensitive information.
But a really, really creepy story out of Portland, a Portland family, this is from KIRO Panel 7 up in Portland, Oregon area.
A Portland family contacted Amazon to investigate after they say a private conversation in their home was recorded by Amazon's Alexa, the voice-controlled smart speaker.
That's not bad enough.
The recorded audio, this family alleges, was then sent to the phone of a random person in Seattle, Washington, because that person happened to have been in the family's contact list.
Now, that is really scary.
I don't have an Amazon device in my house, but here's my phone.
I've got hundreds and hundreds of contacts.
So many that I've met over the years in business, in law enforcement.
Half of those people, I don't know.
I don't speak to.
I'm just too lazy to go through my phone and purge those contacts.
It would be weird.
It would be scary.
It would be creepy, really inappropriate if a private conversation I had in my home was sent to one of those people.
What if I was talking about those people?
What if I wasn't being flattering of those people?
This is really creepy.
So the woman named Danielle, this family asking Amazon to investigate.
They don't want to use their last name.
They don't want their photos out there, which is why I tend to believe their story.
These people aren't putting their names and faces out there looking for a payday.
Said, quote, my husband and I would joke and I'd say, I bet these devices are listening to what we're saying.
Well, Danielle, seems like you're right.
Now, they say every room in their home was wired with the Alexa devices to control the heat and the lighting and the security system.
You know, that's how they market this.
It's an all-inclusive home electronic solution, security, heat, light, AC, all that stuff.
But Danielle said two weeks ago, their love for Alexa changed with an alarming phone call.
The person on the other line said, unplug your Alexa devices right now.
You're being hacked.
That person was one of her husband's employees calling from Seattle.
So the random person that the message was sent to was one of the family, the husband's employees.
Goes on to say, quote, we unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us, the employee, that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house.
At first, my husband was like, no, you didn't.
And the guy who got the message said, you sat there talking about hardwood floors.
And we said, oh, gosh, you really did hear us.
Danielle listened to the conversation when it was sent back to her and she couldn't believe someone 176 miles away too.
She says she felt invaded.
It was an invasion of privacy and she's never plugging that device in again because she can't trust it.
Now, she called Amazon and an Alexa engineer investigated, quote, Amazon's, she says, quote, that Amazon told her, they said, our engineers went through your logs and saw exactly what you told us.
They saw exactly what you said happen, and we're sorry.
He apologized like 15 times in a matter of 30 minutes.
And he said, we really appreciate you bringing this to our attention, our attention.
This is something we need to fix.
Now, we heard about that in that other data breach.
I forget who breached that data.
I don't know if it was Snowden or that reality winner weirdo or, but we learned that the CIA was using devices or had the ability to backdoor innovative vices to spy on Americans.
So you've got Amazon, very left-leaning.
And you guys watch me, you know I am not a conspiracy theorist.
You know that.
But we know that the NSA spied on American citizens.
You have companies like Amazon that are very left-leaning that have these lucrative contracts with government agencies like the DOD.
Do we really believe that a device like Alexa, and this is all I'm going to say?
Do we really believe that a device like Alexa couldn't be used to spy?
Of course it could.
I mean, it's a big, gigantic microphone.
It's almost like a joke.
It's like it would be a comedy movie.
Hey, I'm putting a bug in your house.
And it's like one of those old brick cell phones.
Of course, those things could be turned on to listen remotely.
I mean, that's pretty rudimentary technology, which is why I don't have one.
I would never have one.
All right, but I'm also a guy who puts black electrical tape over the webcams when I'm not using them.
And I shut down the lens cap on the camera here in the studio.
I, at home, I like to cover the cameras on my machines for the simple reason that you just never know.
I might one day just by accident, and I'm not thinking of government spying on me.
I just might leave Skype connected one day by accident, or I might leave YouTube connected one day by accident.
If I was streaming something, Periscope, who knows?
So I like to know when my cameras are exposed.
Now, I, but I am concerned about the breaches in privacy of these large data companies.
If these devices make your life easier, use them.
If they don't, don't.
If you're concerned, don't use them.
If you're not concerned and you love them, use them.
I don't believe in conspiracy theory.
Really, really don't.
That's not my thing.
And I don't think that the government cares about the average person and that they'll proactively use this.
But do I think that the government would, if they could, collect all of our communications and store them?
And we found out they can with the NSA, do I think they would do that just as an exercise?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And nothing good comes from that.
We have a constitution.
We have a right not to be surveilled.
Bigger problem is these are private companies.
So why are private companies doing it to us?
And are we giving them too many permissions to invade our privacy?
And I think the answer is yes.
And it's going to be very interesting.
I'm going to be doing more of these stories.
This is a world I worked in for a little while.
Part and parcel, law enforcement, online safety, security, when I was tracking the bad guys and privacy, personal protection, rather protection of your personal information, what they call PII, personally identifiable information, was always something that we kept top of mind.
How do we bridge that gap of engaging in effective investigations and enforcement while protecting the identities of people?
And it saddens me to see that some of these companies don't seem to be taking it as seriously as we.
They're just collecting all these mass amounts of data.
But if this is true, if Amazon Telexa devices are recording all of our communications, this is really, really, really troubling.