John Cardillo’s June 5, 2018 episode dissects Trump’s potential self-pardon, with Alan Dershowitz and Andrew McCarthy debating constitutional limits amid Ford’s Nixon pardon precedent. It links the opioid crisis to rising crime in cities like Philadelphia—where "Hamsterdam" enabled open-air drug markets—and contrasts it with New York’s stricter shelters, citing Phoenix House’s 60-70% success rate versus detox programs’ 10-15%. Fort Lauderdale’s 45-minute prisoner processing highlights systemic inefficiencies, while Maxine Waters’ June primary runoff flop (just 10 millennials) and Omar Navarro’s grassroots surge—backed by Roger Stone, Joe Arpaio, and Michael Flynn—expose California’s Democratic dominance under threat. The episode argues that addiction decriminalization fuels crime, and political shifts could reshape long-held incumbency. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, on off the Cuff Declassified, special counsel Robert Mueller accuses Paul Manafort of witness tampering.
We'll discuss.
Legal experts differ on whether or not President Trump can pardon himself.
Law enforcement analyst Ben Manis joins me to discuss the opioid crisis and crime and how they relate to the growing homelessness problems in the United States.
And what would happen if Maxine Waters held a campaign event and no one showed?
Well, it did happen.
And we're going to talk all about it.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, a guy you know I don't trust, is now claiming that Paul Manafort engaged in witness tampering.
But others who have gone through the federal prosecution process as defendants are saying this is a common tactic.
One of them is a former police commissioner.
I'm going to get to that in a moment.
This from a Thompson Reuters story: Manafort attempted to tamper with potential witnesses, U.S. special counsel.
Mueller, of course, is investigating possible collusion links that don't exist.
Now, Mueller has indicted Manafort in federal courts in Virginia and D.C. He's now claiming that Manafort tampered with witnesses.
Let me read you this from the Thompson Reuters story.
FBI special agent Brock Doman, in a declaration filed with Mueller's motion, said Manafort had attempted to call text and send encrypted messages in February to two people from the quote Habsburg group, end quote, a firm he worked with to promote the interests of the Ukraine.
The FBI has documents and statements from the two people, as well as telephone records and documents recovered through a search of Manafort's iCloud account showing that Trump's former campaign manager attempted communication while he was out on bail, according to Domin, the FBI agent.
The communications were, quote, according to this FBI agent, in an effort to influence their testimony and to otherwise conceal evidence.
Now, Mueller urged the judge, Amy Berman Jackson, to promptly hold a hearing to decide whether or not Manafort should remain out on bail and or if he should be what's called remanded and start serving jail time now pending trial so he can't communicate with people.
Now, seems straightforward.
If you trust Mueller, I don't.
So Bernie Carrick, Bernard Carrick, who was the former police commissioner of New York City, I know Bernie Carrick.
Bernie Carrick did his own time in federal prison.
Many people feel unjustly because he was tapped back after 9-11.
He was the police commissioner on 9-11 prior to that of NYPD.
Prior to that, he'd been the New York City Corrections Commissioner.
He ran the jails.
And when he was being considered for Homeland Security Secretary during his background check, certain things pop up that he might have had unscrupulous dealings with contractors and they unfairly gave him free work on his home due to his role as police commissioner in New York City.
That was one of these sets of charges.
But many people feel that Carrick was railroaded, that did not rise to criminality.
So Carrick tweeted for those about this.
He took a quote tweet of a Fox News report on the story I just read you from Thompson Reuters that Mueller is claiming Manafort witness tampered.
And Bernie Carrick wrote on Twitter, for those ignorant of DOJ tactics, this maneuver is to scare to death any Manafort friends or supporters that would think of assisting in his defense and mentally torture him with solitary confinement in order to force him to take a plea and cooperate.
Hashtag prosecutorial misconduct.
Now, that's a pretty heavy allegation level against Mueller, but it seems to make sense.
No one said that Manafort isn't allowed to communicate with people while he's out on bail.
No one said Manafort can't speak to people that he formerly worked with.
That's not a condition of your bail.
I've got a friend who I've mentioned and they were subsequently, they won on appeal during Obama's war on wealth.
They were an older couple who did very well on Wall Street.
They were both sentenced to federal prison for a couple of years, minor, minor, minor white-collar crime issues.
An appeals court looked at the way the government acted.
It was one of the most scathing rebukes.
I've ever seen against the government from a federal appeals court in both vacating and overturning their convictions, dismissing the charges with prejudice, and essentially saying to the government, as a federal court, we're embarrassed at how you acted in this case to essentially seize millions of dollars of these people's assets for what amounted to a clerical error on one form related to a $150,000 financial transaction.
In this case with my friends, the government claimed they were one of the elements.
One day I'll do the whole case.
Their lawyers are almost ready to have them come on air with me because it's so egregious.
In one case, they claimed that a company they were investing into and that the investors in their fund were investing into didn't exist, that it was a Ponzi scheme.
This company made a certain type of hardware.
My friend's attorneys showed a video of the factory, showed a video of the pieces of hardware on shelves at stores.
It showed that the company not only existed, that people were employed there, that they made these items, that these items were shipped to big box retailers, that they existed, the company was profitable.
The investors, by the way, the investors were saying, we love this company.
We're making money with this company.
We've been to the factory.
We see the products at our local hardware store.
We have no problem with this.
We've gotten our dividend checks, wanted out of the investment.
We got out of the investment.
The government didn't care.
They maintained this.
Even that judge in the trial laughed at the government and essentially told the jury to disregard that entire charge and that entire line of questioning.
So I've seen the government act very unscrupulously.
I kid you not.
The government claimed a company didn't exist that had a factory, was making items, and those items were on store shelves.
And like I said, as soon as these friends of mine can go on camera, their lawyers are about to let them.
They said about two months.
I'm going to do a couple of shows with them and they can walk you through exactly how they were treated by the Obama Department of Justice.
It was an absolute travesty.
And for no other reason than I believe, they were very wealthy, very conservative.
They were big money Republican donors and very charitable to PACs that fought Hillary and Obama and to veterans causes.
Very, very conservative people, very religious people.
And the Obama Justice Department went after them as if they were members of the cartel.
It was one of the most tragic, disgusting cases I've ever seen as retribution against conservatives.
And the overturn of their conviction on appeal proves the government never should have gone after them in the first place.
That's a whole other story.
But it ties into what Bernie Carrick is saying here.
Again, for those ignorant of DOJ Taxis tactics, this maneuver is to scare to death any Manafort friends or supporters that would think of assisting in his defense and mentally torture him with solitary confinement in order to force him to take a plea cooperate.
And why it makes sense?
Well, Manafort reached out to some old colleagues.
Now, the reason I brought up my friends is that while they were out on bail, they could talk to whoever they wanted.
I would go to their house all the time.
They would throw parties.
They would have loads of friends over their house, knowing they were going to federal prison.
Thank God it all worked out for them.
There's a rule that says you can't speak to people you formerly worked with, that you're friends with.
So it does appear that what Mueller is doing is trying to tell everybody who knows Manafort, don't go near him.
He's toxic.
DOJ Taxis Tactics00:10:07
He's kryptonite.
Because if he calls you, even to say, hey, wish your wife a happy birthday, we might see it as witness tampering and you're going to be in trouble as well.
So you isolate Manafort, right?
You kill all of his supporters.
You terrorize and terrify anybody that might come into court to testify on his behalf.
Then you ask the judge to pull his bail, like Kerrick says.
And when he gets to prison, you put him in.
Mueller and Weissman are bad guys.
They probably request that he go to one of the most vile, brutal facilities where his lawyers are going to ask for administrative segregation where he's going to be locked down 23 hours a day with no contact with anybody.
And it's going to mentally mess with the guy.
And he's going and they're going to say, well, yeah, we can keep going for years.
Take a plea and do two years in a minimum security facility where you get fresh air every day.
Not the way our system is supposed to work.
And I believe that's what Mueller's doing.
I do not, I profile law enforcement.
I defend law enforcement to me.
Mueller is not law enforcement.
He's a thug who's drunk on power, abusing what appears to be an unconstitutional appointment.
That's not a cop to me.
That's not law enforcement.
So we're going to keep an eye on this one.
Now, the other big question out there in this case is, can the president pardon himself?
Well, Alan Dershowitz in an interview with Newsmax said he doesn't know because it's not something the framers of our Constitution ever considered.
And so there really isn't established case law on this.
There really is an established precedent on this.
Giuliani and some people are saying he can.
Others are saying he cannot.
Dershowitz, a guy that they tend to listen to, there are a few people I tend to listen to on legal matters.
Dershowitz is one.
But another who I give equal weight to Alan Dershowitz, Andrew McCarthy, feels a little bit differently.
So Dershowitz says, well, we don't know if the president can pardon himself.
Andrew McCarthy says in his piece at National Review yesterday, definitively, Andy says, yes, the president may pardon himself.
Andrew McCarthy said, but he shouldn't be talking about it.
McCarthy's definitive.
The headline is, yes, the president may pardon himself.
And McCarthy writes, as he often does, President Trump hijacked the news cycle with a Monday morning tweet.
This one, excuse me, observing that, quote, numerous legal scholars agree that, quote, I have the absolute right to pardon capital letters myself.
President elaborates that he has done nothing wrong and thus there is nothing to, nothing to pardon.
But one might ask, why bring it up?
And McCarthy said it's a good question.
In any event, McCarthy writes, if we must discuss the matter, then yes, the Constitution empowers the president to pardon himself.
Like any other power, the pardon power may be abused.
And if Congress finds a president self-pardon, finds a president self-pardon sufficiently abusive, it may impeach and remove the president, but that would not vitiate, it would not invalidate the pardon.
It would be impossible to prosecute the president on whichever crimes he has committed, that he pardoned himself.
Now, Andrew McCarthy wrote in a column for PJ Media last year, this, quote, the pardon question is factually premature in the sense there is no allegation or indication that the president or those close to him have committed a crime.
It is not, however, legally premature.
There need not be a formal criminal charge for a president issues a pardon.
After President Nixon resigned, President Ford pardoned him even though he had not been indicted.
President Lincoln mass pardoned Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, and President Carter mass pardoned Vietnam graft evaders.
Thus, the fact that special counsel Mueller has not and may never file criminal charges would not prevent President Trump from issuing pardons, including a pardon for himself.
Yes.
And that's McCarthy's decision.
Now, McCarthy goes on to say, for what it's worth, I believe the president and his legal team are making a strategic mistake in talking about how expansive the pardon power is.
I agree with Andrew McCarthy here.
And about how the president's control over the executive branch renders it constitutionally dubious that he can obstruct justice in the sense of impeding investigators, subordinate executive officials who answer to the president.
He says, I think I understand what they're trying to do.
They want credit for cooperating with Mueller's probe, especially given that the president prudently is declining to be interviewed by the special counsel.
So they're saying, look, quote, look how much we've done here to support this investigation and let it proceed, even though the president cannot be indicted and has sweeping power to end the probe.
But McCarthy, again, and I think very accurately notes that people aren't focused on Trump's cooperation.
They are focused on the claims of power that he calls them the extravagant claims of power.
And he goes on to say, even if those claims are well supported, they are unnecessary and they make people wary.
And I agree with that.
I like what Giuliani did.
I like what Giuliani said.
But now it's time to leave it alone.
You said it.
You've stuck your nose in Mueller's face.
You've thumbed your nose at him.
We get it now.
Now, poking the bear is going to prolong Mueller's investigation.
And now I'm thinking, not through my defense of the administration lens, but through the midterm lens.
We don't need Muell dripping, slow leaking, damning information on Republicans and on the administration in the midterms.
But McCarthy's piece, you know, really, I haven't read anybody that has been as prolific on this issue as Andy McCarthy.
One of the others who's done a great job at analyzing the overarching situation is Byron York.
But in terms of the legal analysis of the Mueller investigation, the FBI's misdeeds, DOJ's misdeeds, really nobody has done a better, more objective, more critical, an accurate critical analysis than Andy McCarthy over at National Review.
So McCarthy ends the piece by saying, similarly, on the facts as we understand them, Mueller has an insufficient basis to demand that the president submit the questioning.
Wow.
The special counsel does not appear to have evidence implicating Trump in a serious crime, nor can he show that to prove some criminal case.
He needs evidence that only Trump is in a position to provide.
Consequently, there is no need to get into whether, hypothetically, a prosecutor could compel a president to testify if the president were implicated in a crime and possessed evidence the prosecutor needed to prove the case.
What McCarthy's saying is the argument on the left is Trump might have information that Mueller needs to put other people in jail.
McCarthy's contention accurately is can't look at it like that.
The government needs to show that they know that Trump definitively has that information.
It can't be a phishing expedition.
They haven't shown that Trump has that info.
They haven't even shown that there's somebody particular they're looking at that Trump could shed light on.
Again, a big phishing expedition.
The government cannot compel the president to testify in a phishing expedition.
Therefore, Mueller has no grounds to compel any testimony from Trump.
Verbal, over the phone, via Skype, written, sitting in person, none.
And I think the president of the United States is making the exact right decision by ignoring Mueller's demands, by refusing to testify.
What's Mueller going to do?
He's going to get in a showdown with the president of the United States, whose popularity is hanging around 50%.
It's probably high in the high 60s, but around 50% because of 95% news coverage.
He's going to go after a president who sees unemployment at record lows of 3.8% and black unemployment at a record low of 5.9%.
Down from 6.6%, down nearly a full point, 0.7% in only a month.
In only a month, he's going to go after that president.
He's going to go after the president that's making our economy soar.
The president that's got North Korea begging for a meeting, the president that took out ISIS, the president that's neutralizing Iran, the president that has Bashar al-Assad and Syria terrified, the president who's making a dent in illegal immigration.
He's going to really want to show down with this.
I don't think so.
I don't think Mueller wants that.
It's one Mueller knows he can't win.
But what Mueller can do is he can slow drip out leaks to damage other Republicans in the midterm.
He does that.
And Democrats take the House and they vote to impeach Trump in the House.
He'll never be removed in the Senate.
Then Mueller is given credibility.
And in history, the history books, Mueller will get the credit for leading to the impeachment, for being the special counsel that led to the impeachment of Donald Trump.
Never mind that it was all rigged politically.
And that's what I believe Mueller wants.
He knows he has nothing criminal.
He knows he can't indict anybody.
He knows he's never going to get the president anything criminal because Trump didn't do anything wrong.
But Mueller wants his scalp in a different way, impeachment.
And if he can damage Trump and damage Republicans badly enough to give Democrats a house, Mueller gets his impeachment.
The history books say due to special counsel Robert Mueller, Donald Trump was impeached and Mueller goes down in history as one of the special counsels that got his man.
And to me, that is the most perverse, perverse perversion.
Let me call it one of the most disgraceful perversions I've ever seen of the American criminal justice system.
Encampments and Enforcement00:15:04
I often analyze criminal justice situations on the show, but one underlying problem for many, many years has been homelessness.
And we're now seeing a spike in the levels of homelessness in cities.
Residents in areas that have traditionally been liberal, residents that have been in support of homeless encampments are now doing a 180 and pushing back against them.
I had my own experience with a homeless encampment in Fort Lauderdale, where I live.
Joining me is Ben Mattis.
Ben is a law enforcement expert.
He's an analyst.
You've seen him on the show before, retired local and federal law enforcement.
And he's been studying this issue.
Ben, you and I were talking about this off air.
You sent me three news items of many.
It was very interesting because yesterday I was talking a little bit about mass exoduses from cities like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area when they polled residents up in the Bay Area as to why they wanted to leave.
And the interesting thing was 46% of residents wanted to leave the Bay Area.
Of those, around 75%, I forget if it was 74 or 76%, 75% wanted to leave California entirely.
The top three reasons were housing, cost of living, and homelessness crime.
So this is a top three issue, and we're seeing it manifest in many cities.
In your home city of Philadelphia, you sent me a story from WPBI, mass eviction at Kensington homeless encampments.
So basically, you've got these encampments of homeless.
They're living in tents.
I'll talk about what I saw in Quart Lauderdale.
It blew me away.
And now the city, now the residents in this very blue city are starting to say no more and asking the police to remove these encampments.
Is that what's going on?
Well, the truth is, John, good morning.
The homeless situation in Philadelphia has metastasized like a cancer since the opioid crisis and the epidemic has risen.
Heroin has always been an issue in neighborhoods that are traditionally called the Riba Wards, which is Kensington, Port Richmond, Judiana, Harrogate.
And the problem there is, you know, as the suburban opioid epidemic rose, people who had to switch from OxyContin and prescription drugs to street heroin, the mayor and the police commissioner and the recently elected district attorney have kind of let the crime associated with addiction go the way of, well, we don't believe in criminalizing addiction.
And the problem with that is when you decriminalize addiction, you ignore the crimes of the drug dealers who are supplying them.
And then what happens is you have a destination for homeless people.
What I'm saying is that the big push to publicly decriminalize addiction has almost become a statement of permission to the secondary crimes committed by addicts and dealers.
Right.
Like a lot of the other national talking points we're seeing right now, there's been this push to kind of combine homeless, the homeless problem with the addiction problem.
And we need to separate the homelessness issue in America with these illicit encampments that are really infringing on everyone's right to live in a law-abiding neighborhood.
We have taxpayers in a city that have seen their sixth annual tax increase, which is the problem if you look at the West Coast because their cost of living rises astronomically to the point where there are no million dollar, you know, under million dollar homes in places like Seattle.
Hold on, that's a good place to transition to Seattle.
So we've seen these reports on the exorbitant prices of homes in the Seattle area due to companies like Microsoft and big tech firms there.
Tiny little dilapidated houses going for 800,000, a million bucks.
Seattle is a very, very liberal place.
Another story you and I discussed offline from King 5, KING 5 in Seattle area.
Seattle Tiny Village Plan gets pushed back from neighbors in South Lake Union.
And essentially, this South Lake Union neighborhood in the city of Seattle was about to build a homeless village to address the problem.
It would be city-owned property.
It called for 54 new tiny homes to be built at the site.
But residents, these very liberal residents, ones that probably would excoriate a Republican for taking action on the homeless, are saying things like, I will not feel safe walking my dog at night.
Quote, we came into Seattle in 2016.
It was getting cold at the time, said a homeless person.
The homeless guy, Leo, says it saves lives.
The residents, these affluent Democrats, these affluent liberals, are saying, but we won't feel safe.
Hypocrisy at its finest, but what do you do?
If you're not going to let the city build a village to put the homeless somewhere and you don't want them to live in tents, where do they go?
What do you do here?
What's the public safety and public health solution?
Yeah, and what happened was we've allowed, because of the lack of checks and balances in these cities that are so far blue that they have literally no one watching them and they have no voter checks and balances because it's 80, 90% Democrat, is we've created a true disservice to the addicts and the homeless by leaving them in the street.
And we're investing in these encampments versus investing in bed space, treatments, you know, hospitals.
Isn't that what Seattle was doing?
Seattle was going to build those tiny modular homes where they would get these people off the street, correct?
Seattle was going to basically put container and temporary shelter housing under the I-5 and the I-405 and the West Seattle Bridge, which is exactly what Philadelphia and Los Angeles have done.
If you look at Los Angeles, they were just creating a homeless encampment with hard walls and roofs.
It was no different than a tent.
It was just more waterproof.
It wasn't an actual solution.
They weren't regulating it the way, if you look at our alma mater, New York City, you know, the Department of Homeless Services has very clear regulations as to how to operate a shelter.
And they have numerous large, low-income shelter buildings run by places like West Hab throughout the city.
All right, so let's go to the crime.
Let's go to the crime element of this.
So the proponents of homeless encampments, the anarchists, the Uber libertarians, the ones who say everybody should be able to put up a tent and live wherever they want.
And there's no crime.
Don't equate homelessness with crime.
The common sense normals, people like you and I, people that work the street, know that there is a direct correlation.
Even if we could only say anecdotally, because the left-wing academics refuse to study it formally, we know there's a correlation of homelessness and crime.
So what are some of the crimes these cities are seeing?
What are these red.
This woman is there, she won't feel safe walking her dog at night.
As much as I think she's probably a hypocritical liberal, I've got to agree with her, Ben.
What kinds of crimes are we seeing coming out of these homeless encampments?
We have problems here under the train trestles because they use it for shelter.
Basically, where you've ever seen the show The Wire?
We have Hamsterdam in Philly right now.
And instead of it being one street, we're talking about 20 streets.
So you have open-air heroin use, open-air heroin dealing, people going to the bathroom in the street.
We have a public health crisis because there's no wastewater treatment in these areas.
We have prostitution.
We have robbery.
We have rape.
Actually, the rape has soared in these encampments since they've started.
So you have a situation where there are part one and regular felonies and those who want to decriminalize homelessness because back in like the Giuliani era, we used to, you know, take people off the street for aggressive panhandling.
That isn't the problem here anymore.
When you let them stay on the street, they have to find a way to eat and buy their heroin and survive.
And that often leads to ancillary crimes, which are making it completely unlivable for the taxpayer.
And in addition to all those violent crimes, those personal crimes you just spoke of, I'm sure the burglaries, the vehicle break-ins, the vandalisms, the criminal mischiefs, those have to be off the charts, no?
Off the charts.
So very common thing that I'll see literally when I leave the house in an hour is, you know, there are the people who steal the shopping carts.
We have a 95 construction project.
It's a multi-billion dollar rebuild I-95 in Philadelphia, and they're picking it clean daily.
And I'm not talking about scrap metal.
I'm talking about brand new rebar, construction equipment, tools.
They break in, they rob it clean.
The construction company builds PennDOT the next morning, and it's like this ever-ending cycle that's delaying the construction and costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
Wow.
Wow.
But what's being done?
Are we seeing positive solutions?
So I'll tell you how shocked I was.
So I live in Fort Lauderdale, right?
Vacation destination.
You've been down.
We've gone out in that you were down here with your wife.
So you think of Fort Lauderdale, you think of a really nice city.
It's a newer city.
Our main drag, Los Olas, is booming, great restaurants.
So I had to go down about seven, eight blocks off of that main Los Os drag, but a few blocks right off of Broward Boulevard and another main drag that on the east side has multi-million dollar homes.
Where City Hall is located.
So exactly where you know the city, where City Hall is located.
I had to go to the supervisor of elections office for a segment I was doing.
I needed to pull some voter files for research.
I parked my car on one side of City Hall.
Fine, a couple of little pizzerias there, you know, lunch spots for people that are working.
I walked up the steps onto a park, a city-owned park near the big library.
And when I got up on about the third step, I honestly thought there was a concert or something.
People were sleeping out for tickets.
Now, I don't go down to that part of the city.
I only live about two miles from it, but I usually stop about half a mile short where the restaurants and bars are.
I never go down to the Civic Center.
I was shocked.
God, for a city the size of Fort Lauderdale, geographically large, but by population, it's not a New York, it's not a Philadelphia, it's not a 500,000, right?
200,000 people in the city limits proper.
Wow.
I mean, hundreds and hundreds of homeless tents.
I was blown away by the level of density in this homeless encampment.
Now, I walk through the park.
I don't care.
I'm always armed, former street cop, whatever.
But I could understand why that college student, that mom who just wanted to take her kid into that park with a stroller, would never go anywhere near it.
Now they can't use these city services because I was watching the drug dealing.
I was watching the heroin addicts with the rubber on their arms kind of falling off the wall.
I was watching these guys with the gang tats that were thugs.
And I mean, this is not a crowd of only.
I'm sure within there are people that are down on their luck and in an unfortunate situation.
A lot of people in this crowd are there for exactly what you say because of crime, because of drug activity.
And the city of Fort Lauderdale didn't even have so much as a rookie cop walking by.
It's as if they're ignoring it.
They don't want to know what's there.
It's gone even worse in a lot of cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
Oh, especially Seattle.
I talked to the former guild president, the PBA president there all the time, where is the situation is they're being told not to enforce this.
The political leaders of the city have basically combined homelessness and addiction into a less help them model versus less enforcement model, which I understand is empathetic and you want to help people who are in need, but you're not helping them.
You're allowing them to continue a cycle of addiction and mental health issues that are making the matter a lot worse.
Yeah, and let me say one thing for the audience as well.
I didn't walk, the things I saw, I wasn't walking through there at 11.30 p.m. on a Saturday night.
This was the middle.
It was like 2.30 in the afternoon on a weekday.
I think the Soup of Elections closes at 4 p.m.
I was in there long before close.
We're talking the middle of a weekday afternoon, bright sunlight, South Florida.
You might as well have been in Tompkins Square Park in New York City in 1980.
Well, John, we have a real problem here because kids walk to school.
You know, there are like three Catholic schools and four public schools within walking distance of any one of these given encampments in Kensington where the kids have no choice because they have to cross under a train trestle to walk through this open-air drug market, which is dangerous, where rapes occur.
Terrible.
So what do you do?
What's the solution?
And well, let me back up.
Is it a policing solution?
Is it a political solution?
Is it a medical solution?
All of the above, I would imagine.
Right.
What is it?
What do you do?
What is the solution?
Because I'll tell you, Fort Lauderdale, right?
We don't have a big PD.
We're a pretty comfortable city financially.
I mean, every city has its problems, but got a strong enough tax base, a lot of high net worth people living in Fort Lauderdale on the east side.
What does a city do?
You can't devote all your cops to this problem.
Well, cops in places like New York, LA, and Philadelphia would kill to have Fort Lauderdale's troubles because Fort Lauderdale could literally process a prisoner or refer them to a hospital within 45 minutes and be back on the street.
Very true.
Whereas the average processing time in a city like Philly is three hours.
So we have a situation right now where obviously we need to ramp up enforcement.
Stop telling the cops to get hands off because wherever homeless addicts and mental patients are, ancillary crime like drug dealing is occurring.
We need to get in there and intervene.
Not to cut you off, Ben.
So you're saying, and I agree with you wholeheartedly if you are, we need to go back to what Giuliani did in 1994, a broken windows policing strategy.
Take care of the little things.
The big things will follow.
So that's point one, right?
So you go back to the enforcement, obviously, but you do it with a unique twist, which is every single dollar being spent, whether it's non-profit money, public money, you know, public health money, needs to be diverted from making these encampments nicer for people to live on the street and put it into bed space.
We have no attic bed space, and we need to fine-tune the rules of engagement that are given for people, i.e., we're paying a lot of money to give people Narcan so that they could wake up a drug addict so they can go back out and score more.
Man, I was talking about this, Ben, yesterday for two hours with somebody in media, how the cops don't even want Narcan anymore for that exact reason.
They're administering it, they're showing back up an hour later for the same person.
I know paramedics here in Philadelphia that have given people Narcan twice in a shift because what you do is it's like giving a drunk a cup of coffee.
You're waking them up.
They've ruined their high.
They go out to score more dope and then they overdose because the other dope is still in their system.
So why are we spending all this money to train people and give people Narcan versus putting that money into the actual long-term treatment plans like Phoenix House in New York in Harlem, which have been proven to have the 60-70% success rate versus the 10-15% success rate involved with giving someone a 48-hour detox and sending them back in the paper before they started.
What are they doing?
Long-Term Treatment Solutions00:03:31
So you get them into a facility like that.
There's bed space, hypothetically, perfect world, bed space.
They go through the detox.
They get more comprehensive treatment.
What do you do with them after they're finished there?
Because they're not.
So a long-term treatment plan is you got your detox, your 48 hours, you've hit bottom.
Then you have your traditional 12-step recovery facility, 28 days.
Then you have what's called a long-term treatment house where you're basically in a group home like someone on parole.
You live there, you pay rent there.
So it's zeroed out as far as cost, public funding.
And you basically are monitored and you have groups and you have 12-step meetings.
And they assure you get enough time between you and the street so that you don't end up going back out.
Okay, now, Ben, I like that solution.
So when you talk about criminalizing addiction, you're really not talking about it in the traditional sense.
You're essentially saying this is more of a, rather than saying criminalized, this is more of a strong civil commitment situation to try to get these people off drugs and keep them off.
You're not talking about just throwing them into prison.
Yeah, it's a civil and criminal combined solution.
So if you look at the platforms of Beth Grossman, who lost to Larry Krasner, Beth Grossman's platform.
No, wait, we're talking about, because the audience won't be familiar, we're talking about the Philadelphia district attorney's race, correct?
Yes, the controversial one where the attorney of Black Lives Matter and Occupy won the district attorney race.
His platform basically is stop criminalizing minor things.
We're not going to arrest them or charge them in the first place, which leaves them on the street versus someone who's pro-enforcement who says, look, there needs to be some kind of scheduled intervention in the first place.
So how do we intervene with them and then divert them into something that makes them better versus just kicking them out to Rikers or Holmesburg prison?
No, it looks like it makes sense to me because all that jail is crime school.
I always remember that scene in the Johnny Depp movie Blow when he says that when he went to federal prison, it was crime school.
Yeah, for weed.
Yeah, he spent his days teaching guys how to smuggle, right?
And then there's drugs coming in there.
It's whatever you need.
So I love the solution.
It makes perfect sense what you're proposing.
What's the likelihood we'll ever see anything like it around the United States?
Because these cities have a major, major problem right now.
Surprisingly, you started seeing it in places like New York first.
So there are some baby steps being taking place.
You're going to see it in southern states first because they've already streamlined their criminal justice processing.
I think there can be a private side.
I think there's money in it.
I think if groups like Geo and some of the larger private contract groups start looking at treatment wings of their correctional facilities, it can be a positive ROI versus simply correctional facilities, people still, because they're getting drugs in the jail.
So they're still addicted.
They're just coming out more hard and credible.
Hey, look, it'll probably be for the big private prison contractors, GO and some others, it'd probably be a hell of a lot more lucrative as well than just providing bed space and sales.
Right.
Well, you're also getting into a root cause of Fort Lauderdale's problem.
So why is Fort Lauderdale such a destination for homeless addicts right now?
Because there's a lot of treatment facilities, private ones located in South Philly, of South Philly, South Florida.
They go to South Florida, they fail out of the treatment facility.
And instead of going back home because there's no return ticket, they just get kicked out.
Very true.
And they wind up on the street here.
That is very, very true.
Maxine Waters' Vulnerability00:08:36
Ben, absolutely.
This is, I think, one of the most informative segments and solution-based segments I've done in a really, really long time.
Ben Manis retired.
Well, Ben has held a few law enforcement jobs.
Retired street cop, retired federal cop, but has been a really prolific law enforcement analyst, issue analyst.
Ben, as always, my friend, thanks a million.
John, it's great talking to you.
If you're not part of the problem, you're part of the solution.
Exactly right.
All right.
Have a good one now.
Take care.
care now.
Once a week, I'm going to do a story that makes me really happy to do because we talk about such serious stuff here on the show.
We always talk about these really important topics.
I really love doing all of them.
I'm super interested in the content I bring you.
And I'm glad you're super interested in it.
And you watch the show.
Thanks a million.
It makes the show what it is.
That's why I do it every day.
But I get to bring stories to you that make me happy.
And every week, I'm going to start doing at least one.
I'm going to do more.
I'm going to do at least one.
So the first one for this week, it's only Tuesday, is from our good friend Kyle Olson over at the American Mirror, entitled, Woke.
Maxine Waters plays to empty seats.
Yep, Maxine Waters held a campaign rally and no one came.
Maxine Waters plays to empty seats as only 10 millennials go up to the campaign event.
Kyle writes, Maxine Waters likes to say millennials love her, but if her own campaign event is any indication, that might be more rhetoric than reality.
79-year-old Auntie Maxine held a meet and greet tweet-a-thon on Sunday for two hours.
And while it's hard to know what she hoped the outcome would be, but the turnout seemed to be underwhelming.
Now, there's a flyer here in the article.
You able to see the graphic.
Please join us for the Anthe Maxine meet and greet tweet-a-thon.
So, apparently, this event was aimed at millennials.
And in Maxine Waters' world, one of her delusional staffers really thought this would be a good idea.
Come join top social media influencers for a tweet-a-thon in support of Auntie Maxine, our fearless champion in Congress, who taught us how to reclaim our time.
We are coming together to amplify Congresswoman Waters' voice and highlight her many achievements throughout her career.
Millennials come energized and ready to get out the vote on June 5th.
Oh, they're voting today as the primary by the way, for Maxine Waters.
And this was held on Sunday.
So, Maxine Waters in this primary runoff today.
And it's just incredible.
So, this video of the event on Maxine Waters' website, like 10 people showed up.
And Maxine Waters used the event to allow attendees to gripe about what they think is wrong with America.
He said, when you come here, you always have an open mic.
You can say whatever you want to say.
Waters told the crowd, oh, they probably didn't need a mic.
There were 10 people there.
They just all kind of stood in a circle and they could have aired their grievances.
It was like that episode of Seinfeld when they had the Festivus poll.
And we came for the Festivus was their holiday, if you don't remember.
And then one of the things you do on Festivus is the airing of the grievances.
It said the camera showed, the pieces, the camera showed empty tables, likely intended to be filled with fans of the liberal darling.
He said, we're going to take back the house.
Pro-Trump forces think they're going to take me out.
She said, I ain't going.
When 10 people show up, I don't think you're taking back the house.
Now, a Republican who's running against Maxine Waters, Omar Navarro.
I've spoken to Omar.
He's a nice guy.
Can he beat her?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Maxine Waters has institutional support and money in that area.
Omar is a young guy.
He's trying his best.
I've spoken to him on the phone several times.
He's an affable enough, likable enough guy.
He's from the area.
He's a Latin guy, Latino, sharp guy.
He seems to know what he's doing.
He's gathering grassroots support.
And if anybody can mount the challenge, it's Omar.
And quite frankly, I think I like him on a personal level.
We've engaged a couple of times.
I think he's a good guy.
I think his heart's in the right place.
And I think he's an infinitely, infinitely better choice than Maxine Waters.
He'd probably do a very good job for the residents.
So I hope Omar can win.
I just don't have high hopes for these institutionally blue California districts.
But Maxine Waters didn't miss an opportunity to use racial identity politics to attack Omar Navarro.
She said, quote, he has a last name that is Latin.
He's Cuban.
And what a lot of our people don't understand is that he supports the president building a wall.
He's opposed to DACA.
He does not support DACA.
And in addition to that, he is not worried at all, has not said a word about what is happening at the border.
And the so-called, what they call it, jungle primary, an open primary in California is today, June 5th.
It's going to be very interesting to see how that shakes out.
But what's even more interesting is that Maxine Waters is concerned enough about Omar Navarro to actually engage him and campaign against him.
In the past, she's really run unopposed.
She's never had a semi-formidable challenge.
And now the district makeup has changed quite a bit.
That district has historically been primarily African-American, but not long ago, it changed and has a much larger Hispanic population, which works very well in Omar Navarro's favor.
Maxime Waters, not just because of the name.
That's not why.
Maxime Waters' alliance with people like Farrakhan doesn't go over well with Hispanics and Latinos because they're very Christian.
They're Catholic.
They do not like radical Muslims like Farrakhan.
That alone will hurt her.
And it's a message that I'll give Navarro credit.
Navarro has been using very, very effectively.
He's been tying, he understands, it's his community.
He understands that these people are Christian, primarily Catholic.
And the Hispanic Latino community, very religious community for the most part.
I talked to Omar.
I asked him what it was like in that part of California.
Very religious.
And when he ties her to Farrakhan, he gets some of his investment engagement.
Now, anecdotally, yes, I look at it on social media because I really, you know, I've done segments on Maxine Waters.
I want to see this woman out of Congress.
But you do notice that people, especially Hispanics, Latinos from his district, do engage him on Twitter.
And when he posts things about, or for Facebook, when he posts things about Maxine Waters' friendship and alliances with and the port of Farrakhan attending Farrakhan rallies, refusing to denounce Farrakhan, the Catholic, primarily Catholic, Hispanic, and Latinos in that district, they do not like that.
they do not like.
Like that is a deal breaker for them with Maxine Waters, even the ones who have been Democrat voters.
And so I think Maxine Waters has a tougher fight on her hand than she ever anticipated.
10 millennials showing up at her event.
Now, Navarro is a younger guy, late 20s, early 30s, really young guy.
He's got a big millennial following, got a lot of grassroots support.
He's raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, not a tremendous amount of money for a congressional race, but far more than anyone else has raised against.
And he's had big names go out for him.
Roger Stone, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, General Michael Flynn.
They've all gone out and campaigned on behalf of Navarro.
And so Waters is starting to see a challenge from Trump world like she's never seen.
And it's got her concerned.
10 millennials showing up spells doom.
Her alliance with Farrakhan spells doom.
In any other district than a normal place in the country, I'd say Maxine Waters is doomed today.
But it's California.
It's a deep blue district and entrenched Democratic political machine.
And so while I like that she has to campaign, I'm not going to sit here and say I have tremendously high hopes that she can be unseated.
But I'm not writing it off either.
I think if there was ever a time when Maxine Waters was vulnerable and could lose the House, it's going into the November midterms.
And we're going to see just how much support.
We're going to look at turnout today in that district.
If turnout is low in that district and Navarro keeps his grassroots machine going as it is, he has a really, really outstanding shot of beating Maxine Waters in November.
So keep an eye on this California primary.
But again, only 10 people, 10 millennials, showed up at this Maxine Waters event.