Minneapolis’s City Council pledged to dismantle policing after George Floyd’s death, with members like Lisa Bender framing 911 response as "white privilege," while Mayor Jacob Frey and Toronto’s Black police chief Mark Saunders knelt in protest—raising questions about neutrality. A Morning Consult poll showed 71% of Americans, including 42% of African Americans, oppose defunding, yet progressive leaders like Ilhan Omar push radical policies tied to corporate-backed activism. Cities like Detroit and NYC saw crime drops from aggressive policing, now reversed, risking surges that disproportionately harm minorities. The episode warns: depolicing could fuel violence, economic decline, and racial backlash, exposing a dangerous shift in priorities ahead of the 2024 elections. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I take you through the crazy footage of the weekend.
Riots, bowing down to rioters, defunding police.
We got it all.
Just incredible.
You know, there's some really good clips.
I invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber because that gives you the video version of this podcast.
I just want to show you some of the, there's this struggle session where the mayor of Minneapolis bends the knee to Black Lives Matter, but it's not enough and it's such a powerful, powerful video.
Please consider becoming a Rebel News Plus subscriber.
It's eight bucks a month or 80 bucks a year.
And you get all the videos of these podcasts and you get videos from Sheila Gunnreid and David Menzies too.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, do you think police should physically bow down to anyone?
It's June 8th and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government government just because it's my bloody right to do so.
Did you see this image the other day?
It's from Toronto.
It's Toronto's black police chief, Mark Saunders, bending the knee, submitting at a Black Lives Matter protest, and there are white activists holding their fists up, white activists making the black power fist salute.
So a successful black man, the man in charge of policing for Canada's biggest city, Canada's blackest city, he's being shamed and degraded by, amongst others, some white leftists, and he's doing it.
Black Power Salute00:10:19
He's actually doing it.
Well, that's nothing.
Saunders was at least upright.
But look at this guy.
He's the police chief of the second largest city in all of New England called Worcester.
His face is on the ground.
His hands are behind his back.
What on earth is he doing?
What would make him do that?
And for what?
How do you feel about a policeman doing that?
What compelled him to do that?
Whatever it was, would it stop him from enforcing the law, that same power?
Would it make him act less than neutrally?
He's wearing the uniform of the city.
He's a representative of the city.
This isn't him doing something weird in his private life.
He's a symbol of the city.
He's a symbol of the city's authority.
So he's not just denigrating and belittling himself.
He's denigrating and belittling everything he's a part of.
The city, its police force, its election officials who oversee the police, the people of Worcester who rely on him to impartially uphold the law and protect them.
The law itself.
Have you in your entire life ever seen anyone just lie down face down like that who wasn't bowing down to God?
I've seen deep bowing from religious people of various stripes when they're talking to their gods.
I've seen Muslims, Jews, Christians, each in their own way and their own manner bow, but nothing like this.
And to whom?
And for what?
Who's he bowing to?
It looks like what Mao Zedong called a struggle session during the Cultural Revolution in China.
Millions murdered, but that wasn't the salient feature.
It was the denunciation, the self-denunciation that really told the tale.
Look at this.
Someone, a capitalist, a professor with the wrong ideas, a personal rival of some communist local boss, wearing a huge dunce cap with his crimes written on them.
He's covered in blood.
He's obviously being beaten.
He's being jeered and denounced by the mob.
And here's a man who in a show trial just wouldn't go along with it.
He refused to take a knee, so to speak.
He kept professing his innocence at a communist show trial, so they literally stuffed a cloth in his mouth to shut him up.
These are from a staggering book called Red China News Soldier.
Photos taken by a Chinese army photographer in the 60s of the mass purge of anyone, everyone, for wrongthink in China.
Boy, that girl looks a little bit like Alexandria Oquesio-Cortez with a Greta Thunberg scowl.
Oh, by the way, you can denounce yourself to save your life, but you will not be forgiven.
You will not spare yourself anything more than maybe just your life itself.
Do you want to see a struggle session in color TV, not just black and white?
Look at this.
First, a reminder of who we're dealing with.
This young hipster, Jacob Fry, who bears a resemblance to Justin Trudeau.
He's the mayor of Minneapolis where the riots began.
Here he is responding to Donald Trump's obvious and accurate tweet that night that Fry is weak.
Of course he's weak.
He's the one who ordered the police to surrender, including to surrender their police station.
Weakness is refusing to take responsibility for your own actions.
Weakness is pointing your finger at somebody else during a time of crisis.
Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis.
We are strong as hell.
Is this a difficult time period?
Yes, but you better be damn sure that we're going to get through this.
The danger became necessary, and I made the decision to evacuate the third priest.
Yeah, so pretty much doing whatever the rioting mob wanted him to do.
This is Fry trying to act cool and hip, sort of like Trudeau in a way.
He's dancing here with Black Lives Matter activists, I think.
I think that's who those are.
So he's showing that he really gets black people.
You might think that's condescending.
You might think that black people have similar concerns to white people and brown people and red people and green people and that simply dancing with them for five minutes is not a substitute to a grown-up conversation.
But you would be forgetting that our own prime minister is precisely the same way.
Here's Jacob Fry crying at George Floyd's funeral.
Gee, I wonder if he knows he's on camera.
Have you cried that way for anyone other than perhaps your own mother or father or spouse or perhaps, God forbid, a child?
If you express this emotion for a stranger who was in fact a criminal himself, though he surely didn't deserve to be killed, you're false by definition.
You cannot care this much about a stranger.
You cannot.
And if you do, your feelings are worthless and fake, and nothing you say or do can ever be taken at face value again.
Again, I think he and Trudeau went to the same drama class.
Oh, and here's Trudeau taking a knee.
He's been hiding in his house for two months, won't go to work, won't go to parliament, won't have a proper press conference or question period.
Says it's because of the pandemic, social distancing, all that.
But there he is, and he always knows where the camera is, doesn't he?
And he always waits for it, and then he takes a knee.
What exactly is Trudeau taking a knee for?
Is it to stand up to Trump, as the shouters there said, or is it something in Canada he's apologizing for?
If so, what is he apologizing for?
And what does it mean?
He's been prime minister for five years.
All I can think of that he's done on race relations is call a lot of people racist all the time.
He spent a lot of money on the missing and murdered Indigenous women's report, but that's just money going to lawyers and lobbies.
He didn't actually do anything.
He wore blackface so many times he couldn't remember how many.
Oh, and he fired Canada's first Indigenous justice minister, that too.
So what exactly is he taking a knee for other than doing whatever the mob tells him to do, just like the media is doing whatever the mob tells them to do?
There haven't been riots in Canada, thank God.
There was some looting in Montreal the other day, but I think most Canadians are pretty happy with how we get along with each other.
Sure, there are some anti-Trump crackpots, but I just don't think that they've been weaponized in Canada yet.
Sure, why.
Maybe Trudeau would worry that could actually cost him re-election.
I doubt it.
Have you seen any conservative politicians speak out strongly against these riots and looting?
Yeah, me neither.
In fact, all I've seen in Stockwell Day get fired from the CBC and various lobbying jobs because he was insufficiently reverential towards Black Lives Matter.
And they're trying to fire Rex Murphy from the National Post, too.
So yeah, Trudeau doesn't have to worry about any law and order or racial equality candidate on the right, does he?
There are none.
But here's how it's going for Jacob Fry down in Minneapolis.
The one who ordered the police to surrender and abandon their post, the one who does the awkward dancing.
He was summoned to a struggle session and he was asked, get this, if he would abolish the police.
I'm serious.
I'm deadly serious.
And he's crazy, this Jacob Fry, but he's only about 90% crazy.
He's not 100% crazy.
And so watch this.
My own shortcomings, and I know there needs to be deep-seated structure in terms of how the department operates.
The systemic eraser system needs to be revamped.
The police union needs to be put in its place.
We need to make sure that everything from the union contract to the way that the arbitration functions officers.
Thank you for- Vista!
Jacob Fry, we have a yes or no question for you.
Yes or no, will you commit to defunding Minneapolis Police Department?
Yes or no?
What did I say?
We don't want no more police.
We don't want people with guns toting around in our community.
He's a yesterday.
He is a yesterday.
All right, be quiet, y'all.
Be quiet, because it's important that we actually hear this.
It's important that we hear this because if y'all don't know, he's up for re-election next year.
If y'all don't know, he's up for re-election next year.
And if he says no, guess what the fuck we're going to do next year?
That's a struggle session.
Not sure if you heard him.
He said he wasn't for the total abolition of the police, just cutting it down to size and humiliating it.
That wasn't enough, though.
Go home, Jacob.
Go home.
Well, the rest of Minneapolis's city council saw that, and they didn't need to be asked twice.
They didn't need to step under the guillotine.
So here's a story in the New York Times.
Majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledges to dismantle the police department.
Nine members, a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledged on Sunday to dismantle the city's police department, promising to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism.
Saying that the city's current policing system could not be reformed, the council members stood before hundreds of people who gathered late in the day on a grassy hill and signed a pledge to begin the process of taking apart the police department as it now exists.
Pledge to Dismantle Police00:15:05
So that's how lawmaking goes in burnt-out, riot-stricken Minneapolis.
Once a jewel of the Midwest.
Just mobs on the street abolishing police.
Yeah, that'll work.
Rich liberals like the idea because they live in white suburbs or live in gated communities, or if they're in New York, they have a doorman in their apartment.
They don't live in the ghetto.
I mean, if you were a cop and you received a 911 call in a rough part of Minneapolis today, would you really go in to help?
Knowing that you'd probably be videotaped and screamed at at the very least and possibly assaulted, even murdered.
Here's a black retired cop, David Dorn, who was murdered in the riots in St. Louis by a black looter, as it so happens.
Would you go in and answer a 911 call if it was dangerous?
Why?
Here's New York's Bill de Blasio announcing a cut in New York's police budget to punish the police.
He's going to give the money to social workers and youth workers instead.
So that's who you call, I guess, if you have a bank robbery or a mugging.
Call a social worker.
300 NYPD cops were injured in the riots.
Would you keep working for de Blasio?
In the UK, they had massive protests over the weekend, too, which is odd.
In the entire United Kingdom last year, a country of more than 65 million people, there were a total of two unarmed black men who were killed at the hands of police, and one of them was a terrorist.
So that's not good, but that's not a crisis.
In fact, if there is a racial crisis, it's that Pakistani Muslim men commit more than 80% of the child rapes against indigenous white girls, thousands and thousands of them.
Not really a Black Lives Matter situation, more of a white girls' lives matter situation, but no protest for them.
But big protests for George Floyd in the UK.
Or was it Floyd George?
They don't really know.
They just know they want to riot for black rights, they say, against fascism, they say.
You know, right outside Britain's Parliament is a big square.
There's a statue of Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator, the U.S. president who freed the slaves, who put America into the bloodiest war of its history over the slavery issue.
And they defaced his statue.
And who actually defeated fascism?
Actually defeated literally Hitler?
Well, it was Winston Churchill.
And look at how his statue was desecrated.
And listen to the police.
No, you got fans and fans.
I'm sorry.
No.
Don't tell us.
We haven't seen into it.
You know we haven't.
It's disgusting.
It's been dead.
It's been time.
It's the over.
So why are you not gardening it now?
We have problems.
We're officially shocked.
Sharpie all the football action.
Well, Will.
Get boys around that guard.
Fucking that's disgusting.
So what's this about?
This isn't about black rights.
It's not about anti-fascism.
It's about terrorism.
That's what political violence is.
And there are different ways to react to terrorism.
The way of the coward is to bend the knee, to submit, to surrender, like Jacob Fry.
Bow down low to the mob.
Of course, it's never low enough.
It's not enough.
They take what you give for free.
And then that's the new front line.
That's a new starting point.
You can hide and hope it doesn't happen to you.
That's a rational approach.
Move out of Minneapolis.
I mean, seriously, if you can, poor black people won't be able to leave, of course, but others will.
Move to somewhere else, not just to live, but businesses do.
You said black lives matter.
I said, I worked here hard time.
Plus, I'm a former owner of this store.
You said black lives matter.
Why don't you choke me?
I'm black.
Tell them, sister.
Look what you did to my store.
Tell them, sister.
Look!
Look what you did to my store.
Tell them, sister, that's like because I got their back.
These are my nues right here.
Good night.
These things you've done.
Good name.
Look, the Black Lives Matter.
We've been here all night cleaning up.
All night tweeting.
And you've got black people down right here with them.
But tell me, I said, Black Lives Matter.
You lied.
You wanted to loot on the store.
You needed money.
Get a job like I do.
Why would you invest your life savings in a small corner shop when it'll get looted or burnt one day?
Why bother?
But let me leave you with some good news.
I'm serious.
I have some good news.
And it's in the form of a large public opinion poll.
It asks ordinary Americans, not the media, not politicians, not people on Twitter, ordinary Americans, what they think the response to these riots should be.
It asked blacks and whites, Republicans and Democrats.
And let me tell you what they said.
And this was a week old.
So this was a week ago before this weekend's insanity of defunding or abolishing police.
Sample size over 1,600.
Reputable pollster called Morning Consult.
Look at this question.
Would you support or oppose cities taking the following measures to address protests and demonstrations in dozens of U.S. cities in response to the death of George Floyd?
Calling in the National Guard to supplement city police forces.
Now you'll notice they didn't use the words looting or riots, just protests.
But still, 42% of Americans strongly support the National Guard.
Another 29% somewhat support it.
That's 71%, 71%.
Look at this.
African Americans.
42% support it.
63% of Hillary Clinton voters.
65% of those who voted Democrat in the 2018 midterm elections.
People want not just police, they want the National Guard.
And I say again, the question didn't even have the word riot or loot in it.
Americans don't want defunding of police.
They want safety and security.
They want an end to this madness, the struggle sessions, the cowardice, the madness of the French Revolution and its guillotines.
Here's another one.
Calling in the U.S. military to supplement city police.
That's pretty heavy duty.
58% of Americans actually support bringing in the full-out military.
Not just the National Guard, but the actual Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, including 37% of African Americans.
Yeah, don't believe the media.
Don't believe the drama teachers Jacob Fry and Justin Trudeau.
Don't bow down to anyone other than your God.
And if you're a Canadian monarchist, bow to the Queen as our head of state.
But don't bow to the mob.
Never, never, ever.
Stay with us for more.
Well, the riots started in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a place that I always thought was pretty friendly.
It reminded me of an American version of friendly Manitoba.
It's not too far away from Winnipeg, actually.
Well, what went wrong in that city?
And I was reminded that Minneapolis, Minnesota, that is where Ilhan Omar is from.
And then I started to think, well, hang on, like so many of these riot zones, looting zones, places where racism is in the air, they say, haven't they all been run by Democrats for decades or even generations?
Look at all the cities wracked by riots from Washington, D.C. to Chicago to L.A. to Manhattan, Minneapolis, Detroit, even in the past.
They're all Democrat cities.
So who exactly are they blaming?
Well, joining us now to talk about all these things, including Ilhan Omar, is our friend Ben Weingarten, who wrote the book, American Ingrate, the best biography out there about Ilhan Omar.
Ben, great to see again.
Welcome back to the show.
Thanks so much for having me, Ezra.
I want to start with a crazy question.
And I just, you're the only person who I trust to answer it.
I had a shocking wave crash over me when I saw Jacob Frye, the hapless mayor of Minneapolis, basically come bust when he went down to the struggle session in the streets.
And he couldn't go 100% of the way to crazy and say, yes, I'll abolish the police.
And they shouted, shame, shame, go home, Jacob, go home.
That was an incredible moment.
And I thought, who's going to be the next mayor?
And I thought, I wonder if Ilhan Omar will be the next mayor of Minneapolis.
What do you think?
That's an interesting question.
I think if I'm looking at this from a purely political perspective, it just so happens that Keith Ellison, the attorney general who had previously served in Ilhan Omar's seat in Congress, his son serves on the Minneapolis City Council.
His son is one of those who actually tweeted in support of Antifa before it was designated as a terrorist organization and who was, of course, a supporter of this effort to defund and actually disband the police in Minneapolis.
So I suspect that Keith Ellison's son is probably more woke than Ilhan Omar and maybe he's the man for this moment in Minneapolis.
But I have to say, I was so struck by that scene of the mayor prostrating himself.
Even he couldn't get extreme enough for the mob.
And I think what you're seeing is essentially a Marxian mob eating its own.
The progressives have been in control of cities like Minneapolis for decades, and it's still not progressive enough for them.
And so even someone like Jacob Fry, who comes off as so earnest and wanting to express how sorrowful he is and trying to meet the demands of the mob, even he learned the lesson that you can never concede enough to the mob.
They want it all.
They want total power.
So it's a lesson for those who think of themselves as liberals or progressives that you'll never get radical enough for the mob.
But I don't think many of them will take that lesson to heart.
Yeah, it's incredible.
I thought that this defund police or abolish police was just a shock and awe statement, a conversation starter.
But it looks like, at least in some ways, they're serious about it.
Now I see that same idea has spread here to Toronto, where we have a city councilor for one of the wealthier neighborhoods where people pay a lot of taxes and they have a lot of valuable houses they wouldn't want torched.
He's talking about trimming back Toronto's police, even though we haven't had anywhere near the problems they've had in various American cities.
Can these people be serious about depolicing?
I've seen so many comments about turning Minneapolis into Mogadishu, Somalia.
It's almost too ridiculous to be true.
But aren't we moving towards anarchy if we actually disband police forces?
Well, it's actually amazing on that last point.
There was an article in the New York Times profiling several Somali Americans, some of whom lived in Minneapolis, saying that they didn't think Minneapolis could actually turn out like Mogadishu, but it actually has.
And again, you have to ask the question, how did that happen when you had these progressives running Minneapolis for all of these many decades?
I think that the notion of disbanding police, I'm glad actually that the radical Marxist revolutionaries who are really behind this sort of view, I'm glad they're on record because they're exposing themselves for who they really are.
And look, if you follow their line of thinking and you accept the proposition that criminals are essentially the core victims and their victimizers, the police, are really the criminals, then of course you have to disband police departments.
By the way, it flows from the same viewpoint as the notion of abolish ICE.
They want to abolish all authorities essentially that maintain law and order, at least as traditionally understood, so they can impose their own law on anyone who dares dissent from their prevailing orthodoxy.
And one of the things that's really ironic in this, I would say, is that if we were to accept that systemic racism were policies and practices that ultimately led to disproportionate victimization of people of color, the idea of defunding police departments or getting rid of police, in particular from the highest crime areas of cities with large members of minorities, well, you are going to disproportionately victimize people of color.
So I have to ask, what is systemically racist?
I think this policy is systemically racist.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think that, I mean, Ann Coulter, who is very aggressive on these subjects, she tweeted there's going to be white flight from these cities in a way we haven't seen in decades.
And I think not just white flight, but any black people of means will want to get the heck out of these neighborhoods that are being depoliced and basically thrown to the wolves of anarchy.
Joe Pollack, who I respect very much, has said that he believes this will set back not only the economic prosperity of many black American cities by decades, but I also think it'll set back race relations because it has so branded rioting and looting as a black thing.
And not necessarily because it's black people doing it, but it's called a Black Lives Matter protest.
It's in the name of George Floyd.
So I don't know.
I think this is the worst of all outcomes for African Americans.
That's how it looks like from up here in Canada.
I don't know what it looks like in the States.
I wholeheartedly agree.
And my heart in particular goes out to all the people who are law-abiding that are caught up in this, many of whom have been locked down for weeks, some of whom have seen loved ones perish without being able to say goodbye in person.
On the contrary, on the other hand, you have people who are the most lawless in society destroying businesses that have sat idle for weeks, some of which have gone under, and they get to act with total impunity.
And there have been some great profiles out there in a few different publications speaking with people who own businesses in any of these areas that have been destroyed essentially by the mob, by rioters and looters.
And it's just heartbreaking because you see people who pursued the American dream, did everything right.
And then law enforcement basically was forced to stand down or maybe in some cases stood down its own accord, understandably, given the circumstances, but nevertheless, in contravention of the fundamental principle of law and order and the fact that you need to have protection of life, liberty, and property if you're going to have a functioning society.
Imagining a World Without Law and Order00:10:33
It's really the basis of the American system.
Absolutely.
Those who are going to be most hurt are the law-abiding people who live in the areas that are going to be hollowed out, destroyed, and left defenseless.
And by the way, of course, many of the American cities with the greatest crime problems also have the harshest strictures on gun ownership.
So, not only are you going to have less policing or maybe no policing in certain cities, but then if you're living in a high-crime neighborhood and you can't afford to get out of it, you're not going to be able to defend yourself from the lawless anarchy that you described.
So, it's absolutely disastrous, and it's just really puts civilization into question itself.
If you don't have law and order and people aren't able to defend themselves, and then you're going to victimize the people that, if you're on the left, you claim to care about most.
You claim to care about those who are living in the poorest neighborhoods, in high-crime neighborhoods, and the like.
You really are proving that you don't believe at all in your principles.
You just believe in the revolution at the end of the day.
I saw, pardon me, I saw a poll last week, sample-sized about 1600 morning call consult, I think was the polling company, that showed 71% of Americans supported the National Guard being deployed in support of local police.
Now, this was a week ago, and things have gotten, I think, worse in the last week, including a majority of Democrats and a large number of African Americans.
I find this hopeful because it suggests that the anarchy-lawless mania has not infected, to use the word, everybody.
And I think those numbers are probably tougher now.
Instead of tacking back towards the rule of law, this move further down the road to defund and abolish police sounds nuts politically, but who knows?
Maybe it'll pay off.
Look at this interview.
Here's a clip from CNN where a city councilor in Minneapolis says, Yeah, we absolutely do mean it when we say remove policing because the idea of police being available on 911 to make you feel secure-that's white privilege.
And we all have to imagine what it's like to be terrified.
Take a look at this.
Do you understand that the word dismantle or police-free also makes some people nervous?
For instance, what if in the middle of the night my home is broken into?
Who do I call?
Yes, I mean, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors.
And I know, and myself too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.
Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.
That's Lisa Bender, the top city councilor in Minneapolis.
It looks like they have a veto-proof majority.
She's saying that that feeling of security that we have, that the police are out there, they're on our side, they're a 911 call away, that's white privilege, and we should imagine what it's like without that.
But she doesn't want to just imagine she wants to go there, Ben.
She wants to make us all insecure.
This is some sort of racial rebalancing or something.
What she is effectively saying is that it prioritizes politically correct principles over preservation.
In other words, she's social.
And if that is really the way that she feels, then I suggest that she move to the highest crime neighborhood in Minneapolis after there are no police, not hired any private security force, not have a firearm to defend herself.
And then let's see if she still really clings to that perspective.
And I think that particular line of argumentation is something that really has to be posed to all the people who are on the side of reduced policing is, okay, if that's what you believe, then you move to a neighborhood that doesn't have police and leave yourself defenseless.
And then let's see how you feel about it.
Yeah, it's crazy.
Now, there are some people crazy enough to do that.
We've all heard these anecdotal stories of, you know, someone who, you know, women who want to bicycle or hitchhike around the world, including the most dangerous parts of, you know, the stands to prove that it's safe.
And then they, God forbid, they get attacked, killed, raped.
There are some people who are so naive and reckless that they wind up killing themselves.
But this woman wants to do it to the whole city, a great, mighty city of Minneapolis.
It's possible, though.
I mean, Detroit used to be the motor city, used to have the highest wage in America.
It was the jobs magnet, the factory magnet, and now it's a burnt out husk.
I think they are destroying a great city in real time.
It makes me extremely sad, but how can anything come back from this?
I don't see it.
Yeah, bad ideas have bad consequences.
And I see it in New York.
I grew up in the New York area.
I've lived in New York for over a decade since being in college and graduating from college.
And what I can say is that New York didn't become this bastion of security and prosperity by magic.
It was a disaster of a city in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s.
And it had to be cleaned up during the 90s precisely because there was, for example, broken windows policing where the police department did not let minor infractions go unnoticed and corrected them immediately.
And those policies and many other policies as well led New York to become, I believe, the safest big city in America, certainly, and probably one of the safest in the world.
And we're seeing in New York right now that we are heading in a regressive direction under the banner of progressivism under what I like to call, who I like to call Mayor DiCameo, but Mayor de Blasio.
And what you're going to see is as the police, even if there is no defunding or disbanding of police, and many of these cities have pledged to at a minimum defund, including New York City, regardless, police are absolutely going to back off relative to the way they were policing before.
Consequently, you're going to see a rise in crime.
As you noted, you're going to see anyone with means that wants to be secure and can't hire a private security force or hold a gun themselves get out of the city, which is going to further erode the tax base of the city and lead the worst neighborhoods to crumble even further.
So again, it's the law-abiding citizens, many of them defenseless, who are going to be most hurt by this.
And I think you're going to see it around the country if this trend continues.
And consequently, you're going to see ironically even greater so-called inequality in this case of outcomes in that the suburbs to which people who can afford it will flee will have their own private security if they need it and probably be policed just fine regardless.
And the highest crime neighborhoods will descend into further violence, chaos, and anti-social behavior.
So it's really a disaster.
And again, proves the hypocrisy and the irony, really, of these people who claim to care about justice who are going to, in effect, lead to the perpetration of even further injustice against the people, again, who they claim to most care about.
Yeah, you know, I know a few years ago when there were the Black Lives Matter riots under Obama, those cities that came down the hardest on their own police that indicated they don't like the police, well, the police listened.
And what policeman would risk going into a dangerous neighborhood in a dangerous situation where at best he would be shouted at and filmed on videotape for any real or perceived moment of indiscretion.
And at worst, he would get in physical danger.
Why even bother?
And I think, I mean, you saw a crime boom because the cops said, oh, they don't want us.
Fine, feelings mutual.
And you can't even blame a cop when the entire chain of command from the top down is anti-cop.
I'm surprised that there is still police working in Minneapolis, giving how defamatory their own city council is towards them.
I don't know.
I find it deeply sad.
And the thing is, this vicious cycle you've described, it only strengthens the hand of the Ilhan Omars and the radicals like her.
That's what's sad about it.
The worse it gets, the better for an Ilhan Omar.
It's absolutely right.
And this is the world that she and her ilk want us to live in at the end of the day.
And this is why I wrote that book, American Ingrate Ilhan Omar and the Progressive Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party.
Because it's leading Democrats, it is the woke executives in hundreds of leading corporations in the country who are at minimum standing by and at least cheering on in part what we're seeing in the streets today.
And in some cases, are going much further than that.
So when you have kind of the elite cadre of society pushing down and seeking to impose this on us, it is ultimately going to lead to calamity.
I am heartened like you are by the polls that show that this is really kind of out of line with where the American people broadly are.
And I think it illustrates this chasm that we've seen play itself out in any number of policy contexts in recent years of the fact that what the elite believe to be mainstream is actually radical.
And what they believe is radical is actually mainstream among broad cross-sections of society.
But again, I wholeheartedly agree with you.
We've really taken for granted, in particular in America, the fact that over the last three or four decades, violent crime has dramatically fallen.
And again, that didn't happen by magic.
That happened as a result of conscious policies that really did result in positive results in terms of more peace and more prosperity on our streets.
And I think we're seeing in real time the reversal of that with disastrous consequences for millions of Americans of all colors and creeds.
Well, I tell you, we're five months away from the presidential elections.
I can't think of higher stakes than we're in.
Ben Weingartner, the Federalists, great to see you again.
Once again, let me mention Ben's book, the best book on Ilhan Omar, rather prophetic and a great title.
I just can't get over that.
It sums her up so perfectly.
American Ingrate.
Higher Stakes Ahead00:01:11
And you can get that at the Amazon link under this video.
Ben, great to see you.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks so much for having me, Arza.
All right, there you have it.
Go ahead and pick up that book at amazon.ca.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue Friday about racists getting mad at Rex Murphy for saying Canada isn't racist.
John writes, perhaps Van Mella Subramanium would like to debate Rex Live.
Now, that's something I'd love to see.
Yeah, me too.
I don't think Van Mella would be up for it, really.
Billy writes, I hope the leftist media banishes Rex and he comes to Rebel News.
He'll always have a voice with those who believe in freedom of speech and thought.
Yeah, I wonder how long National Post will keep him.
I hope they do, but boy, there's a mob out there.
On my interview with Terra Fada, Paul writes, great to hear from Tarek.
I have had to take action on the hair front as well.
Would far rather deal with India than communist China.