Former Commissioner of the NYPD Bernard Kerik, author of The Grave Above the Grave, reminder he was Commissioner of the city of New York during 9-11, and Former Lt. Commander of the NYPD Counterterrorism Unit and Sgt. Demetrick Pennie, 21 year veteran of the Dallas Police, President of the Dallas, Texas National Fallen Officer Foundation and now a U.S. Congressional Candidate in Texas CD30, talk about the calls around the nation to defund the police. This current climate of hostility between police and the public they serve is only further intensified by the shooting of Raynard Brooks in Atlanta this past weekend. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
800-941-Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
You know, I said this the other night, ending the program on Friday night to Laura Ingrow.
I said, yeah, well, my heart's troubled again.
I've been saying that a lot instead of what, you know, would usually be said, let not your heart be troubled and believe in me.
And I believe all of that with all my heart.
And I got to tell you, it's troubled.
I just, I am like, oh, what is happening to this country?
If you love America and you're watching all this and you think of all that we've been through, it's only June 15th, but we have 141 days.
We have, I think, the single biggest, most important, pivotal, you know, the future of America on the line election.
And look at what we've been through just from January straight on through, and it just gets worse every single solitary day.
The worst pandemic in over 100 years.
You see, you know, you learn from things.
You see some good things.
You see some horrible things.
You learn what we did right.
You learn what we did wrong.
You're seeing resurgences now that we've got to pay very close attention to.
I've always said it's not if, it's when and it's going to happen.
And how we deal with that part of it is crucial.
And I think we've learned a lot of lessons to do a lot better with it.
And the country now struggling to reopen, people craving it.
Then, of course, you know, leading into what happened with George Floyd, which never ever should have happened, which shocked the conscience of a nation.
Then, of course, leading to rioting, looting, arson, a number of dead police officers.
The cop in Vegas, by the way, looks like he's paralyzed for life.
You know, so many others of Americans killed in the process, many hundreds others injured, 800 cops injured, rocks and bottles and Molotov cocktails and bricks thrown at the cops.
And then we have precincts being burnt to the ground, looting, arson, rioting.
And yeah, people make a good point that there are peaceful protesters.
And amongst them, you have the agitators.
And there are a lot of them, though, too.
And that's sad.
And those that want to march for the right reasons, I'm not bundling them in with the anarchists.
But then you go to Minneapolis, defund the police, and the city council that has a veto-proof majority to now get rid of the police department.
And they're serious.
You know, then we go to Seattle and the autonomous zone or the free love zone or the summer of love.
And we're going to have street parties.
And we're going to have, you know, it's like one big block party going on all throughout.
I never thought that we would have entire city blocks, including a police precinct taken over by anarchists and the mayor seemingly siding with it all out in Seattle and the governor totally impotent and incompetent to deal with any of it.
And then you look at all of the offers of help of the president.
Let me help you.
Let me help you.
You have to ask for the help, but I want to help you.
I want to help you.
And the same in New York and the same in Illinois.
And, you know, a lot of things then start bubbling to the surface.
And, you know, we start wanting to look deeper and deeper and deeper into the causal effects and socioeconomics and the fact that there are some bad cops, but it's not the majority of them.
It's not even 98, 8% of them, I would argue, are good people.
I know a lot of cops.
Everybody that's a cop, everybody I know that's a teacher, everybody I know that's a fireman, everyone that I know is a paramedic.
Most people that go into medicine, they go in because it's their calling.
It is their passion for life.
And they do it knowing there's a pretty, you know, there's a limit.
They're not going to get rich doing any of those jobs.
But it is a calling to protect and to serve.
And they know that they're putting their lives at risk every time that they put on that uniform.
And they do it anyway.
And because that's our line of defense against the fact that there is evil and there are bad people.
You know, the human condition is what the human condition is.
We've all sinned and we've all fallen short.
All.
I'll start with me there.
And I'm just saying that, you know, we are better than this.
We can be better than this.
We can become a more perfect union.
It's not a, I don't say this lightly when I quote the recently deceased Perry Farber when he said, there's never been a history, a country in the history of mankind that has accumulated more power and abused it less.
Didn't say we're a perfect country.
We're not.
And what we want to become, the beauty of our framers and our founders, is a more perfect union.
We make strides to become a more perfect union.
And I always add that there's never been a country in the history of mankind that has accumulated more power and used it to advance the human condition than this one.
And it's all because of liberty.
It's all because of freedom.
It's all because we believe that every human being is born with talent from God.
Again, we're endowed by our creator with rights, not with government giving us rights, that our creator gave us these rights.
And then you look at, you know, well, okay, we can factor in decades and decades of Democratic Party governance in blue states all across the country.
And you see, you know, systemic failure everywhere.
I mean, again, I didn't look today, but if I went and I googled how many were shot in Chicago, I'm sure I wouldn't be shocked.
And nobody does a thing, lifts a finger.
We have a duty to protect our American family.
We don't do it.
You know, you have school systems in big cities.
We spend more per capita than any other industrialized country on the face of the earth with the worst results.
Third highest spending city for per capita per student per year is Baltimore.
But they have 13 public schools where not one American child is proficient in math.
How do you fail?
And then, but even worse, how do you not step in and try to fix it?
Why?
Because you have this unholy alliance with teachers' unions and the Democratic Party.
Now we get to then this weekend.
We all watched, and I watched and I've studied this video again and again and again.
Let's start with the facts.
Let's start with, so the police get a call from a Wendy's in Atlanta, and Rayshard Brooks is asleep in his car in the drive-through lane.
Police are called.
They show up.
Police officer knocks on the window.
No response.
Knocks on the window.
No response.
Opens the door.
Takes a while.
We finally get a response.
You can see Rayshard at that moment just waking up, obviously.
He's confused.
And here's that encounter.
So the reason why we're here is because somebody called 911 because you were asleep behind the wheel while you're in the drive-thru, right?
Do you recall that?
I don't.
I don't.
You don't recall that?
You don't recall just minutes ago where you were passed out behind the wheel in the drive-thru?
You don't recall that at all?
Absolutely.
Just complete blur.
I wasn't driving.
Like I said, I just say my girlfriend, she probably was sleeping, but like I said, I said, Bay, I want a freak fry.
So far as I'm aware, you're the only person that's been seen in this vehicle, right?
Yeah, only person.
You've been in the driver's seat the whole time.
So how did the car get into the drive-through line?
With you behind the wheel.
She drove here.
I said, babe, I'm drinking in a black car.
In a black ball.
And you got into your car.
I said, hey, you know what?
No problem.
I'll just meet you at the hotel.
All right.
That was the initial encounter.
Now, the first thing I want you to observe in all of this, up until the moment when the officers, They offered a breath test, he agreed to the breath test.
You know, what I notice on both sides is courtesy and respect.
Courtesy and respect by the police officers.
Rayshard Brooks, courtesy and respect from him.
Here is when he was patted down by the police.
I don't have anything on me.
Is it okay if I pat you down just make sure?
I have just money, gas, and that was it.
Is it okay if I pat you down to make sure you got any weapons?
Absolutely.
Can you just turn around and face away from me real quick?
What is this?
It's just a bunch of money in your pocket?
Some more wallet.
What's all this?
How much money do you have in your pocket?
I mean, maybe a half or a couple hundred bucks.
Okay.
Like a bunch of wants and stuff here.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Just walk over here with me, please.
This is when you're trying to pass the sky.
Yes, yes.
I do remember.
You can see the side, right?
Absolutely.
I just came to get something.
You mind just putting your phone on the truck of your car.
I don't want you having it in your hand.
All right.
And then there was a moment, too.
All right.
So the officer says, can you please park the car over here?
And, you know, I guess he had an out-of-state license.
Okay, what are you doing here?
Well, my mom had passed away about a year and a half ago.
He goes, oh, I'm so sorry to hear it.
I mean, friendly.
It was professional.
Rayshard Brooks was courteous, even calling the cops by their last names.
It was mutual.
It would seem like routine, very neutral.
Now, the police officer, the second officer on the scene, asks if he could take a breathalyzer test, and it's completely up to you.
Listen.
Will you take a preliminary breath test for me?
Is it yes or no?
I don't want to refuse anything.
It's yes or no?
It's completely up to you.
Yes, I will.
Okay, just wait here while I grab.
Oh, man, man.
So trying to make sure, man, you're staying to drive.
That's all.
I know, man.
I just.
scared me a little bit because you were sleeping in there so that's you know why I was making sure you're okay you know and that's I know I know You just doing your job.
He gave a number of different answers as it relates to, first it was top shelf.
What does top shelf mean?
Then he said, I only had one drink, then it was a drink and a half, and it was margaritas.
And then I don't know what I had to drink.
So, you know, things were off.
Officer said he smelled alcohol in the car.
Obviously, between maybe drinking, getting up, waking up, you know, he became more lucid as the engagement went on.
But again, professional.
Till we get to this moment.
Now, by the way, if you have young kids in the car, you may not want to listen.
Give you a warning.
This is when this is when everything up until that moment to me, from what I seen, and I've watched it a lot, was the police professional doing their jobs, being respectful, and Rayshard Brooks being respectful.
Okay, as he said, we just want to make sure you're safe to drive.
You know, we don't have anybody get hurt.
The police don't have any choice here.
He's over the limit.
That means you don't just get to take the keys and throw them in the bushes and ignore it.
Here is when he struggles with the police.
All right.
I really don't understand.
All right.
I think you've had too much to drink to be driving.
Put your hands on your back for me.
Put your hands on your butt.
Stop fighting.
You're going to get tased.
You're going to get tased.
Stop.
You're going to get tased.
Mr. Rod.
Hands off the taser.
Hands off the taser.
Stop fighting.
From there again up to that moment, it was fine.
It was the moment of they tried to put cuffs on.
Then everything changed.
And I think probably even to the surprise of the cops, Rayshard Brooks initiates a battle with them.
You can hear the cops saying, stop fighting.
Fops damage.
You got to get tased.
You got to get tased.
Then hands off the taser.
That's what it sounded like to me.
Stop fighting.
Stop fighting.
Ends up fighting the two cops.
I saw two instances where he seemed to hit the cops, one each, grabs the taser and starts running.
We'll pick it up from the other side where that goes from there.
Just, it did not have to happen this way.
It's so sad.
A DUI is not the worst thing in the world.
Let's be honest.
It's not good.
Can't have people drunk because then innocent people can get killed.
All right, Clint, you're with us 25 till the top of the hour, 800-941 Sean.
You want to be a part of the program today.
So it leads us to four specific parts with the police in Atlanta and Rayshard Brooks, the initial encounter, being patted down, taking the breathalyzer test, the conversations that go back and forth about, well, I'm here.
My mom passed away, going to her gravesite, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Listen, we just got to make sure you're okay to drive.
We're worried about everybody's safety.
And I know why, you know, you got to do your job.
I totally understand it.
And polite, professional on both ends.
And then we get into the situation where we get to this moment.
And I digress for a second here because, you know, cops, the TV show after 32 years has been canceled.
And Live PD, very highly rated show on cable, has also been canceled.
You know, at the moment when the two police officers in Atlanta begin to put the handcuffs on Rayshard Brooks, you know, up to that moment, everything is fine, and then all hell breaks loose.
And one of the things that as I watch this video over and over again, I think to myself, as I'm watching this, up to that second, it's okay.
And he's going to be probably taken into custody.
I don't know.
I never gotten a DUI, but I assume that it's pretty much a bench warrant.
Somebody comes, picks you up.
You get a ticket.
You have to get a date to show up.
You go home.
And not a great thing.
Nobody wants to go through that, I'm sure.
But it's a job that has to be done.
We know the devastation of, you know, mothers against drunk driving.
We've learned in the day and age of Uber, and, you know, it's just too easy now not to have these accidents.
You pay the money for the Uber.
You go out, you get your sandwich, whatever you want to get.
You had a couple of drinks.
Okay, nobody cares.
I don't care how much you drink.
That's up to you.
But courteous, professional on all sides.
And then it becomes, okay, stop fighting, stop fighting.
You're going to get tased.
You're going to get tased.
Hands off my taser.
Stop fighting.
Stop fighting.
And then the ensuing hits.
I didn't see that they were big, big hits, but both officers getting hit, out-wrestled.
There was a moment.
I don't want to go back to my martial arts point because everyone gets annoyed with that.
But there's a moment that I thought police had an opportunity to gain control and didn't.
As I watch it over and over again and slowly, and it's easy to say, you know, after the conflict happens, he grabs the taser.
He starts running down the parking lot in pursuit of the two officers.
The DUI officer has his taser out.
Then Rayshard Brooks turns around, fires the taser that he took off one of the cops, and then is shot twice.
And he's no longer with us today.
And that's the sad part to me because none of this should have happened.
It is a human life.
Now we get into the question of, all right, well, you know, who is at fault here?
Because the Atlanta police now have, they have gone forward.
They announced that Officer Garrett Rolfe, he's the one that fired the shots, veteran department.
He was the DUI officer, hired in October 2013.
He's been fired.
The other cop, who was the initial cop on the scene, seemed to have a good rapport with Rayshard Brooks.
He's been placed on administrative duty.
He was called to the Wendy's, failed to field sobriety test, resisted arrest, and during the struggle, grabbed the taser and ran.
Now, I can get into the technicalities of the law because we've been researching it all.
And I know that everybody thinks this might be, oh, this is a slam dunk case, et cetera.
I don't know.
If you look at the law, a lot of it's going to depend on, for example, how they categorize or characterize legally what a taser is and whether or not, you know, what was the police officer thinking if the guy turns around, which he did in Rayshard Brooks and shoots the taser back at the cops.
But as for the written law, it says he or she reasonably believes an employee, meaning a cop, can use deadly force to apprehend a suspected felon only when, and by the way, if you take the taser at that point now, you are a suspected felon.
One, he or she reasonably believes that the suspect possesses a deadly weapon or an object, a device or instrument, which used offensively against a person is likely or actually does result in serious bodily injury when he or she reasonably believes that the suspect poses an immediate threat of serious bodily injury to the officer or to others,
or two, when there is probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, and the employee reasonably believes that the suspect's escape would create a continuing danger of serious physical harm to any person.
That's what the law says.
You know, I walk away with this and, you know, it was a lot of people when I came out immediately after seeing the seven minute, 55 second video of George Floyd.
I'm just, I wrote, I just kept saying, you have no idea.
This is a death sentence.
This never should have happened.
You can't keep your knee on somebody's neck with their head into the pavement like that and expect any other result than what happened to George Floyd.
Most of my life on radio and TV, I often tell the story about, well, how did I learn not to rush to judgment?
How do I learn, how do I always end up being right when so many others do rush to judgment?
And that's because we don't rush to judgment.
And I learned that in the Richard Jewell case.
And I was on the air in Atlanta as a local host.
And the AJC comes out with, well, he fits the profile of the lone bomber because he lives with his mother.
And he was a security guard.
Originally, he was hailed as a hero because he cleared out the area when he saw a suspected package or backpack just laying there.
Turns out he was right.
And by pushing people away, he probably saved a lot of lives that day.
And I'm like, okay, just because the guy lives with his mother doesn't mean he fits the profile of a domestic terrorist.
What are you talking about?
In the end, he did not.
He did not do this.
Lynn Wood, his attorney, who's also representing Nicholas Sandman, swears to this day that Richard Jewell died at 44 because of the devastation and the stress and the pressure.
He was overweight and all those other factors existed.
But that was certainly a contributing cause in his death.
And he's explained that on this program numerous times.
And then I say, well, okay, how does everyone get hands up, don't shoot?
How did I get that right?
And everybody else got that wrong in the media.
Well, one of the reasons is I do my due diligence and I talked to police on the ground that were there that already knew that there were numerous people that would testify that just happened to be because, again, identity politics came into play in that case that said it was exactly how Officer Darren Wilson described it.
African-American witnesses saying, yeah, he was being charged at by Michael Brown, told him to stop, stop, stop.
He didn't stop.
The initial shot was fired in the car when Michael Brown reached into the car.
That's what the evidence showed.
That's what the testimony ended up showing.
I knew in the Zimmerman-Trayvon case, and I would say I wish George Zimmerman would have just called the police, but that there was an eyewitness that was going to identify Trayvon on top of George Zimmerman at the moment when this became deadly, you know, saying he was pounding his head into the ground.
That testimony would impact the case.
I knew that from the very beginning.
If you look at, for example, Freddie Gray, there was just a consensus that, oh, this was a slam-dunk case and the six officers there were going to end up, you know, all being convicted.
And I was like, none of them are going to be convicted because, again, what my sources were telling me at the time that knew a lot.
And I have a lot of friends in law enforcement.
We work sources.
In the Duke La Crosse case, I took the time and I went out to Garden City, Long Island, and I met with some of the kids and some of the family members.
And a very different tale was beginning to emerge.
And I very early on understood that in spite of, you know, just condemnation by the Duke school community, even, you know, close to 100 professors taking out an article, signing a petition in the newspaper, basically convicting these kids because, quote, they're a bunch of privileged, you know, athletes that, you know, think their blank doesn't stink.
Well, they all ended up proving their innocence.
You know, time stamp, video stamp at an ATM machine wasn't there at the time of the allegation.
Time stamp going into a dorm, not there at the time of the allegation.
And in the end, the kids had to one by one prove their innocence in that case.
And then a lot of other things came out in that allegation.
We did the same thing with UVA.
We did the same thing with Cambridge Police.
And, you know, this is a part of what I've realized in part of my work is to is to dig deeper than the average person digs here.
Now, how they define, and we'll have lawyers on this program examining this in the days to come, how they ultimately define a taser in that moment is going to be probably where legally this case ends, assuming that officer Garrett Rolfe is, in fact, indicted.
Remember, you're going to indict a ham sandwich.
But again, the one thing I would caution here is, again, if you go back to the moment where just up until the point, he's getting asked to be handcuffed because he's over the limit.
You can't let somebody drive a car drunk.
You can't.
At that point, they tried to put the handcuffs, and then the conflict was initiated.
There's no ambiguity.
This is why I like body cams.
I like vehicle cams, patroller cams, et cetera, squad car cams, whatever you want to call them, because it helps us put a more accurate picture together.
Then we have, I guess, the video from Wendy's, and that came into place.
We haven't even gotten to the idea, okay, now the Wendy's has burned to the ground.
Apparently, they've identified who the person is that started that fire in that particular case.
And on the heels, obviously, of George Floyd, the timing couldn't be worse because it's such a highly charged atmosphere in the country right now in a lot of different ways and the ensuing violence and now anarchy in some places that has taken over.
And so a lot of it's going to, if you want the law on this, a lot of it is going to come down to say that.
My first thought is, it's so sad and tragic.
I don't know, you know, number one, you can't drive drunk on the age of Uber, in my view.
You have a drink, I think two drinks is usually the limit, but don't take my word for it.
You know, buy one of those breathalyzers yourself.
You can buy them.
And you can't resist and you can't fight and you can't steal a weapon.
And you can't turn around and fire a weapon, even if it's a taser.
So I walk away with a number of things without rushing to judgment because I think everybody deserves the presumption of innocence.
And what the written law here is, it will play a big factor in what we're viewing.
And so many other people want to rush to judgment on.
Regardless of what it's going to be defined as, you know, the first question I have is, okay, if you shoot the taser once, does it have one shot or two?
Because I think there are two versions of that.
I don't know in this particular case.
I've not been able to get a definitive answer.
I've gotten mixed answers on that.
A couple of things that come to mind, and I know the president, I think this week, according to reports all over, that he is going to come out with certain reforms.
I think one of them has to be only if it's imminent danger on a chokehold, because that's the most sensitive part of the human anatomy.
I can agree with that, but if a cop's life is in danger, all bets have to be off if he thinks there's a physical confrontation and that's the only way that he can he can stop somebody from maybe killing him or her.
There has to be an understanding of the difficulty of that job.
I think, again, we get back to we need more training for these officers.
And I go back to a third point that I've been making, other non-lethal options available to the police.
I am not a big fan of that taser.
Number one, you have to be at close range.
You got the stupid wires that come flying out behind it.
And now you're going for either the taser, the taser gets taken.
Now you only have one option.
Or if you shoot the taser and you miss, you only have one option.
And I discussed in detail, you know, some of the some of the great new technology that's coming on market that I think will be ultimately an assist for police officers, non-lethal options that they will have.
Now, in terms of the neck, I think we all agree.
In terms of training, I think we all agree.
You know, add to the tools that the police have for non-lethal force.
I think that's critical.
I think the public has a role to play here.
And that is that the public has got to understand and there's got to be more communication, better communication with every community.
You know, it's upsetting that it seems like everyone wants to just say 99% of cops are horrible.
And that's just not true.
And I'll tell you other things that are going to happen.
I heard Congressman Clyburn saying, I fear the police now more than during segregation.
79% of truckers say that they're not going to deliver to cities that defund police department.
Minneapolis cops are resigning now in droves with this defunding effort.
Now the defunding effort is going nationwide.
The Seattle mayor is just allowing the anarchists to take over with their summer of love and anarchy and the autonomous zones and whatever you want to call it.
She's like, oh, yeah, the zone is a safe space for spaghetti, potlucks, and movies predicting a summer of love.
I'm like, wow, this woman is clueless out there.
I don't know what she's thinking.
You had an entire Florida City SWAT team in Hollandale Beach.
They resigned because the police chief there kneeled with the protesters.
There's been almost universal condemnation of all cops.
Well, you defund the police.
Who are you going to call?
I always go back to that one question.
And if we surrender to the anarchists, what?
Everyone knows there's no private property.
Everything's free.
And they get to build a wall and keep police out and take over their precinct.
That's not going to end well, in my view.
And, you know, the Minneapolis police, what's happening in Seattle, the president's asking to help.
They refuse any help whatsoever to restore law and order.
If we don't have law and order, then what happens from there?
Nothing good is going to come out of that.
And, you know, it just, I'm glad they had the body cam, but, you know, how is it that we're just willing to throw an entire group of people that risk their lives for not a lot of money down the stairs?
And we have absolutely no room whatsoever for, let's wait for all the facts to come in.
Let's look at the law.
This is a very scary time for this country.
And I really worry about where this is all headed for everybody's sake.
We're one country.
We're one people.
We've got to get along.
We'll continue.
All right.
Welcome back, hour to Sean Hannity's show.
Glad you're with us, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, let me play for all of you.
This is what happened in Atlanta over the weekend.
Rayshard Brooks, his initial counter with the police, him being patted down by the police, him taking a breathalyzer up to the moment.
I hear nothing but respect on both sides up until the moment they began to cuff him, having obviously been above the driving limit for alcohol and when things went bad.
But I've got to give you a listener warning.
It's hard to hear.
So the reason why we're here is because somebody called 911 because you were asleep behind the wheel while you're in the drive-thru, right?
Do you recall that?
I don't.
I don't.
You don't recall that?
You don't recall just minutes ago where you were passed out behind the wheel in the drive-thru?
Uh-oh.
You don't recall that at all?
Absolutely.
Just complete blur.
I wasn't driving.
Like I said, I just damn my girlfriend, she probably was sleeping, but like I said, I said, babe, I want a freak fry.
So far as I'm aware, you're the only person that's been seen in this vehicle, right?
Yeah.
Only person.
And you've been in the driver's seat the whole time.
So how did the car get into the drive-through line?
With you behind the wheel.
And she drove here.
I said, babe, I'm drinking in a black car.
In a black bottle bar.
And you got into your car.
I said, hey, you know what?
No problem.
I'll just meet you at the hotel.
I don't have anything on me.
Is it okay if I pat you down?
Just make sure.
If you have just money, gas, and that was it.
Is it okay if I pat you down to make sure you don't have any weapons?
Absolutely.
You just turn around and face away from me real quick.
What is this?
It's just a bunch of money in your pocket.
It's just more wilder.
What's all this?
How much money do you have in your pocket?
I mean, maybe a couple hundred bucks.
Okay.
Like a bunch of ones and stuff here.
Yeah, absolutely.
Just walk over here with me.
This is one of the things that I've got.
I do remember.
You can see the side, right?
Absolutely.
I just came to get something.
You mind just putting your phone on the truck of your car.
I don't want you to have anything in your hand.
Will you take a brilliant breath test for me?
Is it yes or no?
I don't want to refuse anything.
It's yes or no?
It's completely up to you.
Yes, I will.
Okay, just wait here while I grab.
Oh, man, man.
So just trying to make sure, man, you're safe and drive.
That's all.
I know, man.
I just.
You scared me a little bit because you were sleeping in there, so that's why I was making sure you're okay.
The thing that just stands out in this entire exchange, and I watched it so many times, like so many of you have here, is from the first moment of the encounter, all the way up to the moment the two officers tried to put handcuffs on Rayshard Brooks.
It was professional.
There was respect on all sides.
Everything that you think you'd want to hear in terms of an exchange with a police officer and a citizen.
And then all hell breaks loose, which you just heard also.
Here to help sort through all of this.
We have former commissioner of the New York Police Department, Bernie Carrick, author of The Grave Above the Grave.
Remember, he was the NYPD commissioner during 9-11, September 11, 2001, and former Lieutenant Commander of the NYPD Counterterrorism Unit, Sergeant Demetrik Penny, is with us, 20-year vet, Dallas Police, and president of the Dallas Texas National Fallen Officer Foundation.
You have a congressional candidate now in Texas District 30.
Thank you both for being with us.
Let me start with you, Sergeant.
I mean, up to that moment, did you see anything wrong on either side, be it Rayshot Brooks or the police, up to the moment when they began to cuff him?
No.
First of all, thank you so much for having me on, Handy.
But yeah, I saw this thing.
I've watched this video over and over again to try to figure out what went wrong.
And the bottom line is, these officers did everything right.
When you got to that confrontation where the individual started fighting with the officer, and when he took that officer's taser, the circumstances changed.
We were just talking a couple of days ago about George Floyd.
This is not that.
And the community needs to completely understand this is not that.
That individual, he created the deadly force in Connor.
When that taser was taken from that officer and we turned back around and pointed it at him, I think that tells a story in itself.
So I completely disagree with the position that the mayor took on terminating that officer.
I think that they need to go back and look at this whole use of force situation to determine whether or not that force was reasonable or not.
I have the exact language of what a suspected felony would be, and I'll get to that in a minute here.
So we have the confrontation.
You can hear the cops, you know, I think we're all taken off guard just watching it.
But when you hear them, you know, stop fighting, stop fighting.
You know, you're going to get tased.
You're going to get tased.
You know, stop fighting.
Then you hear that he's taking the taser.
A slight scuffle.
From my perception, I saw the two cops hit by Mr. Brooks twice.
He runs off with the taser.
As he's running, he turns around and seems to fire it.
One question I have: do you have one or two shots in that taser?
Because I thought it was only one.
Yeah, it's typically only one shot.
You got the one.
I'm not the biggest fan of it.
It's an option, but I think there's got to be other options that we give police down the road as we now are re-evaluating other non-lethal tools in a police officer's arsenal, if you will, in moments like this.
Non-lethal, meaning it will be effective, but it will also save more lives.
Based on the video that you see, do you think this shooting was justified?
I hate to really get into the mindset of the officer, but I'm going to tell you: if it's me and I'm in the field and this situation is happening in real time, and you got to think these are split-second situations.
I'm thinking about the way I've experienced it, where we've had officers to die in the line of duty because they've missed guns.
They've missed weapons, okay?
When that officer, when Mr. Brooks took off and turned around with that weapon, in that officer's mind, I'm seeing the same thing.
I'm seeing gun.
I'm seeing weapon.
And I'm thinking, pull your weapon and fire.
Now, I've heard all these arguments about why they just didn't shoot him in the leg.
You know, why did he have it?
You know, why didn't he shoot him with a ton of money?
There's no cop training that says to shoot for the leg.
Of course not.
Absolutely not.
No.
In fact, we trained to shoot cinemats.
Cinemas.
Yeah, of course.
You're shooting to stop the threat.
You're not shooting to execute or kill a person.
You're shooting to stop the threat.
And that's where this convolution of the media is kind of playing in a certain way to make it appear that there's this major problem within law enforcement where law enforcement was just killing black people.
Well, first of all, let's talk about community interaction with law enforcement.
We need to start gearing people up.
I talk about training all the time.
It's not just the officers being trained on how to use force.
It's on individuals.
It's a community understanding how force can be used.
You have to understand in what predicament you can and cannot be aggressive with an officer.
In no situation should you be aggressive with officer.
But this, this was, this was, like I said, this was not a George Floyd situation.
This guy here, he put himself in harm's way by his actions toward those officers.
The sad tragedy, again, in the moment Bernie Kerrig leading up to this, I saw the interaction between the officer and with Rayshard Brooks.
I thought the officers were professional.
It was one moment where the first cop that had asked him to park in the parking spot and get out of the lane, the drive-through lane, couldn't be more compassionate.
I mean, it was a real conversation between two human beings at that point.
They were courteous.
They were professional.
They were just, there's nothing more they could have done.
They followed the policy by the book.
You know, the confrontation itself, I got to admit, when I saw the body cam footage, I was a bit surprised at how the courteous both sides were.
And he even said, Brooks even says, I know you got to.
By the way, that might be a factor of you being from New York in the Gentile South, but that's a side note.
But he even says to the officer, I know you're just doing your job.
But the second they went to handcuff him, it changed.
Then there was the assault, the attack, the seizure of the weapon.
But I want to comment something that the sergeant said.
And look, he comes out of Dallas P.D.
It's one of the best departments in the country.
Great cops.
It's a rough town to work in.
And many, and they've lost a bunch of cops in the line of duty.
I remember my son was at one of the last funerals.
There's a point that he made about the community and what the community has to do.
And here's my problem with what's going on today, Sean.
And it refers to exactly what he said.
Why aren't the mayors and why aren't the governors in towns around the country today telling their communities, you cannot attack the police and assault the police.
It's against the law.
You cannot resist arrest.
You cannot obstruct or interfere with an arresting officer.
You can't run from the police.
You can't hit him with your car.
You can't disarm them.
Why aren't they denouncing this action?
The mayor fired this guy, threw him under the bus, crucified him in the court of public opinion without even a hearing.
And you know what?
That villainizes the cops, victimizes the thugs, when in fact they should be telling, if you're going to scream and yell about reforms with policing, well, you better be screaming and yelling at the communities where this stuff is happening, and they are completely annihilating the cops.
All right, as we continue, former commissioner of the New York Police Department, Bernie Carrick, also with us, Sergeant Demetrik Penny is with us out of Dallas.
You know, if you look at the encounter, I mean, the stories changed quite a bit.
Now, I think it took a lot to wake him up when he was, obviously, his car was in the drive-through lane.
He seemed a little disoriented, seemed to get more oriented as the encounter went on.
You know, changed the story a little bit in the beginning.
He sounded confused and kind of out of it.
And then he was specific about, I only had a drink, then it was a drink and a half, a margarita.
No, it was top shelf.
I don't know what kind of drink I had.
I mean, it really took me by surprise, you know, watching it.
It was like what you would expect in an encounter where there's respect on both sides just up until that moment.
And I get these, I look, I believe those cops were probably shocked that happened, Sergeant.
Correct.
I mean, they caught me off guard just watching it.
I mean, because that's not normal behavior.
But we do know that this individual was intoxicated at the time.
I mean, I think we, you know, we you lose a little bit of the rationale with dealing with that.
And I was fine up to, you know, it was almost like he was agreeing to, you know, he knew he had done wrong.
The officer had to had to take him to jail.
But the fight, the fight is where the circumstances change.
Like I said, we've lost entirely too many officers.
And officers are, they're trying to do the best that they can.
I mean, we're faced with, we're faced with, you know, dealing with the legal challenges on one side.
Then you're dealing with the lawlessness on the other side.
And now you have, you know, political leaders saying that we want to defund the police.
It's hard enough as it is for law enforcement to do that job.
The average response time for an officer to even show up at a call to a priority call is three to five minutes.
When right now it's taking these, it's taking officers because they don't have enough officers to be there.
Now it's taking them between 10 and 13 minutes.
We know that there's a problem.
There's a problem, but these problems are created by what's happening, these social issues that are happening in the community.
And our political leaders are not pushing back on them.
They're not saying, hey, we need law and order in our community.
We need our police officers to be protected.
Nobody's going to want to enter this profession if they think in a snap of a dime that they're going to be prosecuted for following their own training.
I got to take a break here.
Sergeant Demetrik Penny with the Dallas Police Force, president of Dallas, Texas Fallen Officer Association, now a congressional candidate in the 30th District, former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerrig, 800-941 Sean also talk about all the chaos that has been going on out in Seattle, Minneapolis, defund the police.
We got a lot more ground to cover with both of them.
We'll continue.
How long do you think Seattle in those few blocks looks like this?
I don't know.
We could have a summer of love.
Well, tell that to the police who was supposed to be in that precinct, though, but I understand your sentiment, Mayor.
We don't have to sacrifice public safety for First Amendment rights.
Both can exist, and we'll make sure that both exist in Seattle.
Behavior is very radical.
Oh, is it?
And Jamie, every time I just try to have a normal conversation with you, it just goes right to insults.
Is that against the law?
Is it against the law to insult a man in blue?
You guys get called sh ⁇ all the time.
Why we're concerned?
you get and you take down the blacks and you get video have a good day jamie I want him arrested for physical assault.
You f ⁇ , that was a videotape went viral on Twitter where cops just very nicely dealing with somebody and the person just starts screaming.
They're saying, can you please be nice?
And then they just turned around and walked away.
We're now seeing now a lot of police around the country are just saying, you know what?
This isn't worth it anymore.
We're not going to do this job.
And they're leaving in droves.
And, you know, you see now it's gotten in the world of politics.
And Clyburn, I feel the police now more than during segregation.
Truck drivers are saying they won't deliver to cities with defunded police departments.
They don't think it's safe.
The defund effort gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
The Seattle mayor is saying that this autonomous zone, the summer of love zone, the safe space for spaghetti potlucks and movies for the summer of love is just madness.
You see what's been happening all around the country in every way, shape, matter, and form.
And you see now police precincts being burned to the ground, others being taken over completely.
You don't see any efforts to even stop it in any way.
You have an entire Florida City SWAT team that resigned after the police chief was kneeling with the protesters.
They'll remain on the police force, but they've left the SWAT team out in Hallendale Beach.
So no thanks.
We don't need this.
Now one Democratic Al Green is now calling for, I believe it was him, yeah, it was him, calling for the creation of a department of reconciliation.
Okay.
I don't know what that means because if you surrender to anarchy and they're able to take over city blocks and police precincts and nothing is done to stop it, who are you going to call when something happens?
I mean, this is the madness of all of this.
Congresswoman Omar defending the call to dismantle the Minneapolis police.
Now, again, she now also, you know, it's unbelievable.
It's just getting from bad to worse here.
And you see anarchy now reigning.
And this is now, I guess, you know, now a big issue in the campaign.
And what is this growing divide?
How does it all end in the end here?
Anyway, we continue with former MYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerrig, and also he's the author of The Grave Above the Grave.
He was the commissioner of New York's police department, 9-1101, as we all know.
Sergeant Demetrik Penny, 21-year vet, Dallas police, also now a congressional candidate, Texas Congressional District number 30.
Let me go back to what's going on in Minneapolis, this defund the police effort.
The anarchists or the free love zone, Chaz as they call it, utopia as they call it, now taking over city blocks.
And by the way, on top of it, Bernie Carrick, we have over 800 officers now that have been hurt, a number of them now killed, a number of them permanently injured, one paralyzed in Vegas.
And, you know, rocks and bottles and bricks and Molotov cocktails.
And no desire for the president is begging these cities to restore order.
They refuse to take it.
They put the entire, from my perspective, they put the entire city of their cities at risk here.
Plus, Sean, you have hundreds of millions of dollars in devastation damage as a result of the arson and looting.
You've got about 20 people that were innocent civilians that were shot and killed throughout this.
Nobody's marching on their behalf.
But I want to bring up a point, Sean, that I think is lost in the mix here.
Most of these cities, every one of the cities you just mentioned, and most of the cities around the country where you have the highest violent crime rate and the highest murder rate, they're all run by Democrats.
They're run by Democrats that have far left-leaning radicals in many cases who basically want to diminish and abolish policing in general.
And I think the lesson people they should focus on, they should look at New York City in 1994 when we averaged about 2,200 murders per year.
We were the capital of homicide, of murder in the United States of America.
And over an eight-year period under Giuliani, that number dropped by 63%, by 70%.
The murder number dropped by 70%, violent crime by 63.
And in the black communities in New York City, that number dropped.
Murder dropped by close to 80%.
Thousands of black lives were saved as a result of basically enforcing law in order.
We didn't have these problems with riots and all this other stuff.
We had issues within the police department that we had to deal with.
But at the end of the day, we had a leader.
We had a mayor that enforced the law, dealt with the communities.
I didn't have any problems as the police commissioner.
I had 55,000 people working for me.
I had no problems in the black communities.
And we had great relationships.
It can be done.
But today, it's not being done.
And in every one of those cities where black lives are being slaughtered by numbers that compare with a war zone like Chicago and St. Louis and Baltimore, they're all run by Democrats.
And I think that's something that has to be looked at.
Okay.
And your take, Sergeant.
Yes, just, look, I want to play up on a commissioner's position.
In fact, on the 435 U.S. House seats, this is why I'm running.
Of those 435 House seats, 28% of them are majority minority districts.
All of them are run by Democrats.
No Republicans in those seats.
Now, what we've done over the last 50 years, these failed socioeconomic policies have led to the failures in these communities.
Now, I come from the inner city.
I came from a community where police just didn't come in because of the level of crime.
We didn't want them there, but we were being victimized at a higher rate than anywhere else in the country.
And I say everyone's an advocate until they become a victim.
I said this last time.
Everyone's an advocate until they become a victim.
I had to witness my own cousin get killed in front of me, but for me to say, man, I got to get out of here.
Like that had to wake, something had to wake me up.
And what's happening is you got a lot of people that aren't from these communities that are carrying the gauntlet and saying that we want the police out.
We want them out.
Well, guess what?
Who's going to police these communities once you get them out?
You get rid of the police, then nobody's going to, all the people are going to do it, they're going to be subjected to more and more violent crime.
And the violent crime rate, regardless of what we do, because we can't get people to come into this profession, the violent crime rate is still going up across the country.
Now, on another note, I would like to also talk about our law enforcement officers, okay?
Everyone wants to bring up their First Amendment right to protest.
And their First Amendment right to protest should be protected by the First Amendment rights.
We're all against that.
I mean, we all support that.
But by that same token, we have to start talking about these officers, 14th Amendment right to fair and equal protections under the law.
Because they're not just going out there to be attacked and be murdered and belittled by individuals that don't want to follow the law.
We got to start getting back to the conversation and talking about where does the letter of the law mean anything, the rule of the law?
What does it mean anything?
That's how America became the great democracy that it was with our law.
And we have to get back to business and start talking about how we're going to protect people.
And that's why I'm running.
So what do you do now when you got a mayor and you got a governor that are allowing anarchists to take over city blocks and city precincts, which I never thought would happen in my lifetime, Bernie Carrick.
And they reject, steadfastly reject the president's daily offer for help and assistance to restore order, which, by the way, as long as they're not in there killing each other, I don't think the president should be getting involved.
If that's how they want to run their state, if that's how they want to run their cities and allow anarchists to do what they're doing out there, unless and until it becomes totally untenable, that's their responsibility.
They say no.
Well, president offers help.
No.
Chicago, Illinois, president offers help.
No.
New York, same thing, no.
You know what, Sean?
Listen, and I want to remind people, those numbers I give you on New York City, that was during Giuliani's term.
After Giuliani, Mayor Bloomberg came in for 12 years, for 12 years.
So for 20 years straight, every single year, there was reduced violent crime, reduced murder in New York City.
We had the most substantial reductions in U.S. history ever.
And the only time, the only time in 20 years, after that 20-year period, the only time it started to spike was under a Democrat, under Mayor de Blasio.
Then it started to change.
And in the last two weeks, it spiked dramatically.
And you have a mayor that basically told his cops, in his words, you're going to use a light touch in dealing with these thugs and rioters and arsonists and anarchists.
And they burned Fifth Avenue.
They burned Madison Avenue, Soho, the Diamond Exchange.
And you had a governor sitting in Albany saying, oh, yeah, I'm not happy with the cops.
I'm not happy with the police.
They didn't do their job.
The mayor didn't do his job, really.
Well, what is your job?
You run the state of New York.
Where are you?
Why weren't you there?
What are you doing?
And you know what?
For any of these executives, any of these mayors or governors in any state that refuses help from the president with regard to the National Guard in restoring law and order, they have a constitutional obligation to their citizens.
And they're refusing for political reasons because they know the president's right.
And they also know the president's not going to stand for it.
And if they can't do their job and he has to, the job will get done.
So what do they do?
They refuse.
That's what I'm saying.
They refuse.
I got to tell you, I'm going to have to let you both go, but former Commissioner NYPD Bernie Carrick, Sergeant Demetrik Penny, by the way, he's running for Congress, Texas CD 30, Congressional District 30.
Thank you both.
800-941 Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
Jim is in Texas.
Jim, you're next on the Sean Hannity Show.
How are you?
I'm good, sir.
How are you today?
I'm good, sir.
Glad you called.
Excellent.
Sir, I'll get right to my point.
In the recent weeks, I've heard you speaking a lot about how you feel that what happened in the Floyd incident was really just due to a lack of training with police officers and you want more training.
And I understand that point, sir, but I couldn't disagree with you more.
And the reason is, sir, is Floyd did not die from the chokehold.
That was not a lack of training.
That was just a lack of moral character.
That was just pure evil.
In most agencies, the chokehold is already illegal.
And if you know anything about training like you say you do, you can see that Floyd was not in a chokehold.
He just had a knee on his neck.
And I don't remember the last person that was killed from a chokehold.
And it just drives me crazy when I hear people say we're not trained well enough.
I'm a patrol sergeant.
I've been a police officer for 13 years.
And we get trained beyond belief.
We go through de-escalation training.
We go through defensive tactics training with martial arts involved in it.
Even now in Texas, when you go through the driver's license, when you're driver's ed, when you're a young person, you're trained on how to interact with police officers.
Therefore, police officers are trained on what young people are trained to interact with.
You know, we're trained in de-escalation methods.
And in my particular area, we even have a unit that goes out with a social worker for suicidal attempts, any kind of mental issue.
By the way, I think that's a great idea.
I think they could accompany police and maybe the experts in that field because cops can't possibly do all that.
Listen, I got to run, but I know the White House is expected to come out with reforms.
And this week, a lot of them hopefully will include training and will include other people that could show up and maybe help, you know, professionally those people that might have other issues, problems that they've got to deal with.
I'm not against any of that.
More training, absolutely.
More options in terms of non-lethal tools available for police officers.
Love that idea too.
And I've been talking about that extensively.
So anyway, got to take a break.
We'll come back.
On the other side, by the way, we will get into the issue.
What about, okay, the uprisings that are now happening around the country.
Is COVID-19's resurgence a big deal?
What about riots in our city streets and now police standing down straight ahead?
Right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
And a far more serious scene.
Watch these images.
Really just an ugly, a dangerous scene at the state capitol in Michigan as we look at this extreme group of people.
Those pictures and those clashes really show the chaos.
And you're out there with guns.
I don't want to call them rallies.
They're not protests.
These quote-unquote protests.
I don't even think that that's the right word because protests are supposed to be peaceful.
I'm not embarrassed to say that I was afraid.
It's not clear what they're demanding.
Demanding to infect other people, demanding to make other people sick.
It's dangerous, and these people can take this home with them and hurt their families and all the rest.
I'd like to ask them if they're willing to sign away their rights of treatment if and when they get infected.
Who the hell do you think you are?
I don't understand what is wrong with people.
Stay at home.
I want to be clear in how I characterize this.
This is mostly a protest.
It is not, generally speaking, unruly.
That ain't a riot, what we're seeing right now in Minneapolis.
Excuse me, any reasonable person would say we shouldn't be destroying other people's property, but these are not reasonable times.
And please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
The beautiful thing is we're seeing citizens who are caring and concerned.
They're hitting the streets.
Heartwarming to see so many people turn out peacefully.
You know, Brooke, I think this is a march, really.
But as they're coming off, it's peaceful.
They're saying peaceful protests.
Across the country, it's bringing people together, community with unity.
People are risking COVID to explain to this country that we're fed up.
News Roundup Information Overload hour on the Sean Hannity show.
I mean, it is unbelievable.
We're living in the craziest of times.
We see what happens in Atlanta.
You know, we see what is happening in Seattle.
We see what's happening to fund the police.
We're in the middle of an election season with 141 days to go, and it's getting scarier by the day.
Then you have to worry about a COVID resurgence in some places.
A lot of the numbers that I'm seeing are like, quote, percentage increases from the day before, three weeks before.
I didn't see that it was as bad, but I've said from the beginning it's a matter of when, not a matter of if we get a resurgence.
Dr. Rosowi said that as well.
We bring back to the program Joe Concha, commentator, opinion columnist for The Hill, and Mark Simone, host of the morning show here in New York, our flagship in New York, AM710, WOR.
Mark Simone, we begin with you.
Big overall picture, 141 days, the American people, they're the ultimate jury.
They're going to have to sort through all of this.
Your thoughts, sir?
Well, Joe Biden, not the slickest candidate in the world, not the smoothest talking, fast candidate in the world.
I don't know how he defends, defund the police.
I don't know what possible argument you can make for that.
He's backed away from it, but he's still going to have to answer for that.
And allowing six blocks of Seattle to be seized and declared a foreign country, he's tied to all of that.
These Democrats don't get their party back from the real crazy progressives.
They have no shot in November.
Not that they do anyway, but this is just making it one of the most impossible.
This is mission impossible for Biden if he ever gets out of the basement.
Oh, if he, what do you mean, if he ever gets out?
He's getting out for like five seconds at a time.
My favorite line of last week, Joe Concha is, oh, I'm fine with him in the basement.
He sees two people a day.
She's two bodymen.
That's it.
He sees two people a day.
I was a Democratic caucus.
You ever been to a caucus?
No, you haven't.
You're a lion dog-faced pony soldier.
You said you were, but you're.
So, folks, you want to nominate a Democrat?
A lifelong Democrat.
A proud Democrat.
And a Biden-Bomba Democrat.
Because we cannot get re-elect.
We cannot win this re-election.
Excuse me.
We can only re-elect Donald Trump.
I hope you'll all join us.
Together, I think we can win back the House.
We're going to keep the House, increase it, and flip the Senate.
There's a large portion of the union workers that are young enthusiasts, and you are actively trying to diminish our Second Amendment right and take away our gun.
You're forced.
All right.
No, no, no.
Shush.
Shush.
No one is in a position where they have a significant financial disability as a consequence of this particular crisis.
We can do that.
We did that.
We've been through this before with the coronavirus.
We've been through this before, excuse me, we've been through this before with dealing with the viruses at the N1H-15s, as well as what happened in Africa.
One way they get inspired is by great leaders who are, you know, called us to peel our better angels from Abraham Lincoln to all the way, you know, to FDR to John Kennedy, Barack, et cetera, Iraq.
We have to take care of the cure.
That will make the problem worse no matter what.
No matter what.
Excuse me.
You know, you're supposed to cough into your elbow.
I don't know, sir.
I learned that actually covering your White House.
Actually, that's true, but fortunately, I'm alone in my home, but that's okay.
Why doesn't he just act like a president?
That's a stupid way to say it.
You know, Donald Trump is asking us.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
No, no, I probably best I don't.
And what we have done is the reason why most of the world has repaired to us, particularly after World War II, is because of who we are as a nation.
We, the people, we hold these truths, etc.
Sounds corny, but it's real.
If we were setting up an education system for the first time in our history, as we did at the turn of the last in the late 1800s, we would not say 12 years was enough.
12 years is not enough to live in the second quarter of the middle of the 21st century.
What is President Trump's level of culpability?
What's his level of responsibility say toward the illness and fatalities we're witnessing every few minutes these days?
I put it slightly differently.
What is his responsibility?
And what if there wasn't, you know, allocating responsibility is, you know, I'll let history do that.
We need to get direct cash relief payments out to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
Again, this may sound straightforward, but no American should have to wait a single minute so Donald Trump can put his signature on a physical check.
Former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, thank you so much for your time, sir.
Appreciate it.
Well, thanks for giving me the time.
Thanks so much.
So then I don't wonder where I am.
Now I know.
When they ask me, where is Joe Biden?
I say he was on the 2 p.m. show on MSNBC.
People say all the time, oh, we got to get the vice president out of the basement.
He's fine in the basement.
Two people see him a day.
He's two body people.
That's that.
And let Trump keep doing what Trump's doing.
It's hard for the vice president to break through.
And he gets to sit down there quietly with no answers and a track record that's going to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb.
And everywhere we begin to look, it's not particularly favorable to anything.
Your thoughts?
Well, I think that the fine-tooth comb will probably be used by you, right, and some other outlets perhaps, but not many in the traditional mainstream media are going to scrutinize Joe Biden's record in any way, shape, or form.
We've seen that now to this point, that he could say literally whatever he wants and not be challenged.
For instance, the president won't leave office even if he loses and I'll have the military protect him and he's not going to leave, right?
And that is just stuff that even like Alex Jones hears and says, wait a minute, that's out of control.
That's way out there.
But he gets a pass because he could say whatever he wants because obviously people want to see him get elected.
But to Mark's point before, I mean, picture this parallel universe for a moment in terms of what we're seeing in Seattle.
Let's say a large mob took over a neighborhood in, say, I don't know, Brooklyn, right?
And in fact, the mob isn't even a mob.
It's the Covington Catholic kids, and they're wearing the MAGA hats.
And this time, you arm them, okay?
And they force the police to evacuate their own building.
And then they construct walls, which are bad, apparently.
And then they patrol the area and say who gets in, who gets out.
It's their own company and in their country.
And they call themselves Chaz, which of course doesn't stand for the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
This time, it's the Covington High School Autonomous Zone.
What would the media reaction be?
Because this story is largely being ignored.
And I know what the media reaction would be because I'm old enough to remember, I don't know, a month ago, and you played it in your montage before when some protesters took over, or at least, you know, for a little bit anyway, the State House in Michigan, and some were armed.
And the only word that I could think of in terms of the media coverage was, maybe it's two words.
I'm not really sure what the answer is on this one, freak out.
And we're not seeing the freak out anymore because people agree with the message overall, to fund the police and all these things.
So, yeah, what we're seeing in terms of Seattle, when you compare it to what happened in Michigan, you could teach a class on what media bias is.
That's exactly what it looks like.
You know, the bias is so palpable, so real, and I'm not overstating it, Mark Simone.
Every second minute, hour of 24-hour day, every day since this guy, even before he was elected.
And now we learned a lot of how they tried, people in power, the highest levels of power, tried to try to subvert a free and fair election.
We learned that there was no Russia collusion.
We see the double standard quid pro quo Joe Zero experience hunter.
And now it's this, and I watch city after city after city.
Universally, nobody, there's not one person I know that ever defended what happened to George Floyd.
Not one.
No, it's absolutely the single worst cop I've ever seen in my life.
Ray Kelly, the greatest police commissioner in America, was on the show today.
Even he said in his 30, 40 years, the worst thing he's ever seen.
That's a problem with the protesting.
You're busy protesting to people who agree with you for the most part.
And I hope this protest isn't wasted.
You got America's attention.
Use it for something specific.
Get specific changes and things that can get institutionalized.
You know, it's fun to rename streets and paint things on the street, but that's just symbolic.
It's not going to make any real change.
So don't waste the protest.
Get something accomplished with it.
Well, okay.
But how do you stop an effort when they have a veto-proof city council of Minneapolis that says we're going to defund the police?
What do you do when you have a Seattle mayor that is calling this a summer of love in the festive zone and every other bizarre thing that is being said about all of this?
I mean, I'm reading this daily and I'm like, you're kidding me, right?
We're going to call it a festive zone.
We're going to say that it's like a big street party when you just take over city blocks, take over precincts.
Cops don't go in.
The mayor doesn't care.
The governor doesn't care.
They don't want to get involved at all, seemingly.
Well, I think this is what kills Democrats in November.
They don't realize it yet, but this wave has started.
They look at these crazy left-wing progressive Bill de Blasio type mayors.
This Minneapolis guy, this Dookie Hauser, left-wing mayor, the mayor of Seattle, who just gives up control.
And then you see Joe Biden, you know, who just looks too slow, too out of control.
Donald Trump said it once, the president said, this is the perfect candidate for these guys.
This is what the big donors want.
They'll put them in a nursing home and they'll run the country.
And people are going to start to realize that even before the debates happen.
Yeah.
Joe?
Yeah, Joe Biden isn't running for president, guys, as Mark just perfectly stated.
They put him in.
He's a vessel to get in because maybe he could bring in moderates in Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin, those key states that Donald Trump took last time.
And then from there, people you don't even know.
Forget who the vice president is.
People you don't even know.
Behind the scenes, faceless people will be running this country.
Got to take a break.
More with Joe Concha.
More with Mark Simone on the other side.
800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
Then your calls coming up next half hour.
Look, one of the things that I think is really important is that we somehow put that back on.
There's somehow that we're in a situation where.
All right, as we continue with our friends, Mark Simone, Joe Concho are with us.
All right, Joe.
So where does this all end in 141 days now that we get to hear the great Joe Biden and we see all of these, all of this anarchy, chaos, disorder, failure of big liberal cities and states?
Does that now factor into what happens in November?
I would think so.
I'm getting out of the prediction business, by the way, because if you told me even in January that everything that just happened over the last three months, I heard a great line from somebody recently who said, we have lived an entire decade in the first five months of the 20s, right?
Crazy thing that's happened.
It's not, so who knows what the next 145 days holds because we've had no room.
Mark knows this.
You know this, Sean.
There hasn't been a slow day in news, probably, I don't know, three or four years.
So 100 things can happen.
But overall, in the end, if the fund the police actually sticks to Democrats, and look, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants that, and she is an advisor on the Biden campaign as far as being part of the chairman of a task force that he runs.
If the president's able to attach law and order and chaos to Democrats in terms of defunding the police, in terms of that he's the guy who's going to keep the country safe while if you let Biden and then you're going to have Seattle all over the place, then that puts us in a very good position.
All right, we'll give the last 45 seconds to our friend Mark Simone.
Where's this headed, Mark?
I have no idea.
They tried Russian collusion, a fake Ukraine call.
They tried to tanking the economy.
They've tried a pandemic.
They tried riots, looting.
I don't know what's next.
Aliens from outer space, locusts.
I don't know what they got planned.
Locus?
By the way, it wouldn't surprise me at this point.
We've seen everything else.
And the incredible, tough search for a vice president.
Why didn't they search this hard for the right candidate?
They're working harder on the vice president than the presidential candidate.
Oh, man.
All right.
Mark Simone.
That was the Blues Brothers reference, by the way, that you threw in there.
Don't think I didn't catch that.
Yeah, I caught that too, by the way.
You'd think Mark's clever.
Mark likes to throw these things out.
By the way, in our next life, everybody wants to be Mark Simone.
And only Linda knows the truth.
A two-hour radio shift every day, middle of the day.
Oh, no, no, no.
No, after that, Joe, that's nothing.
That's the tip of the iceberg.
There's no more popular figure than Mark Simone.
The rare times I go out, I turn around.
There's Mark.
This guy is a social butterfly among butterflies.
Well, that means you're there, too.
Yeah, the few times I'm there, you're always there, which means you're everywhere.
Otherwise, I'm in the library, the museum.
Yeah, I don't even believe that for a second.
All right.
Thank you both.
800-941, Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
All right, 25 now until the top of the hour.
We'll get to calls here in a minute.
800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
So I have this book coming out, which I'm very proud of.
And I was worried at different times because I wanted to keep it as current as possible.
I started it over a year ago.
It's called Live Free or Die.
America and the World on the Brink.
And I have it in Latin underneath, live free or America dies.
And okay, that's hyperbole.
No.
And I actually think I designed this book a special way because, and I'm feeling it now with each passing day more than ever, that the great country, this great republic, chapter one, a republic, if you can keep it.
You know, it has to do with the Constitutional Convention and this widely told story of Ben Franklin.
And, you know, he comes out, is it a monarchy or a republic?
It's a republic, if you can keep it.
And I've never, ever thought that we would get this far in this country with so many embracing the most radical and extreme ideas, ideals that would absolutely upend the greatest, freest, best republic and constitutional governance in the history of the world.
Not perfect.
Nobody's saying it's perfect.
We're not perfect.
You know, we've watched movements before, and the reason that I thought it was important that I go through a history, if you will, of what founded the principles that our framers and founders believed would make this the greatest country on earth.
Because if you don't see this as a tipping point, critical, pivotal point in our history, then I don't know what America you're looking at.
I mean, you've got groups of people now that are happy with the idea of defunding the police.
You have cities now ceding blocks and police precincts to anarchists and not doing a thing, not lifting a finger to stop it and to maintain law and order.
You now see that curfews are meaningless, you know, and you really, you get to see the failure of decades and decades of Democratic Party rule in cities, big blue states, big blue cities all across the country.
It can't be any more stark than what we have now on every single issue.
And when you look over the, and this is an entire chapter, the, you know, the fantasy land, which is the new radical Democrat Extremist Party and their agenda.
And what is their agenda?
Okay, well, 10 years, no more oil or gas.
You know, for the first time in 75 years, we are energy independent.
It is the lifeblood of the world's economy, but they want to eliminate it.
If you eliminate it, it's a guaranteed prescription for poverty.
You now have of talk of everything is going to be free.
I go over all the costs.
Mathematically, it's impossible to implement Medicare for all 10 years of $50, what, $2 trillion.
The new Green Deal, $94 trillion.
Okay, guys, we're only taking $4 and $4.5 trillion a year.
Do the math.
It's not complicated.
And that would mean you have no defense on top of it.
It is school is going to be free, guaranteed government jobs, guaranteed government healthy foods, guaranteed education from basically the minute you can walk to the, you know, all the way through college, eliminating school debt that people have to pay back.
Who's going to pay for all of this?
These are the false promises of liberalism.
And then eventually, well, then we're going to get rid of cars and we'll have plug-in stations everywhere.
Okay.
We're going to just upend the automobile industry like that.
We're going to get rid of eventually airplanes and cows.
They're saying it.
It's not that I'm making it up.
And you can see that if you believe that they were moderates within the Democratic Party, you see that their voices are squashed and shut down by this new extreme radical leftist party.
And you can look at pre-coronavirus and you can see, okay, compare Donald Trump's agenda and what he did for the country in a short period of time under the worst of circumstances.
I've never seen a president hated to this extent.
I've never seen a media so 99.9% so harshly aligned against the president.
There's nothing in their world or minds that Donald Trump can do right, but he kept his promises on cutting taxes and it worked.
He kept his promises on ending burdensome regulation and that worked.
He said he'd get rid of, you know, what, three or four to every one new regulation.
It's like 18 to one.
He said he'd appoint constitutionalists, not activist justices to the courts, and he's done that too.
He said he'd secure the border.
Well, by November, we'll have 400 miles of brand new border wall.
And it was a heavy lift every step of the way.
You know, you have Democrats, they want open borders.
They create their sanctuary cities, their safe zones, their autonomous zones, their summers of free love, whatever zones.
And you can see that they want open borders for everybody.
I don't think that's a good idea, especially considering the heroin and the fentanyl that crossed into this country from across the border.
And I just, as you look at the foreign defense differences and foreign policy differences, okay, we're going to bribe dictators with cargo planes full of cash and other currency, $150 billion for mullahs in Iran that chant death to America and death to Israel and burn our flags.
You know, you're going to get upset over Russia collusion, but not Hillary's dirty dossier.
And nobody in the media, no Democrat seems upset over the fact that there never was any evidence whatsoever of any Trump-Russia collusion.
As a matter of fact, it's been debunked and they drag the country through three years of hell.
And then once that didn't work out, then another six months of hell over Ukraine.
And I go into the book in deep detail on that.
How can that happen in America?
And as of now, the book is done.
You know, nobody's really been held accountable.
I think they will be, but so far they haven't.
But you know, Sean, one of the things, you know, and we've talked about this so much over the past year when you were writing this.
And obviously, you know, I've been with you for 15 years.
So I've seen, you know, you're such a, you're a student of history.
You love history.
And I think, you know, this book, like when you said, I think I'm going to write this, I'm like, oh, dear Lord.
Because, you know, I know how hard conservative victory was for you in 2010 and all that we went through to get that message.
I don't like writing.
And everyone's going to say, you dirty it for money.
No, I'm not.
I'm doing it.
You know why I did this, Linda?
And you know why.
Of course.
And why I had all these people that I asked to research this, research this, research this, research this.
And I mean, I wanted to really make it comprehensive.
I want to, I'm laid out in this book.
What is at stake?
I have laid out exactly what is on the line in 141 days.
And I'll tell you right now, and I'll predict here and now, if Donald J. Trump does not win this election, guaranteed, this country will be unrecognizable for our kids and grandkids.
It's a done deal.
I mean, that is poignant.
That is true.
This is a very scary time.
I mean, we are having people call in.
I'm seeing it all over social media.
You know, people that have called themselves hard left for years and they're talking about like, we don't even recognize our own party.
Like, we can't even, what is this autonomous zone?
You know, I mean, it's like, who do you call when there is no police officer to come to you?
You know, what we all saw that happened in Minneapolis was heartbreaking and terrifying and just so destructive to your soul, to everybody who watched it.
But then it became a movement that was already planned by a group called Antifa that was taking over the group of protesters that were doing it for the right reasons.
And we lost ourselves in the message of it all.
And it's like, we should be unifying over this and looking for solutions.
But they're excusing it.
They're allowing it to continue.
They are, you know, honestly, I warned about Obama and his radical background and his agenda.
He seems like a moderate compared to what's being discussed now.
And on every issue, Joe Biden, oh, yeah, I'll cave on that.
I'll cave on that.
I'm really with you on here, here, here.
And we all know that Joe is not exactly a guy with a fastball, if he ever had one.
Yeah, and honestly, too, I think, you know, I saw a really interesting tweet by Colonel Alan West this weekend, and he's in our prayers because he just had a horrible motorcycle accident and is going through a lot right now.
But putting that aside, you know, he tweeted out and he said, you know, listen, he's like, I'm an African-American.
I served in my military.
He's like, but, you know, just because you tear down statues, you don't erase history.
History is what it is.
We have to learn from it.
And that dovetails exactly into what we're talking about with your book.
You know, we're looking through the prism of history.
We're looking through all that has happened through our American history.
And this Father's Day, you know, when people are sitting down with their families, because that's what happens on Father's Day, just like we talked about on Mother's Day, just like we talk about with anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, where the family gets together.
This Father's Day, you know, we can take a look at your book and say, okay, this is how we got here.
This is how we stay here.
This is how we keep America great.
And this is how we build upon our mistakes.
We learn from them and we find solutions.
You know, your book is about hearkening back, looking from and learning from history.
Erasing history does not help us to learn from the mistakes that we've made.
And this book is an opportunity for fathers and sons and daughters and families to get together.
You know, on Father's Day, when you're sitting around the table and you're looking at Live Free or Die, you know, this great book that you've written and you've taken the time to do, you know, such a great gift, you know, and it has, it just keeps on giving because you're learning every time you're reading.
And it's something we can do together.
You know, it's one thing that I, that I really spent a couple of things I really did a deep dive into, and that was our nation's founding and history.
I did a deep dive, chapter four.
Well, one is the Democrats agenda.
Most people listening to the show know that because I go over it daily.
Stuff I don't talk probably enough about is socialism.
It's chapter four, the history of failure.
I talked a lot about Russia collusion, the attempted coup there, and the impeachment disaster and duplicity and hypocrisy and the mob and the media.
I talk about them and this assault on all things that are freedom.
And then nobody really has the comprehensive list of all the accomplishments of this president.
And then I go into the whole coronavirus thing.
I edited that chapter late in the game because I wanted to keep it as current as possible.
And I'll tell you this, that as I look at this landscape, I am not afraid to say that I am really concerned more than I've ever been in my life about what this country will look like.
You know, you want guaranteed universal basic income.
Do a majority of Americans now want to elect socialists to office?
Do you really believe in the new Green Deal?
Do you really agree with the Northams of the world?
First of all, have the baby, blah, blah, blah.
Make sure the baby's comfortable, then decide.
Open borders, sanctuary cities.
Do you believe in the lawlessness?
Do you believe in anarchists?
Do you believe that you'd ever see cops pelted, 800 of them hurt so far?
Bottles and bricks and rocks and Molotov cocktails.
And they do nothing.
They absolutely do nothing.
Right.
And the thing that you're talking about here.
Talking about.
The thing that you're talking about here is that, you know, you have a situation where people are no longer looking at each other as human beings.
You know, I was in church yesterday and my pastor made a very interesting part of his sermon, which he dedicated to, you know, he's like, I want everybody to look around the church and we're having all of our services outside because of COVID.
And he's like, I want everybody to look around the church right now.
And I want you to understand that a lot of you are going to do things that irritate each other.
Maybe you don't like this one or this one watches this channel and this one.
By the way, is he talking directly to you?
Because everything I do irritates you.
He's like, I irritate everybody in my life.
Pretty unbelievable.
He's great.
But he made an interesting point, which is, he's like, you got to love the rioters.
You got to love the protesters because they're children of God.
And they know not what they do at this moment.
And you need to love them and forgive them because that's what God is doing for all of us.
And I was like, because, you know, Friday, when I drove into the city, you know, I had a protester all week.
My car has been getting jumped on.
I've been getting pelted.
I had a guy spit in my face on Friday and call me all sorts of interesting names.
And, you know, we're living this.
It's not just what you see on TV.
Like, we're living it every day.
And it's very, very hard to do that.
And I think that a book like Live Free or Die, it's so poignant right now because we are literally exercising our freedoms.
And those that wish to be tolerated are not tolerant of anything.
You know, look, you're much younger than me.
Okay.
Let me let me be honest here.
31 years I've been doing this in radio, 25 at Fox, and I've been blessed beyond anything I ever deserve.
Trust me.
And I know that I'm reminded of it daily.
And I will tell you that it's, it's, when I look at, you, Linda always sends videos of Liam, her son.
And I look at that, that kid is full of life.
It cracks me up, this kid.
Like a lot of kids, I think kids are amazing.
And I look at this and I'm like, this is not, that country is not going to exist.
This country, as we know it, the one I grew up in, is not going to exist.
And that's the thing that we're talking about.
This father is recognizable.
Right.
You literally have to live free or die.
Because if we do not save this country for our children, which is why we do everything we do, we are going to be in big trouble.
And that's 141 days from now.
Today, all right, load it up.
The latest news, information.
Oh, we can protest.
They're not socially distant, but don't have a rally.
According to fake news, we'll get to that.
Also, we will have full analysis of the shooting in Atlanta of Rayshard Brooks and what went on in that particular situation.
The chaos, the mayhem, and the anarchy on autonomous zones and the summer of free love.
