Mail In Voting BACKFIRES On Democrats, Thousands Of Ballots From Young And Minority Voters REJECTED
Democrats have been demanding mail in voting and now the results are in.Across the US ballots are being rejected and uncounted. Many of the ballots are rejected for being filled out incorrectly leaving first time voters, young voters, and minority voters left out.Republicans have warned of impending chaos and Trump has been very vocal. But the media has kept on screaming that Trump was wrong and it would be fine.Now Minority voters are outraged and filing lawsuits to get their ballots.#Trump#Democrats#Republicans
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Mail-in voting across this country is collapsing several different states.
We've got California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York.
They're seeing serious problems.
We've got voter fraud in New Jersey and West Virginia.
Now, how many times have we heard journalists complain that Donald Trump was either wrong, crazy or lying when he said that mail-in voting was going to be chaos?
They're still saying it right now, to be fair.
Now, Donald Trump has gone a bit over the top, saying that foreign countries are going to counterfeit the ballots, and it will be the biggest scandal of our lifetime.
So perhaps he is worthy of some criticism.
But I'm sorry, man.
I've got way too many stories now.
We had a story about a dead cat getting voter registration.
I personally received a ballot at my house for someone who didn't even live here, so yes.
I think now we can see that mail-in voting is...
Well, it's not going to work.
OK, an 11th hour change to how we handle our most serious of elections makes literally no sense.
And now we're going to reap those rewards.
Well, Democrats wanted it, and I'm sorry, Republicans were right to be concerned because something happened today.
Don't ask me what.
Maybe it's just because we've seen all these primaries.
But now we're getting a wave of news About broken mail-in voting.
We've got this story from CBS Sacramento.
100,000 mail-in votes went uncounted in California.
We've got this story.
Montclair, New Jersey, signed, sealed, undelivered thousands of ballots.
How about this?
Milwaukee, They say thousands of absentee ballots didn't get counted because of late delivery, missed, late delivery, missed delivery.
We've got New Orleans or the Orleans Registrar, 4,000 mail-in ballot requests, lawsuits in New York, lawsuits in Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, the news just says Trump's false attacks on voting by mail.
Welcome to the circus world of 2020.
No matter what happens, I'm afraid that come election time, no one's going to agree on who won or why they won.
There's going to be claims of voter interference.
It's going to be drawn out, counting ballots, finding ballots, losing ballots.
They're going to do the election.
Then a week later, they're going to say, we found a box of ballots in the post office.
A mail carrier in West Virginia was altering ballots.
Welcome to election 2020 insecurity.
I don't know what's going to happen, man.
It's going to get bad, though.
But there is some.
Well, look, Steve Bannon, you know, he used to work with Trump.
He's saying, give it up, Republicans.
You're going to have to roll with this one.
My stance has always been you should not change the rules the very last minute.
Well, let's start with reading this first story to see what's going on in California.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash Dunnit if you'd like to support my work.
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You know why?
Well, in this video, I'm going to show you the New York Times saying outright that Trump is falsely attacking, you know, mail-in voting.
And then I'm going to show you another story where they say New York is being overwhelmed by mail-in voting.
The issue is not so much mail-in voting itself.
The issue is the fact that we changed the rules the last minute and just launched out all of these mail-in ballots without updating our security for a massive nationwide mail-in election.
It's fine if we do absentee ballots here and there, but it just mail out all these ballots across the board.
We're not prepared for this.
The mainstream media will tell you these individual stories, but the op-eds from the biggest political pundits will all say the same thing.
Trump is wrong because everything Trump does is wrong.
If you disagree with me, stick around and watch the video.
Now, if you like what I do, please consider subscribing.
A lot of people watch, they don't actually subscribe, but it really does help because it tells YouTube that my channel and content are good, is good, whatever.
Let's read the first story from CBS Sacramento.
100,000 mail-in votes went uncounted in California's primary.
They say with the coronavirus pandemic raging, California is part of a growing number of states increasing mail-in balloting to avoid crowds at polling places.
President Trump is among those questioning the integrity of vote-by-mail elections, while supporters say they are just as reliable as polling places and offer greater flexibility to voters.
But while polling places include workers who can assist people who have questions about filling out ballots, a voter doesn't have support at home, and so problems can arise.
I don't know what the Democrats were expecting to happen.
Did they think that every person understood exactly what they would need to do and how they would need to do it?
I received a mail-in ballot application.
And I didn't know what I needed to fill out or why.
And I didn't know why other people in my house, well, people who don't live here anymore, did get ballots.
I didn't know what the time frame was.
And I also didn't know if they were going to have open polling places.
So, I didn't fill it out.
I didn't think it was a big deal because I assumed there would be in-person voting.
But on the day of, the system was down.
It couldn't tell me where I needed to go to vote.
And I was told by some people they weren't actually going to do any in-person voting anyway, so I just said, fine, whatever.
I call that, to a certain degree, being disenfranchised.
Look, if I really wanted to vote in the primary, then I could have done a little bit more.
But to my defense, I work nonstop all the time.
And so I didn't really... I didn't want to sit around and say, what do I have to do to make this work?
So I didn't make it work.
And it didn't work, unfortunately.
For other people, though, they are trying, they just don't know how.
So we get stories like this.
The California Secretary of State's election data obtained by the AP showed 102,428 mail-in ballots were disqualified in the state's 58 counties.
About 1.5 in the nearly 7 million mail-in ballots returned.
disqualified in the state's 58 counties.
About 1.5 in the nearly 7 million mail-in ballots returned.
That percentage is the highest in a primary race since 2014.
And the overall number is the highest in a statewide election since 2010.
Two years ago, the national average of rejected mail-in ballots in the general election was about 1.4%, and in the 2016 presidential election year was 1%, according to a U.S.
Election Assistance Commission study.
The most common problem by far in California was missing the deadline for the ballot be mailed and arrive.
To count in the election, ballots must be postmarked on or before election day and received within three days afterward.
Statewide, 70,330 ballots missed those marks.
Another 27,525 either didn't have a signature or the signature didn't match the one on record for the voter.
Who is going to be most negatively impacted by this?
When it comes to voting, It's going to be poor, minority, elderly voters, people who need assistance.
It's going to be first-time voters, younger voters.
We are going to see a level of disenfranchisement not seen in a very, very long time.
So you get what's happening in California?
Let's step it up.
Let's go to this one.
These are all from today, mind you.
This is what's really crazy.
Signed, sealed, undelivered.
Thousands of mail-in ballots rejected for tardiness, NPR says.
And mind you, this is CBS, this is NPR, this is USA Today.
Mainstream newspapers, all of a sudden now, writing all these stories about how messed up everything is.
But who are the people in mainstream media telling us that Trump was wrong, that mail-in voting was going to be fine?
I'd like to see them answer for this.
They say an NPR analysis has found that in the primary elections held so far this year, at least 65,000 absentee or mail-in ballots have been rejected because they arrived past the deadline, often through no fault of the voter.
While the numbers are relatively small, around 1% in most states, they could prove crucial in a close election, especially one in which many more voters are expected to cast absentee and mail-in ballots to avoid going to the polls during a pandemic.
Those who use mail-in voting for the first time, especially young Black and Latino voters, are more likely to have their ballots rejected because of errors, said Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies election administration.
That's the sort of thing that makes me wary about what's going to happen in November when we get an even larger influx of people who haven't voted or haven't voted by mail in the past.
Boom!
And there it is.
Do the Democrats want Trump to win?
I have to ask this, and I mean this with all sincerity, because I've been talking about it kind of a lot.
It seems like everything that they do benefits Trump.
How many times do I have to make a video saying Democrats do this and it backfires?
Mail-in ballots are backfiring on Democrats because it's younger black and Latino voters who are more likely to be negatively impacted by this, and they are also more likely to vote Democrat.
I'm not saying that they're guaranteed to vote Democrat or that they should.
I'm saying that's just a tendency.
When we do the polls, that's who votes Democrat more so than Republican.
I tell you what, man.
Y'all are in for a wild ride.
Absentee ballots didn't get counted because of late delivery, Post Office says.
In Madison.
It's everywhere, dude.
Do I even need to read this story for you?
You get it.
The U.S.
Postal Service has identified hundreds of absentee ballots for the April election that never made it to voters or couldn't be counted because of postmark problems.
This story's from three days ago.
I did a Google search, and I saw a story.
I do the news.
I prowl the news.
I saw this story about 100,000 ballots being rejected, and that to me is absolutely insane and unacceptable.
I mean, this is disenfranchisement at a massive scale, worse than anything the Democrats could ever complain about.
These are people who didn't do anything wrong, for the most part, like we saw in the NPR story, through no fault of their own, and the ballots didn't get there on time.
Why?
Well, they're relying on the post office.
So what are we supposed to do?
Honestly, man, I don't know what to tell you.
Because it's in Wisconsin.
Check this one out.
4,000 mail-in-belt requests sent at post office.
This is where it gets really bad, because these are people who didn't even get to vote.
They got their application, they filled it out, they sent it in, and the post office did not deliver.
This story says, New Orleans.
An Orleans Parish elections official is bringing problems with mail-in absentee voting to light, and Jefferson Parish voters have similar concerns ahead of Saturday's election.
Both issues appear to involve the U.S.
Postal Service.
Orleans Registrar Sandra Wilson tells WDSU that some 4,000 applications for mail-in ballots were discovered July 1st at a New Orleans post office.
She didn't know how long they'd been sitting there, but Wilson says postal workers delivered them to her office at City Hall that day.
The Registrar's staff worked overtime to put ballots in the mail to voters whose requests were delayed.
Albert Ruiz, original USPS spokesman, said in an email Saturday that ballot applications in New Orleans were held at the post office because of short paid postage.
The employees involved were brought up to speed on the agency's policies, which Ruiz explained in a subsequent email call for mail-in and absentee ballots to be delivered even if they don't have the correct postage.
Oh, man.
So you mean to tell me that people who didn't know what kind of stamps they needed didn't get their applications in in time?
That's ridiculous, man.
Look at this.
League of Women Voters sues NY State Board of Elections alleging serious flaws in absentee ballots.
Who are these people in media who are claiming everything was going to be fine?
I don't know.
Why were they doing it?
I have no idea.
Did they want Donald Trump to win?
I can only imagine that's the case.
It's it's it's absolutely.
Unsurprising, I guess.
Look, I've done a bunch of videos on mail-in voter fraud, but now that we're getting new information on what's going on, and we're learning that a lot of these rejected ballots come from Black, Latino, and youth voters, there's got to be some egg on the face for Democrats for this one.
This is a complete and total backfire on all the Democrats who demanded this.
In CA-25, they did mail-in ballots, and I speculated.
I thought that we would see an increase In younger voters.
Because one of the problems that the Democrats have, they can't get the youth vote to actually turn out.
Well, I speculated.
If you put the ballot in their face, maybe they'll just roll with it, right?
Unfortunately, no.
That wasn't the case either.
I can't tell you why the Democrats want to use this system other than the surface level they're concerned about COVID.
I can respect that.
Maybe they thought people wouldn't turn out to vote because of COVID fears.
And Moody's Analytics told us, and they're very, very accurate, that Donald Trump was going to win unless they had historic voter turnout.
That in a very low turnout situation, Trump was going to win.
So they're probably thinking the only way we can maintain voter turnout is to make sure people feel safe and secure and COVID might scare them.
If that's it?
Well, there you go.
Totally fine, right?
Sure.
In my opinion, I think changing the rules the 11th hour was a huge mistake.
If we are not prepared for a pandemic, it is not the fault of Trump or the Democrats or anyone else.
And we shouldn't change the rules because of it.
The best thing we could do is change the rules of the polling stations.
But the fear was the lines would be backed up and nobody would get to vote.
Well, I don't know what to tell you, man.
What are we supposed to do?
It's an emergency.
It's a crisis.
We can't postpone the election.
Okay, well then we gotta have the election.
And if that means people have to wait in line for a long time, it's the best we can do.
I don't think mail-in ballots are going to solve the problem.
Not only are people being rejected, but we are going to see across the board Accusations of fraud outright.
Now, look at this.
Minority voters sue Massachusetts over failure to send mail-in ballot applications.
Based on what the Democrats claim they want to fight for, you know, marginalized peoples, this... Egg on the face, man.
Beyond backfiring against the Democrats.
Now they're seeing lawsuits from women voters, minority voters.
Now, look, I get it.
I'm not saying that Any of these groups owe their vote to anybody.
But if this is who the Democrats are trying to help, they're not helping.
They're making it worse.
Now, here we go.
The New York Times.
Trump's false attacks on voting by mail stir broad concern.
The president's assertions about widespread fraud have little or no basis in fact, but are resonating with his supporters and give him the option of raising doubts about the legitimacy of the outcome.
Okay, let's stop here.
Trump has brought up fraud.
Trump has brought up, I guess, China, counterfeit polls, OK, let's criticize all that.
Maybe Trump went a little bit too far with it.
I don't know.
I don't care.
What I can tell you is that trying to implement last minute rule changes is, of course, going to result in chaos.
You see, earlier today, As I'm preparing to film this video, I made the mistake of downloading Zoom, and it broke the audio drivers for my computer, and I had to duct tape everything together.
And guess what?
It made me rushed, and I'm recording this literally like right before you've probably watched it.
The reason I'm bringing this up is for one, it's extremely frustrating, you can probably hear it in my voice, but two, when you try to implement a program at the very last minute, it is nothing but duct tape and chaos.
And now I'm certainly reaping the benefits of this.
It's just simple reality.
As the Democrats, as these local governments tried to implement mail-in voting at the last minute, we don't know what the bugs are going to be.
We don't know what will or won't work.
We cannot just change this at the last minute.
And the media just runs.
It's, it's, you know what?
This article is sophistry.
They are trying to use circuitous, nonsensical arguments to convince you everything will be A-OK.
And of course, it's Maggie Haberman.
Let me show you something.
June 24th, 2020.
And they're ragging on Trump, saying Trump's false claims of fraud.
How about your own news outlet?
Vote-by-mail ballot requests overwhelm New York City election agency.
For the biggest city in the country, a dramatic and fast expansion of the mail-in voting system has come with challenges.
June 19th.
Can you believe this?
They wrote this story five days before the other one!
Oh, but guess what?
Nick Corrasaniti and Stephanie Saul, and who wrote this one?
Why, it's Nick Corrasaniti, Linda Q, and Maggie Haberman.
Nick, when you were putting this story together, could you not have said, maybe Trump was right about this?
Mail-in ballots were being over... New York was being overwhelmed by this, and then you write a story about Trump is still wrong about fraud.
Yeah, we get it.
But how about you inform the people of the real problems instead of just trying to run the orange man bad narrative all the time?
Here's the story.
Donald Trump says potential mail-in voter fraud.
Here's the fact check.
There is some voter fraud.
One story is enough to shake people's confidence in the system.
But more importantly, there are concerns about whether or not the system can handle the mail-in ballots.
While I would say Trump maybe goes over the top by claiming there's going to be a massive amount of counterfeit votes, The system is overwhelmed as it is.
Five days before they wrote that, they had this story.
He could have said, the system is overwhelmed, there will be problems.
Trump may be right about that, but the fraud may be over the top, even though I think that'd still be wrong.
Look, we had fraud in West Virginia, we had fraud in New Jersey, and that alone is enough.
And if you go back in time, there's fraud every couple of years.
You see these big stories.
Acorn, for instance.
They don't exist anymore, but they were implicated in several voter registration fraud scandals.
It happens, and it happens on large scales.
Now look, Steve Bannon, he says the GOP needs to drop it.
Democrats own it.
You gotta drop it or face the blue tsunami.
We may not agree with it, but we're going to have to fight that on another day, said Bannon.
Well, it's gonna be chaos, man.
As ballots pile up in the mail, a potential nightmare looms on election night.
So bravo, mainstream media!
To all the people who said that everything was going to be fine, Trump was wrong, and mail-in ballots, they're just like absentee, we do it all the time, and now all of these outlets are writing today, whoopsie, it's going to be chaos.
What does ABC News say?
The potential chaos could make Florida in 2000 look like a garden party.
Well, we get the elections we deserve.
Personally, I think it's fair to blame the Democrats.
I know it sounds cliche, you turn on Tim Pool's channel, and there he is saying, the Democrats!
Oh, it's backfiring!
But come on, man.
Is this not the case?
Am I wrong about this?
Feel free to comment below and tell me I'm wrong.
I get it.
But the Democrats are the ones who are demanding this, and the GOP wasn't.
They were resisting, and Steve Bannon just told them to stop.
So, when first-time voters, marginalized communities, and youth voters are the ones being disenfranchised, who is there to blame but the Democrats who have demanded this?
In the meantime, what do we get?
The RNC has registered more voters already than we did in the entire 2016 cycle.
Hmm, gee, that sounds like really good news for Trump.
Here we got a story from Bloomberg, if I can get it to open.
Trump outpaces Biden in zeroing in on voters with Facebook tools.
Oh yeah, Trump is using the digital space way better than Biden is.
Here we go.
Zogby.
Biden's dismal support from blacks threatens his election.
Maybe that's why they want mail-in voting, because they know they're losing minority votes to Trump.
I don't know.
Doesn't seem to make sense.
I think the black vote will overwhelmingly go towards Joe Biden, pointing out that, you know, many of these people have their complaints with Donald Trump, but many of them actually have warmed up to him.
These individuals have... Well, they're polling in a certain direction.
That's... I'm sorry, man.
That's gonna backfire on Democrats.
There's no other way to put it.
There are some weird things going on.
You know, Texas is a swing state in 2020.
I don't know how much that matters.
But polling is all over the place.
If you are going to have first-time voters disenfranchised, dare I say, a major, major benefit to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is going to be relying on his base.
They voted for him in 2016.
The Democrats are trying to get new voters who hate Donald Trump to vote.
And if they don't know how to do it, and the people, first-time voters are the ones being disenfranchised, congratulations Democrats, you've just owned yourself.
I don't know what else to tell you, but I'm going to leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 6 p.m.
at youtube.com slash TimCastNews.
Thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all then.
Well, I gotta admit, it took a little longer than the Democrats were hoping.
You see, with all of this unrest sweeping the nation, it had been said several times by Trump supporters that the Democrats were trying to bait Trump into sending in the army so they could scream, Trump is a dictator!
Look what he's doing with the army!
Ah, help us!
Well, Trump didn't take the bait, and so he's mostly stood back.
But at a certain point, there was just not much.
I mean, he had to make a move, right?
You see, in Portland, we're now going on day, I don't know, man, what is this, 45 or six of ongoing civil unrest.
There has been literal death in the Pacific Northwest.
I mean, there's a video going around now where you can see the Chazistani people.
Chaz has long since gone.
But after they shot up this SUV, they rushed in and stripped all the evidence out.
And the cops said that's what happened.
Over in Portland, the far left has been besieging a federal courthouse now for over a month.
Just the other day, someone tried breaking through the barricades with a hammer.
When a federal officer came out to defend the building, they smacked him in the head with a hammer.
We then saw the other day, some dude was standing across the street.
Somebody apparently, like, kicked back a tear gas can or something.
I believe it was the marshals, fired and hit this guy in the head.
He goes down.
Nah, at a certain point, when you've got over a month of far leftists throwing explosives at buildings and stuff?
Nah, I don't- I mean, I get it.
Yeah, we should have an investigation, but I think we're gonna understand exactly what happened.
If you're gonna lob explosives and, you know, molotovs or whatever at a building and strike feds in the head with a hammer, and someone fires a beanbag or something, or an impact round, and it hits somebody in the head, I'm gonna be like, I know why the guy fired.
I'm not happy the dude got hit in the head.
But listen, man, you know, you live by the sword.
Well, here's what they're saying now.
Oregon governor and senators condemn Trump's use of occupying army on Portland protesters.
Most of Portland City Council has not responded to the president.
Now, here's the funny thing.
Willamette Week is like a far-left publication, dude.
Like, Portland itself is super far-left.
When I went to Portland and was covering the protests, they called me alt-right, and then had to issue a correction and apology, because they were like, okay, he's definitely not, but still.
Yeah, they tried to smear me, because they're far-left insane people.
What a pathetic publication, I'll tell you what.
But here's what I saw when I saw this headline.
Because they put occupying army in quotes in the headline, I thought it was the governor saying, I thought Trump called the protesters an occupying army.
I thought the governor was condemning Trump for having said that about the protesters.
And the reason I thought that was because I'm looking at these photos and I'm like, the federal officers guarding a federal building are not occupying anything.
It's, I mean, in the literal sense of the definition.
But in the warfare type description, that they've come in and taken over the city, no, it's a federal courthouse.
Feds?
Federal courthouse.
Makes sense.
So I didn't get the context and I read this and I'm like, wait a minute, they said the federal officers were Trump's occupying army?
Are you kidding me?
So wait, hold on.
When you're, listen, let me break this down for you.
If I'm in my house, And you show up for over a month with people at night throwing bricks and molotovs and trying to smash through my windows!
You can't call me the occupying army for trying to defend my property!
Or, if I call my friends and say, hey, please help, I'm being attacked by the far left, and then people come to my house, you can't call those people an occupying army!
It's literally my house!
But of course we knew they were gonna do it, and they did.
Let's read this, um, we'll call it shoddy journalism.
Most of Portland City Council has not responded to the president.
They say, Oregon's governor and two U.S.
Senators today decried President Donald Trump's use of federal officers to counter demonstrators in Portland, but Mayor Ted Wheeler and most members of the Portland City Council remained silent.
Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley both issued statements following Trump's July 10th boast that Homeland Security officers deployed to Portland were handling it very nicely.
On July 11th, Merkley said he was troubled by the deployment of officers who typically guard the nation's borders.
We demand respect for Americans who have taken to the streets to raise their voices in peaceful support!
Oh, you can't!
You can't with these people!
Are you kidding me?
Willamette Week literally put up a photo of a firework exploding in front of the building!
The peaceful support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
No one should be intimidated or assaulted when they peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights.
Oh, bravo!
What is that?
Is that Merkley?
Merkley, you duplicitous, disgusting individual.
I swear, man, these people have no shame.
This is beyond reprehensible.
You have 40 plus days of them trying to burn a building down.
They're just peacefully expressing themselves.
Yeah, okay, man.
Later on July 11th, a federal officer shot a protester in the head with a projectile, reportedly sending that person to the hospital for facial reconstructive surgery.
Not fun, not cool.
I don't like hearing these things, man.
I'd like everybody to go home, maybe play a little game of backgammon, order a pizza, maybe have a beer, if that's what they're into.
I don't know what they do.
Maybe they watch, I don't know, what is the left watch on TV?
Like anarchists?
Soaps or something?
In the wake of that shooting, why didn't strength and condemnation The consequences of Donald Trump unilaterally dispatching federal law enforcement into U.S.
cities played out in Portland with a peaceful protester shot in the head, Wyden wrote.
Trump and Homeland Security must now answer why federal officers are acting like an occupying army.
And there it is, the moment we have all been waiting for.
unidentified
The peaceful protesters were struck by Donald Trump's occupying army!
I mean, I'm not- I'm not- No one should be happy about the extreme violence and the escalation that's happening.
I got some bad news for you, though.
If you show up wearing all black, And a bunch of other people are wearing all black.
And a bunch of those people are throwing bricks, throwing back tear gas, throwing explosives and Molotov cocktails, and using hammers to break into a building, and you're standing next to them waving a sign, and they fire, and you get hit.
I mean, these things happen, okay?
You know, for those—many of you are probably familiar, I did my share of conflict reporting.
So I mostly covered civil unrest, revolution.
I was never actually in any direct civil war zone, or like an actual war zone, but I was in the budding civil war, civil unrest, and revolutions.
Like, I was in Egypt during the revolution.
That was crazy.
And I've gone through hostile environment training.
It's called a HEAT program.
It's like hostile environment action training or something like that.
You get a certificate.
A bunch of security agencies do this.
It's kind of expensive.
It's hard to get into because they don't just allow anyone to do it.
And one of the things they tell you is that as a security personnel, as a reporter, or as a contractor, somebody's got to be down there.
Never, never stand in line with these two groups.
Because one side's going to be throwing projectiles of some sort.
The other side's going to be firing projectiles of some sort.
And depending on the severity of the conflict, of course, standing in the middle is the dumbest place you can be.
If you are with the protesters, standing beside them, standing in front of them, the likelihood that this will happen was 100%.
Governor Kate Brown also lamented violence committed by Homeland Security officers.
The events of last night at the federal courthouse were the tragic and avoidable result of President Donald Trump for weeks continuing to push for force and violence in response to protests.
You know what, man?
Trump?
Let him have Portland, dude.
Just draw a line around it and be like, it's yours.
Here's the problem.
They're trying to destroy a federal courthouse.
I don't understand why Trump is even bothering.
OK, look, I get it.
I get it.
Trump sends in the marshals, and I think you've got maybe CBP, I'm not sure, to defend the federal courthouse.
OK, because the feds need a courthouse.
But I'll tell you what, man, I don't know.
Tactical retreat?
What happens if Antifa rush in and burn down the courthouse like they've been trying?
Donald Trump can then blame Portland.
You see how this works?
It's a really stupid game.
Reminds me of this episode of Frasier.
I don't know if you guys ever used to watch that.
But something happened where... You know what Frasier is?
What's that guy's name?
I can't remember the actor's name.
Kelsey Grammer.
He throws a guy, you know, he, like, picks him out of a chair and throws him.
The guy threatens to sue him.
So then, in order to defeat the suit, the guy, uh, uh, Frazier's brother gets into an argument with him, and when the guy pokes him, Frazier's brother goes, oh, and falls down and then says, now I'm gonna sue you.
Like, the point is, what we've become as a nation is two sides, whenever they get hit, they go, help, help, I'm a victim, help, help.
Well, Donald Trump's not playing that game.
Donald Trump is like, no, we'll just protect the courthouse.
But I tell you what, in the game of PR, Maybe the best thing would be Trump just to walk away from the courthouse, pull all the troops out and say, you know what, you're right, we're sorry, it was an occupying force, we're gonna leave the courthouse!
We just ask that Portland protect it and doesn't burn down.
And then, when it burns down, because of Antifa, Trump can say, you see, they're destroying federal courthouses.
They complained, we backed our troops off, our police officers, our federal law enforcement, the marshals, and then they destroyed the building.
They will destroy this building if the marshals are not there.
So Trump becomes the occupying force deploying federal officers to attack peaceful protests.
That's the narrative they were always going to play.
Peaceful protesters.
Ted Wheeler and his three colleagues and the Portland City Council Commissioner, I'm not gonna name him, have remained silent since the Associated Press reported July 9th that Trump had deployed federal officers to Portland.
Willamette Weeks sought comment from all four offices on July 10th.
The three commissioners did not respond.
On July 12th, Commissioner Udaly released a statement.
It's unfortunate that Trump cares more about protecting monuments and buildings than he does people's lives and constitutional rights.
We didn't invite or ask this overblown intervention by the federal government.
The young man who was shot in the head by a federal officer last night posed no threat to anyone's safety.
This is reckless and inexcusable behavior.
That's what they were waiting for.
Trump, let them have the courthouse.
Just let them take it.
And then you can be like, if we're going to arrest anybody in Portland, they're going to be shipped off somewhere else because Portland allowed the federal courthouse to be overrun and destroyed.
Or, I don't know, the whole building's boarded up, covered in graffiti.
I don't know, man.
We'll call it a rock and a hard place because, to be real, I mean, you can't just give up a federal courthouse, but what do you do?
This is exactly what they were waiting for.
There's videos of violent rioting, physical assault, And now, as soon as these marshals start, you know, defending themselves or trying to quell the civil unrest... Admittedly, this is... I don't like the guy got hit in the head, but that's exactly what they were waiting for.
That marshal who fired that round gave them exactly what they wanted.
They were probably laughing and cheering and jumped up on their tables and started doing the Lindy Hop, like, woohoo!
And they're cracking champagne.
Finally, Trump!
It happened.
Not Trump didn't do it, but that federal officer, they were so happy they're doing, you know, they're square dancing up and they're all yelling and cheering.
And then they're laughing as, I'm going to say, guys, guys, guys, wait, wait, wait, quiet.
I'm going to write, it was a peaceful protest.
And they all start laughing and they're getting drunk and eating pizza.
It was a peaceful protest.
That's what they're doing.
The Democrats, they're sitting there laughing about how they were going to falsely frame this to blame Trump for what their city is unable to handle.
The quiet from the city council is remarkable, given how much political energy Wheeler and his colleagues have spent since 2017 opposing the Trump administration and pledging Portland would resist the White House policies.
But the mayor in particular is in a difficult position.
For the past two weeks, he and the police bureau overseas have warned that protesters bent on property damage are a threat to civic peace and officer safety.
The president sending in federal agents to deal with those troublemakers more harshly leaves Wheeler Not the worst article, you know, from Willamette Week, so I'll give them that.
Bureau declined to comment. Not the worst article, you know, from, from Willamette Week. So I'll,
I'll give them that, but I'll tell you what, man, come up and
Retribution.
Justice.
Well, it'll come for him.
It will.
Judge approves petition to recall Seattle Mayor.
And there it is.
The Mayor of Seattle allowed the Chas to carry on about its business.
And because of this, people are dead.
The Chaz was gonna be a summer of love, she said.
And then, some Chazistani National Guard opened fire, according to one witness, for 10-plus minutes on that SUV, riddling the whole thing with bullets, walked up, you can then hear them say something like, oh, you're still alive, huh?
And then a bang.
Some people think it was an execution.
I don't know.
I don't know what happened, man.
But I do know that there's another video that's emerged showing people picking clean the crime scenes that the cops can't do anything about it.
When the police showed up, they said, there's no evidence.
Well, Mayor Jenny Durkan finally decided, not after that, mind you, I mean, it was after that, but not because of that, that she was going to end the CHAZ.
That was enough, was enough, These people, we cannot have them down there, you know, engaging in such ridiculous and destructive behavior.
Now, of course, I'm not talking about the murdering of this young unarmed black child, a teenager, in his vehicle.
I'm talking about the fact that a couple days after that, they went to her house to protest.
Oh, that was a slight beyond slights.
I mean, let's be honest.
How dare you?
How dare you, protesters?
Go to the mayor's house after she allowed you to engage in violent insurrection.
She gave you everything that you wanted.
You wanted to control the six-block radius.
They apparently wanted the right to walk around with guns, killing people, and she said, do it with my blessing.
I'm exaggerating, by the way.
Finally, though, because in the act of ultimate betrayal, after the mayor just let them run amok throughout the city, destroying lives and businesses, literally killing people, they had the nerve to turn on her.
How dare they?
Shocking, to say the least.
And that's when she decided, I will crush you.
Sent in the police.
There's a petition to recall her, and the petition has been approved by a judge.
What this means now is that the people of Seattle have to collect, I believe, it's 50,000, here, let me read it.
They say, once any recall petition is approved, signatures are needed to qualify for a special election ballot.
The petitioners must, within 180 days, collect valid signatures from a number of voters equal to 25% of the votes cast in the last election.
In this case, signatures from more than 50,000 Seattle voters would be needed.
The Durkin petitioner's recall effort accuses the mayor of endangering the peace and safety of the community by allowing police to leak false information about fabricated crimes and threats to the media and issuing a citywide curfew without sufficient notice to the public.
The petitioners also accused Durkin of restricting certain property rights in downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill, the neighborhood where many of the protests took place.
In a response Saturday, Durkin's chief of staff, Stephanie Formas, said the mayor consistently has acted to protect the city's public health and safety and to respect the constitutional rights to peaceful protesters.
In her ruling Friday, Judge Mary E. Roberts dismissed six of seven charges put forward as insufficient but allowed one, which accuses Durkin of allowing tear gas and other crowd control events to be used during the coronavirus pandemic to proceed more narrowly than alleged.
The judge did not rule on whether the allegation was true.
The court's role in this case is limited.
The mayor could appeal the ruling.
So, I gotta be honest, it sounds like she's gonna be recalled because of the left, not because of people who met at the Chazz, but because of people who like the Chazz.
Let me show you.
They said, the judge allowed the one accusing Durkin of allowing tear gas and other crowd control weapons to be used.
So it sounds like Quite literally.
They're not even recalling her for allowing chats to happen.
I kid you not.
This is what you get.
If Trump stepped in, imagine what they would be saying.
Look at what they're saying now in Portland.
I tell you, man, we live in crazy, crazy times.
The mayor can do all of the stupidest things in the world, and she gets recalled because the cops did use tear gas.
Wow.
Well, she's not being recalled yet.
They're gonna try to recall her, but I'll tell you what.
Maybe they won't be able to get the signatures.
Because I think most people of Seattle have, I believe, I think it's fair to say a lot of them had no tolerance for Chez.
I do.
Because we've seen the business owners, we've seen the lawsuit, we've seen the response from locals.
They said that there was crime, there was theft, intimidation.
We know there was murder.
Several murders.
Now, the left claims it was white supremacists who did it.
That's how insane things are getting.
So this is where we come to a serious problem.
You have fanatics, okay, on the left that don't care about the news and they live on and thrive on conspiracy theories.
And I'm not exaggerating.
There are conspiracy theories that exist on the right.
Some of them are weird and creepy and they definitely jump the gun.
I recently heard about this crazy Wayfair conspiracy theory and there's, you know, a lot of people are saying, aha, this is proof, and I'm like, you know what, man?
I'm all about the evidence.
If you find something strange, follow the evidence, not the conjecture.
And it's funny to me how on the right, the conspiracy theories always just jump straight to a conclusion.
And I'm like, there's... You know what, man?
You can't.
You can't do it.
But at the very least, these people are just sitting online believing crazy things.
On the left, these people believe that there are white supremacists hiding around every corner going, And so they're terrified and shaking, looking around, and they're armed.
So what happened in the Chas was when these young kids were driving this SUV and trying to come into the Chas, because apparently they had just stolen it, the people who believe they're like tiptoeing white supremacists hiding around the corners saw the vehicle and started screaming, just firing randomly at the vehicle like lunatics.
And then it turns out they killed some 16-year-old and critically injured a 14-year-old.
And that's because their conspiracies are much more dangerous.
They believe insane things for insane reasons.
And they take violent action and commit crimes because of it.
Well, it's finally happened.
We'll see if the mayor ends up getting recalled.
The mayor of Portland has announced there's going to be an investigation of the marshals for firing the impact round that hit the guy in the head, which I just find so hilarious.
It's like, have you investigated any of these people?
No, I'll tell you what, yesterday I covered this in Portland.
They actually dropped felony rioting charges on many of these people.
I think it was like 59 people had their charges dropped, 9 of which were felonies including arson.
Those all get dropped, but then Marshall, heaven forbid, an accidental, you know, someone gets hit in the head.
I don't think the guy was aiming for the guy's head.
It's possible, you know, but you're gonna have to prove it to me.
That's the issue.
It's possible he was just trying to fire at the crowd and get him to back off and the guy got hit in the head, and it's bad.
And now apparently that's Trump's fault.
Well, maybe if you had police actually protecting your city, This wouldn't be an issue.
You know what, man?
I'll count down the days until they actually abolish their own police departments, but I'll leave it there.
Next segment is coming up at 1 p.m.
on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all next time.
A couple of weeks ago, Black Lives Matter activist Sean King called for the destruction of statues of Jesus Christ because he claimed the depiction of Jesus as a white man was white supremacy.
Many people were scared that people would actually start to do it, and this could lead to widespread violence.
I'm not sure if we have seen any widespread destruction of statues of Jesus, but we are now seeing this story out of Boston.
A statue of the Virgin Mary has been desecrated.
It was set on fire.
Another statue in a different city was tagged with graffiti, vandalized.
And now three churches have burned down.
One of them was a deliberate act of terror.
A man drove a vehicle into the building and then set it on fire.
He has since been arrested.
The first thing I want to point out is that when it comes to the fires at these churches, I believe a couple of them, we don't know exactly how or why they were burned down.
One of them we do when someone's been arrested.
There's also a story from May.
There was a church that was defying certain social distancing rules that was also burned down.
Again, I don't know if we have the updates on these stories, but I want to be very careful.
Some people may have desecrated a statue of Mary.
Two of them, actually.
Does this indicate widespread religious or spiritual-based violence?
I don't necessarily think so, but I'm highlighting these stories because they're starting to generate shock and concern.
That these statues, statues of the Virgin Mary, for instance, would be targeted, I think has extreme potential to ignite, to ignite real civil conflict.
Let me explain why, and then I'll go through the news.
Right now in the United States, we are seeing statues torn down of people that we love and respect.
Heroes of this nation.
Notably, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Hans Christian Haig.
Hans Christian Haig was someone who died in the Civil War to end slavery.
Now, some people have argued that the Founding Fathers were slave owners, but that doesn't explain why a statue of Frederick Douglass was destroyed.
We don't know who did that.
Frederick Douglass was a very famous abolitionist, and my understanding is that he had worked with Harriet Tubman to free slaves, an escaped slave himself.
The dude was amazing.
His statue was destroyed.
Now, these are an attack on freedom and liberty, but not necessarily a hardcore and devout ideology.
Attacking the church, desecrating the statue of the Virgin Mary, in my opinion, has the real potential to ignite the devout.
These are people who love, absolutely, with all their hearts, these figures, these very important religious figures.
Look, when you tear down Thomas Jefferson, people get mad.
When you tear down or desecrate a religious icon, people feel that in their heart.
I think this is substantially more likely to result in retaliation or escalation.
And that's why I want to be very careful.
Some of these churches being burned down, again, we need to know exactly what happened first.
But of course, the reason I'm highlighting this is because people believe it was deliberate.
At least in the instance of the Virgin Mary, it seems that it is.
I got a bunch of stories to read for you, so let's check out the first story.
From WCVB5 ABC, Virgin Mary statue set on fire at Boston Church.
They say, The Boston Police and Fire Departments are investigating an arson at a Boston church after a Virgin Mary statue was set on fire Saturday night.
Police responded at about 10 p.m.
to a report of a fire near St.
Peter Parish in the city's Dorchester neighborhood.
Upon arrival, officers saw that a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary had been set on fire.
Police spoke with the Boston firefighters, who said that an unknown suspect had set fire to plastic flowers which were in the hands of the statue, causing the face and upper body of the statue to be burned.
I was shocked.
There's disappointment, sadness, said Friar John Curran, our father.
Is that father?
Friar?
I don't know.
In other words, the pastor of St.
Peter Parish.
The image of Our Lady is so important for us and our faith.
It's such a contradiction to Her love.
Mary would never desecrate anyone, never hurt anyone, only offer them the peace and love of Jesus.
I think that's where it really hits us in our hearts.
A Boston firefighter who said he was among those who responded to the fire shared a photo of the burned statue with News Center 5.
The Blessed Virgin Mary statue was placed outside St.
Peter Parish just after the end of World War II to welcome back soldiers who were returning to Dorchester.
On Sunday, neighbors replaced the flowers at the statue that were burned in the fire.
The Archdiocese of Boston said it will clean the burn marks off the statue.
Corrine hopes whoever started the fire will come forward and said the church would be there for them if they were looking for help.
There's too much division, too much hatred, too much beating each other up.
Hopefully, from this, we can have a sign from our God that we need to keep pressing, pressing, pressing the issue of reconciliation, unity, and peace.
The Boston Police Department said it's investigating the arson.
Anyone with information is strongly urged to contact detectives.
Thankfully, the statue wasn't completely destroyed, and it can be cleaned and salvaged.
And this is, I gotta say, it's getting worrisome, man.
Look, they're going to escalate these attacks.
There's already been concern that a bunch of churches being burned down in Europe was the result of religious violence.
The last thing we need to add to our political woes is religious woes.
But it wasn't just one statue.
Statues of Mary vandalized in weekend of Catholic Church attacks.
A statue of Mary outside the Cathedral Prep School and Seminary, Queens, New York, they say.
Boston police are investigating an arson.
And I want to go through this because we do know about that.
We did read this.
They say this.
On July 10th, the Diocese of Brooklyn announced that New York City Police were investigating the vandalization of a statue of the Virgin Mary at Cathedral Prep School and Seminary in Queens.
I don't know what this says.
It says Idol, perhaps?
I-D-O-L?
I'm not sure.
Father James Carolli, Rector and President of Cathedral Prep, called the incident an act of hatred.
Obviously, this tragedy saddens us deeply, but it also renews our hope and faith in the Lord, as he has shown his goodness in many people who have already reached out to us.
We are sincerely grateful for the help we have received as well.
As the prayers, please continue praying for those who committed this act of vandalism and hatred toward Our Lady and the Church.
I wonder how many of the far leftists are going to point out That the response from the churches has been sympathy and an offer for help.
I told this story before.
I want to show you this story first.
The arrest of the man who actually tried to burn down this church.
But I want to point something out to all of you.
For one, I should be ashamed of myself.
I'm kidding.
About getting the, you know, the father thing or whatever that, you know.
I grew up Catholic.
I did.
And I left the church.
I'm not overly religious.
But I think there's a lot of hatred between people that is easily inflamed for tribal reasons.
The story I often tell people is that I was very punk rock, angsty, edgy teen.
And I met somebody who I thought was a good skateboarder, and I was a skateboarder at the time.
So when I saw they had a picture of Jesus in their house, I scoffed at it and basically poo-pooed it.
And the dude told me that he wasn't religious, he just thought the idea of someone traveling around helping people was a cool story, and that's why he decided to put up the image.
And that was kind of a formative moment for me, where I realized that, you know, my view of what this was, what it represented, was wrong, because it could mean something else to somebody else.
I had grown up hearing stories and thinking the church was, you know, was lying to me, there were bad things about it.
I still believe, for a lot of reasons, the church does bad things, I really do.
But I also think that it's really easy to focus on the negative and you miss what the symbols and what the church means to other people.
In fact, probably most people.
So to meet somebody who was not religious, who was like, all that it means to me is this.
And I'm like, but that is a good thing.
If that's what that image can inspire, then that's the message that needs to be spread.
And I kind of felt like me having this anger and putting that that image, like, you know, associating it with negativity or politics or bureaucracy was Was a bad move.
It should be, you know, you can assign to that image your understanding of it.
It basically showed me that other people have different perspectives.
But listen, let's get more to the point here on the politics of the issue.
With people on the left calling for the desecration of these statues and this arrest made in Florida Catholic Church burning, I think we get dangerously close to seeing To seeing real, you know, real devout individuals standing up because it's no longer about politics.
It's about, I don't know, eternal salvation, I guess.
Look, it's one thing if you have somebody who believes that by fighting and burning buildings down, they can create a utopia here on Earth.
It's another thing when you have large groups of people, the majority of the country who are religious, who are Christian, feeling like their faith, their entire existence is under attack.
You might be upset that you live in poverty and you might blame capitalism, but this is something, this is beyond that.
This is a whole new level.
You're attacking people well beyond any physical manifestation.
You're attacking the core of their being.
My concern is that these attacks really are political in nature.
Check out this story.
A Florida man has been arrested after he reportedly admitted to crashing a minivan into a Catholic church and setting it on fire.
Stephen Anthony Shields, 24, of Dunlin, Florida, has been charged with attempted murder, arson, burglary, and evading arrest after he was apprehended by police on July 11th.
They say, according to a Saturday evening statement from the sheriff's office, Shields poured gasoline in the church's foyer and ignited it after crashing his minivan through the parish's front door.
Shields then drove away in the minivan, leading officers on a short chase before he was stopped.
According to local media, Shields told police he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia but is not currently taking prescribed medication.
So this could just be someone losing their minds.
Again, I want to make sure that's very, very clear because I've seen several people post, churches are being attacked, you know, and I want to make sure that we get to the bottom of this.
Listen, I'm reading you from the Catholic News Agency.
If they're saying this guy, the police reported, according to local media, they're saying he's schizophrenic, it could just be somebody who's sick.
As I've pointed out, however, many of these far leftists target people who are unwell.
They're easy to exploit.
He said that he was awoke on Saturday morning with a mission and that he purchased the gas at a nearby gas station.
Shields also quoted scripture, especially the Book of Revelation, to officers, telling them his objections to the Catholic Church.
O'Connell News reported, he reportedly told officers that he understood the consequences of his action, nevertheless saying the arson was awesome and referring to himself as king.
In 2019, he was arrested after swinging a crowbar at a woman and saying he wanted to kill her.
Shields said he wanted to kill the woman with his crowbar so he wouldn't dirty his blades.
That's weird.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Wood says our freedom of worship granted in the Constitution is a freedom that we all hold dear.
My deputies and I sworn to protect that right and will always ensure our citizens can worship in peace.
I'm proud of my deputies for capturing this man so quickly.
And we appreciate the assistance from all of the state and federal agencies that worked alongside us during the investigation.
Now this story is from just July 11th, so a couple days ago.
And I believe the fire, the fire was also on the 11th.
Okay, so they had to catch the guy.
Now we have other stories here.
Check this out.
Elkmont Church, Alabama.
They say a fire destroyed Faith Tabernacle Pentecostal Church in Elkmont Friday night.
Thankfully, no one was inside or hurt.
It took the help of five different fire departments to get the fire out.
The church is off Sandlin Road.
Elkmont firefighter Susan Pliant says they got a call right before 6 p.m.
Pliant said she believes the middle section where the most damage is was the sanctuary.
The building is a total loss.
When we arrived, this intersection, the roof had already fell and there were flames coming out.
The Faith Tabernacle Pentecostal Church has around 50 members on average for their services.
The cause of the fire is unknown.
Appliance of the Limestone County Sheriff's Office is investigating.
It is unclear what church leaders will do for services.
You know what?
I remember there was a mosque that got burned down.
And when the story went viral, several far-left organizations ran the headline something like, And I said, those stories have nothing to do with each other.
So I made a call to someone I know and trust as a firefighter and asked them what they thought.
And they said, someone left a coffee pot on.
That's really it.
You know, why did a building get burned down?
Somebody left a coffee pot on.
Look, right now we have political conflict and turmoil across the country.
And I think people are looking for signs that they are under attack.
But we have to be very, very careful that this doesn't lend itself to escalation.
Church fires happen.
They do.
Some people are saying, yeah, but this many with the Mary being vandalized?
Good point.
I respect your point.
We need to make sure we have evidence, lest we see large mobs of people going out and retaliating against people and they're making it wrong.
This is why we have the court of law that we do.
Just because you accuse someone and think they really did it, doesn't mean you can go out with torches and pitchforks.
We need to be absolutely sure we know who did this.
And that may mean that we could be slow to respond.
Yeah, but the alternative is worse, man.
I do not believe falsely accusing somebody is worth it, and we need to make sure we hold those who are truly accountable accountable.
The problem I have with guilt, you know, guilty until proven innocent, is that if you go out, you see these churches, and you make an assumption, I know who's doing this, it's this group, then what happens if it's not?
What happens if you find somebody, say that's the perpetrator, you don't have the evidence, but you just believe it, so you lock them up, The real perpetrator gets away.
If you truly want justice, we need the evidence.
Unfortunately, it wasn't just the Florida Church, the Alkmaar Church.
It's also this church in San Gabriel in California.
Early morning fire destroys much of 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission Church.
I'll tell you this.
And this is on the 11th.
These are all happening around the same time.
Here's what I would say.
Actually, let's get the date on the Alkmaar one.
The Alkmaar one is the 10th.
So within two days, three churches burned down.
One, deliberately.
The first thing I will say is that if you are a member of a church, be diligent in making sure flammables, electronics, things are turned off, and that's probably the best thing you can do.
Just general fire safety.
Make sure there's no, you know, extension cords all tangled up.
Make sure your smoke detectors are working.
These are normal things to do to protect for a fire.
As for the vandalism of the Statue of Mary, and the vandalism of a couple of them, That lends itself more to the idea that there may actually be religious or political motivations, in which case, you want to hire security?
You do.
But I don't think that the smart thing to do is make assumptions about who did it.
That could be bad, but you can be defensive, and that would be important.
They say, from KTLA-5, a fire broke out at the San Gabriel Mission Church early Saturday and burned the roof of much of the church's interior.
Authorities have not determined what caused the blaze.
At the 249-year-old church on 428 South Mission Drive, the San Gabriel Fire Department received a call about the fire around 4.30 a.m.
and arrived at the scene to find flames through the roof.
The crews called for additional units after about five minutes.
Some 50 firefighters responded to the location, and they struggled as parts of the roof began to come down.
The fire traversed the wood rapidly.
The interior is pretty much destroyed up into the altar area.
Workers had just redone the walls and refinished the 107-year-old pews as part of a renovation project ahead of the church's 250th anniversary next year.
San Gabriel Mission spokesperson Terry Huerta said the roof last underwent repair after sustaining damage from the 1994 Norwich earthquake.
To see it being burned down is just heartbreaking.
There's a lot to be grateful for that didn't burn in the fire.
Video recorded before daylight Saturday shows dark smoke rising from the flames.
Firefighters continued the battle of the blaze after the initial call.
In an 8.25am tweet, the police department announced shutting down Junipero Serra Drive and Mission Drive in both directions.
So, look, we don't know what's causing the fire.
We have a quote here.
we have a quote here. The statue, in previous weeks, statues of the priests who worked to
convert Native Americans to Catholicism in the 18th century and forced them to stay in
missions have been removed across Southern California. Here's what needs to be said.
I'm not telling you to ignore what's happening.
By no means.
I'm just trying to make sure that people don't jump the gun, and I want to make sure that we don't see violence.
We don't want to see escalation.
It is true, however, that it's not just the statues of Mary that have been vandalized.
There was another statue, I believe it was in San Francisco, of, I think it was Saint Junipero, I'm not entirely sure because I'm not, you know, super knowledgeable on the religious stuff.
It was pulled down.
Desecrated.
So there are some attacks we have seen on religious Statues.
Like I mentioned, I opened this with Sean King for a reason.
He said, tear them down.
What do we see now?
They've torn down some religious statues.
They vandalized the Virgin Mary.
And I don't believe it's the first time.
Back in May, we saw this story.
This church fought social distancing orders.
A month later it was vandalized and burned down.
They wrote you hypocrites!
But I don't believe... We have an update.
I did a quick cursory search.
I couldn't really find anything as to, you know, if anyone was arrested.
I'm not sure.
But many people said they were gonna back off because...
Hypocrites was spelled wrong.
It seems weird.
And it was actually many people on the right who thought this may be a hoax as well.
People are reticent to, you know, people don't want to fall for hoaxes like the left did with Covington and Jesse Smollett.
Many people, including myself, believed the NYPD when they claimed that they had ingested cleaner from milkshakes and it's apparently not true.
So again, it looks like there is some circumstantial evidence lending, lending, lending, uh, giving people reason to believe That these recent attacks, which happened all in the span of like, I think it was less than a day to be honest, around 24 hours, may be motivated by political or religious reasons, probably political.
And the attacks on the Virgin Mary, I would say 100% are, especially after what Sean King said.
This freaks me out, because when you go after religion, you're going to see people rise up, you know.
I wonder if the desecration of the Virgin Mary just secured every single evangelical vote for Donald Trump.
And I wonder if it does the same for the Jewish community.
I understand the Jewish community is not going to look at a statue of the Virgin Mary and think it's an attack on them.
But it is an attack on organized, you know, Abrahamic religion.
And that may scare them.
Because many people understand, first they come for one group, and then they come for you.
And if you don't stop them before it gets bad, we know how this plays out.
If they're going to go after symbols of Christianity now, it's only a matter of time before they go after all other religious symbols.
At the same time, we are seeing crime dramatically skyrocket.
So while you're having these churches being burned, one of which was a deliberate attack, though it seems like this person was just unwell, we are seeing vandalization and desecration of religious images.
Police wrestle with surge in crime in U.S.
cities amid defunding efforts from the Wall Street Journal.
A violent summer hit some major U.S.
cities as police faced budget cuts due to the pandemic and efforts to combat police brutality.
I think crime is skyrocketing due to demoralization.
They've slashed budgets in some places, but that won't immediately affect certain cities.
However, I believe in New York they reassigned the entire crime prevention unit.
I think this was the unit that did stop and frisk.
Then shootings went up.
That's unsurprising.
I'm not going to claim to have all the answers.
I don't know what they should or shouldn't do, but I will tell you this.
The police are under attack.
They're not perfect.
I believe in reform.
I believe in accountability.
But I believe that if you demoralize them, they're not going to be able to patrol and protect you.
They're going to be less efficient because of low morale.
And now you get the targeting of churches.
And I'm talking about the statues.
That's a fact.
As for the fires, we don't know.
But I'll say, man, Heaven help us if it turns out these were deliberate attacks from the far left on religious institutions because they've called for it repeatedly.
And if it is, you will probably see a rage unlike any other.
But I gotta add, you know what, man?
I think to their favor, Christians, their response to this vandalism was, if you did this, we will help you.
Yeah, it is the right thing to do, right?
Turn the other cheek, offer up support.
But my fear is, If you turn the other cheek too much, people walk all over you, and they stomp you down.
You have to defend yourself, but it's hard.
It was Jesus who said, turn the other cheek, right?
I don't know exactly, but I think at a certain point you must defend and try to protect your churches.
Hopefully this doesn't escalate.
But I highlight it because we should probably keep it, like, look man, I'll put it this way, I don't know what caused those fires, but when you get three fires in a day, Maybe that's not normal.
The last thing I'll add is, it could just be the media is focused on this, which is how I end up seeing it.
And it's possible these fires happen all the time.
There are churches all across the country.
There's probably hundreds of thousands.
So a couple burned down.
It could just be coincidence.
Now the desecration of the Virgin Mary, that I understand.
That's deliberate.
But we don't know who or why, so let's make sure we have the facts and the evidence before, you know, taking some kind of action, seeking justice.
We need to know the facts first.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 4 p.m.
over at timcast.net, and I will see you all then.
Perhaps the most important voting bloc in this country right now is the black community, for a lot of reasons.
We're seeing two kind of big Moments.
There's the rise of people like Candace Owens, the outspokenness of Kanye West.
We're also seeing, though, Black Lives Matter.
It really does feel like politicians are starting to wake up to how important it is to actually represent and speak to different communities.
I think for the longest time, Democrats took it for granted that they were going to just get these votes.
Well, now the activists are out in full force, but the bad news is for the Democrats, Because dare I say, as I normally dare, Donald Trump is seeing really good support.
Well, I can do better than that.
Better English.
Donald Trump is seeing his support from the black community go up.
And a new documentary has come out called Uncle Tom, in which they talk about their... It's many different conservative black people talking about how they're treated.
How people, what the names they call them, their experiences, how they feel they could better help the black community.
It's a very, very interesting documentary.
I want to talk about it because I did watch it and it was incredible.
Of course, there's many familiar faces in this documentary, notably Candace Owens.
I will talk about it after this, but the first and most important thing, check this out, from the Washington Examiner.
Biden's dismal support from blacks threatens his election.
Democrats just take it for granted, man.
And Kanye West, he dropped, he dropped word bombs on the Democratic Party that they just assume that he owes them, that he was threatened, that his music career was threatened.
They told him if you didn't do this, they would shut you down.
And Kanye told them off.
I have tremendous respect for that.
You can criticize Kanye for the way he talks, for the things he says, for his behavior, all of those things.
But there's one thing I will always respect, even among antifa and the far left, when you stand up for yourself.
Alright?
I may disagree with many things that Kanye says, or especially what the far left does.
But outside of the violence, which I absolutely don't respect, when these Black Lives Matter activists, they go out in the street, and they demand, and they yell, and they protest, it works, and I respect it.
Because they're willing to stand up for what they believe in, and take those risks.
Now the violent riots, that I condemn outright.
To see people like Kanye, Candace, to see this documentary like Uncle Tom, I think.
I have tremendous respect for this as well.
Standing up for what you believe in, man.
I want to know what you think.
I want to know what you feel.
And that requires you being loud.
Check out this story from the Washington Examiner.
They say Biden's dismal support from blacks threatens his election. Former Vice President
Joe Biden, uh, dismal support from black voters now confirmed in two polls is likely to force his
campaign to choose a black woman as his running mate to shore up the key group, according to a
Democratic pollster in the latest John Zogby strategies and EMI research solutions poll.
Biden has the support of 77% of black voters, while 14% back President Trump.
GOP officials have told secrets that if Trump maintains that level of support from black people, he will win re-election.
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, a black Republican, said in February, game over if we get 14.
Wow.
In the last 20 years, only George W. Bush, running for re-election in 2004 against John Kerry, came close with 11% of the black vote.
In 2016, against Hillary Clinton, Trump won 8% of the black vote.
You know what?
I'm gonna... I wanna talk about this, right?
There's so much talk right now about Black Lives Matter, for instance.
And you know what I think?
You know what I really, really do think?
I think the Republicans took it for granted they couldn't win it.
And I think the Democrats took the black community for granted that they were guaranteed the vote from these people.
Donald Trump, I think... I think Donald Trump... I think Donald Trump wanted to help the black community.
I'm not going to pretend like Trump is perfect or anything like that, but you look at the events he's put on, you look at the things he's talked about, the record low unemployment, I think Donald Trump isn't approaching any of this like a traditional Republican.
I think Trump was approaching this like, I am going to talk to as many people as possible and try and win over everybody.
Unfortunately for him, he's going up against the media.
The Democrats taking it for granted are now at a disadvantage.
Even if it's just 14%.
Even if it's just a handful of high-profile personalities.
Donald Trump, I think, is trying as hard as possible and the Democrats took notice.
We've talked about this before.
I want to show you this tweet here from Rasmussen.
This is from June 5th.
It's out of date by a month, okay?
But look at this.
This was shocking to a lot of people.
They say, Black likely voter strong approval. 25%.
Overall, Black likely voter approval of Trump is 41%.
Now what that means is that some somewhat approve, some strongly approve.
And among Black voters, They support Trump.
This could be noise, okay?
But we've now gotten, I think, what is it, six?
There were three polls before Rasputin showing support for Trump in the black community was going up.
And this, I think, is really, really important.
I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what, you know, the black community needs.
Not me.
Not me at all.
So I will absolutely defer to any of the activists, be it Black Lives Matter, be it, you know, Blackxit, or, you know, Candace Owens' program.
And people, you know, yeah, Terrence Williams, the Hodge twins, they know better than I do.
I can tell you about my community.
I can tell you about what it was like for me growing up on the South Side.
I'll talk about that all day and night.
But I think what we're seeing now is a reckoning in politics where politicians... I think it's Trump.
I think Trump was like, I'm gonna go and talk to these people and I'm gonna try and see if I can help them out.
And the Democrats, they didn't think he could do it.
Well, now they're gonna learn that lesson the hard way in Biden.
Look, what did Tim Scott say?
Game over if we get 14.
They say, overall in the survey, Biden leads Trump 49% to 42% down from Biden's 13-point lead in May, 54% to 41%.
In its latest White House Watch, recipes and reports found that 21% of black people support Trump's re-election.
The polling outfit has found unusually high black support for Trump in several months.
Yeah, but so did Emerson, dude.
This is not a one-off.
Trump has actually He's actually gained a decent amount of support.
So hey, man, to anybody who wants to vote for Trump, I may disagree on some grounds, but at this point, I gotta say, I'm in a very different place from where I was seven months ago, all right?
With as crazy as things have gotten in the culture war and the conflict and the street battles, I'm really worried about a Biden presidency, man.
This dude is ineffective, he's scary.
Too many people are voting against Trump, and that is dangerous.
Donald Trump is a man with a vision.
You might not like some of the things he does, but at least he knows how to fly a plane.
He might fly the plane horribly!
Trump's going, he's shaking around, he's like, he leans back, who wants a barrel roll?
And everyone's like, no!
And then he does a barrel roll and everyone's screaming.
Joe Biden's sleeping.
Literally sleeping, okay?
At least Trump can land the plane.
My thing is like, if you don't like Trump, listen.
He's gonna fly for four more years and you get to vote for somebody else.
Alright?
Maybe Trump will lose in November.
We'll see.
Check this out.
I want to show you this.
This is a documentary called Uncle Tom.
You can find it at UncleTom.com.
An oral history of the American black conservative.
I watched this the other day and I learned a lot of things I did not know.
And I will always say I defer to those and their experiences.
Of course, I'm allowed to have an opinion, and so are you.
Doesn't matter what your race is, you can have an opinion.
But I think I'm one to typically defer to the experts.
If we're talking about medical advice, I'll defer to the experts.
Now, when it comes to certain medical experts, I'm not going to say their name right now.
They've been wrong a whole lot and flip-flop, so at a certain point, you can walk away.
But this is an important documentary, and I think you should watch it, and I think you should share it with your friends for one reason.
The narrative we often get, and they point this out, is of the Democratic black voter, and these high-profile individuals who constantly say, vote Democrat.
I grew up in Chicago, as most of you know, and I don't think Chicago is doing right by I don't think Chicago's doing right by anybody, to be honest.
I think Chicago's been just mismanaged for a long time.
It's one of the reasons I left.
But you got crazy levels of crime in Chicago.
And there's a lot of things that could be done.
But we keep hearing the same thing over and over again.
Trump came out and he said, what have you got to lose?
And I think, personally, I thought that was silly.
I thought, what do you mean we gotta lose?
You can crash the plane, what are you talking about?
But there was a point made, and many people heard him, that the Democrats don't even try to help certain communities because they feel like it's a guarantee.
So Trump said, hey man, I'm gonna work for you, give it a shot, and some people said, you know what, I'm gonna go for it.
Kanye West got really offended, and he talked about this.
He's not in this documentary.
But in this documentary, they talk about people like Thomas Sowell and Larry Elder, and these are people who are, in my opinion, I mean, they're geniuses, man.
I may be just some dude in his house complaining on the internet, but Thomas Sowell, man, across the board, this guy, I think, is a genius.
He is an economist, and I think his race is irrelevant.
But it's relevant insofar as his experience when it comes to documentaries like this and the things that have happened in this country.
So, man, listening to Larry Elder and Thomas Sowell, very, very important.
And Candace Owens too, and many of these other black conservatives, for one reason.
It's like I mentioned, I mean, for a lot of reasons, but the main reason for me is how many of your friends have actually listened to what these people have to say?
I am absolutely 100% And in opposition to racism.
I want to say anti-racist.
I think it's fair to say, but they've made it this ideological thing, man.
Look, I hate racism.
I actually do get triggered with being around racists.
I told this story before on the IRL podcast.
I was in an Uber and the driver started getting increasingly more racist.
I get angry, man.
I have an emotional reaction to this stuff.
I don't want to hear it.
You know, this documentary is full of good people who are just trying to tell you their experience, how they feel, and what they expect and what they're looking for.
That's the same for literally anybody else.
But for too long, everyone has made assumptions, and we've only listened to certain voices.
Okay, I'll tell you what.
You've heard the voices of some high-profile left-wing activists in the Black Lives Matter community.
Have you given these other black voices a chance?
If you truly believe in being anti-racist, you need to make sure you're listening to what everybody has to say, regardless of their race.
In this instance, you've got some people that have got some words for you, man.
I listened to... I watched this documentary and I was just like... I was just... I was really surprised by a lot of these things I didn't know.
I don't completely agree with everything, and you always gotta be careful when it comes to a lot of documentaries.
Because they'll frame things, right?
That's what documentaries do.
But this one, check it out.
Go to the website.
You gotta pay for the documentary, but I would recommend having your friends watch it, too.
Many of you who watch are probably familiar with these individuals, notably Thomas Sowell, because like I said, that dude's a genius.
But I would recommend sharing this with maybe people who are prominent Black Lives Matter activists and just ask them to hear out the voices of marginalized communities, right?
And this is what that does.
So I bring this up in the context of Joe Biden and his dwindling support because I think this is the message that's sort of changing the game.
I'll leave it there.
I got a couple more segments in a few minutes.
Stick around and I will see you all shortly.
Crime is on the rise.
You all knew this.
I don't know why you clicked this video, because you already knew this.
But, well, to be fair, no, look, it's worse than you think.
It's worse than I thought.
I did highlight this story earlier on, but check this out.
Police wrestle with surge in crime in U.S.
cities amid defunding efforts.
Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview, perhaps the rise in crime in New York City is due to people being hungry.
Yes, I'm sure the man who was walking with his six-year-old daughter crossing the street was shot in the back because the guy driving the car who pulled up and shot him and then drove off was hungry.
It makes no sense, man.
Crime is on the rise because in certain jurisdictions, like New York City, they've completely removed, they've reassigned a 600-person crime prevention unit.
To be fair, okay?
This was, I believe, they did Stop and Frisk.
You've got a serious, serious struggle between freedom and security, and this to me is a real ethical conundrum.
I gotta say, man, I do not like Stop and Frisk.
Stop and Frisk was overtly targeting minority communities, and Bloomberg said it was because they profiled people.
I don't like it.
But I can recognize there are problems in these communities with crime and violence.
And now with OutStop and Frisk, and when they did the bail reform, we saw crime go up.
How do you solve these problems, man?
The problems are deep.
They're rooted deep, man.
It's not just... You can't walk up to somebody and just arrest them and think it's all gonna go away.
That's not gonna solve the problem.
The problem is community.
The problem is family.
The problem is culture.
There's a lot of problems.
And it's not about race.
That's why I absolutely detested Stop and Frisk.
Because Bloomberg made it that.
The dude was not smart enough to understand the problems of his own city.
So, you know what?
Good riddance.
Now...
Does it mean we should get rid of the Crime Prevention Unit?
No.
Okay?
No, it doesn't.
It means you need to just figure out... Just, just, just, like, abolishing police is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Okay?
You know why?
Maybe stopping Frisco is bad, so they get rid of this, they reassign all these cops.
Well, that's not going to solve anything, dude!
What you need to do is stop, say, okay, let's start putting together a plan.
Let me tell you something.
When it comes to conversation about reparations, what do they propose?
An exploratory committee to view what the best way is.
That's what you do!
You want to abolish the police?
You want to defund the police?
You don't get rid of this unit.
What you say is, hey, we're going to undergo a review and we're going to start working on new procedures, new techniques, new methodologies to keep crime subdued and protect the civil rights of our citizens.
That's what you do.
And that's why reform is the right way to do it.
Let me just show you the story, man, from the Wall Street Journal.
Check this out.
Law enforcement officials in several large U.S.
cities are wrestling with a sharp rise in violent crime amid a national debate over the role of police, calls to reduce police departments' budgets, and growing fiscal troubles.
Some cities are on track to have their most violent summers in years.
In Milwaukee, homicides are up 37% so far this year, on pace to break the record of 167 in 1991,
which included 16 murders by Jeffrey Dahmer.
Jeez, dude. Wow. Yet a year. The record-breaking year because of the serial killer guy, everybody
Homicides so far this year in Chicago are ahead of the pace of 2016, which marks the city's highest tally since 96.
In New York and LA, which have seen falling numbers of homicides for years, killings this year are up 23% and 11.6% respectively.
Kansas City, Missouri has recorded 99 killings since January, far outpacing any record for the first six months of the year.
Police departments already face budget cuts around the U.S., the result of falling tax revenues from pandemic lockdowns.
COVID-19 has also made it difficult for officers to safely conduct community outreach, say experts, worsening police-community relations.
Add on top of that, man, defund the police.
Talk about You know what, man?
Police this year, they got smacked down from budget cuts over COVID.
People weren't shopping.
They weren't spending things.
People weren't working.
Taxes dropped dramatically.
Then, the riots happened, and they demanded defunding.
That was like, you know, kicking the cops when they were down, man.
Everybody's on edge.
Take a look at this.
Heating up.
Year-to-date change from last year, Milwaukee.
Look at Philadelphia, dude!
Philadelphia, 53.8% from 19.8%.
What is it?
They say, data as of Milwaukee, July 7th.
These are the dates.
I guess this is the percentage increase, I suppose.
Atlanta's seeing an increase, but Philadelphia, man... I live in the Philadelphia area, man.
I don't want to hear this stuff.
Community groups acknowledged the crime increase but say more aggressive policing to combat it shouldn't come at the expense of enacting broader reform.
This is not a quick fix, said Vijay Smith, national president of Minneapolis-based Mad Dads, a group that acts as a buffer between the community and police by trying to de-escalate violent situations.
I like that.
That sounds good.
The only way to unite a community is to build it first.
Amid revenue shortfalls and calls to defund police, Art Acevedo, Houston Police Chief and Head of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said cities are now slashing police budgets without plans in place to reallocate funds or replace functions typically performed by police.
You don't tear down the building you're living in until you have a new building to move into.
That's exactly what I'm saying!
Bravo, good sir.
You need to take the cops you got.
You need to look over all the complaints.
You need to figure out what the activists are saying and say, what's a plan to slowly start reducing these problems?
Hey, guess what?
Maybe the plan is to get rid of Stop and Frisk.
Okay, alright.
How about instead of just snapping your fingers and reassigning 600 cops, you reassign 10 of those cops.
And then every month, you reassign 10 more.
And if the crime starts going up, you stop.
And then you start talking with the activists again and say, what should we do?
Now, I know the activists might not accept it, but you can't just... No more cops!
We're getting rid of the... Look, man.
It's a tough, tough question between freedom and security.
I always side on the side of security.
You know what this means?
If you want to have your civil rights, that means you're going to see an increase in crime.
It's true.
That's not a bad thing.
It's about freedom.
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent person suffer.
Ben Franklin took that up to a hundred!
Think about what that means.
You got a hundred innocent people in New York City being stopped and frisked.
I'm just saying arbitrarily.
And you say, these people, you know, are more likely to be committing a crime.
That's what Bloomberg was saying.
So you violate their Fourth Amendment rights.
Nah.
I'm not okay with that.
So you stop.
Then you see that a decent amount of them are actually, you know, intending to commit a crime or something like that.
But a decent amount does not mean all majority or even many.
In a lot of circumstances in New York with stop-and-frisk, it was a slim percentage that ever did anything.
The reality is, I think you can take these 600 cops and you can put them on patrol or something.
So they're not... I mean, they were.
Don't have them stop-and-frisk, just have them active.
Or maybe you need more cops.
Therein lies the big challenge.
When you slash the budget and call for abolishing the police because of the police brutality, you make it worse.
Check it out.
You want cops to do better?
Maybe you get a good bonus.
If you get no complaints, you get a bonus at the end of the year.
How does that sound?
It's really, really, really hard because some people complain for no reason.
But if you have a low amount of complaints, then you're doing a better job.
Okay, right?
Maybe, maybe not.
I don't know.
I'm just off the top of my head.
Maybe you say this.
Instead of slashing the budget, increase it so you have more cops.
So you don't need to use a level of force, or there's just less crime in general.
Maybe the solutions are counterintuitive.
But if you've got an increase in crime, and you call for abolishing the cops, and you beat the cops when they're down, they'll be demoralized, crime will get worse, you slash their budget, crime just gets worse.
Not an answer, man.
Not an answer at all.
City leaders and law enforcement officials say the months of lockdown, rising unemployment, more guns on the street, and the fallout from mass protests helped create conditions for more violence.
This was a perfect storm, said Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales.
We had a series of events that many of us probably never experienced in our time.
At the same time, law enforcement officials say they are weighing the risks of aggressively enforcing the law, concerned that a backlash from activists, protesters, and residents could trigger attacks on police or a replay of the riots and looting that marked some of the earlier protests.
In some cases, officials say police are backing away from some kinds of petty crime arrests that give them a higher profile on the street, hoping to quell tensions.
It's a lot more dangerous to become an officer, said Ray Kelly, New York City's former long-standing commissioner.
Nah, not a big fan of that guy and many people weren't.
What you see is a backing away.
New York City disbanded its anti-crime unit of plainclothes officers on June 15th, part of a $1 billion reduction in the city's police budget.
The city logged 205 shootings in June, the highest for the month since 96.
Police cited the release of some prisoners from Rikers amid coronavirus concerns and bail reforms that went into place earlier in the year.
So it might not even be the end of stop-and-frisk.
It could be coronavirus.
You know what the problem is?
If that's true, we don't know!
Yo, man, we need to slow down.
Take our time, track the data, and make improvements.
To snap your fingers, cut the budget, release the prisoners, was not a smart thing to do.
I always tell this to people, you know, when I'm working, when I used to do more conflict stuff on the ground.
When you see a group of people running and screaming, the last thing you should be doing is running and screaming.
You have seconds, but you need to assess your surroundings at all times to understand everything happening around you.
And here's an example.
When I was in Venezuela, we had a group of protesters to my left.
Down the street, a group of Venezuelan National Guard.
At one point, I said, here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna go away from them, so that we were standing and we could see both groups.
You couldn't really see both groups, so that we were not, you know, sort of in between them.
And we'll hang out here to see if anything happens.
Well, all of a sudden, the protesters start running, I believe they're running north, screaming!
And so, that's why I told people.
Don't run with them.
You don't know what they're running from.
Run the other way.
Okay?
The reason I'm telling you this story is that, instinctively, many people just saw one person run north, so they all ran north.
You don't know what they're running from.
You need to stop.
You have a split second.
It's not easy, but you've got to think about what you're doing.
Now, with all the problems, with the riots and everything, you've got to stop for a second, assess, not just snap your fingers, because it clearly did not work.
I'm going to wrap it up here, because I do try to keep these short, but you get the point, man.
The whole thing has backfired, and it's just going to get worse.
Now is not the time.
Now is not the time.
Now is the time to actually make sure we're maintaining these budgets.
I know things are bad with the tax base eroding and with the unemployment.
But we gotta keep things stable, man, now more than ever.
I just wanted to order myself a custom Bulls jersey.
I'm gonna type in, let's do, uh, let's do number 26 there, and for the name, let's type in, uh, Tim Poole.
Why did it say Tim?
Ooh, give me a space.
There you go.
Tim Poole.
Tim Poole.
That's my name, everybody.
My name's Tim Poole.
Oh, look, it's loading up!
Is it gonna render it properly?
Does this thing even work?
It's not working.
Okay, let's see.
Let's try a different name and see what happens.
Let's try the name Free Hong Kong.
Wait, whoa, wait, what?
We are unable to customize this item with the text you have entered.
Please try a different entry.
Gee!
That's weird.
Could it be that my name is fine?
Look at this.
It says Free H. Let's get rid of the G and see what happens.
Free Hong Kon.
Let's add the G back.
And, wah, can't do it.
Wait, let's put a space and a G. No, you can't do it.
Space, G. Oh wait, let's do dash G. It's not letting me do it.
You cannot do Free Hong Kong.
Let's do, okay, let's try Free Hong Kond.
I think that one worked?
Okay, you get the point.
This is a story about the NBA and China, and I wanted to start it by showing you explicitly, by going to the store and trying to type it in.
It didn't work.
Now, to be fair, I've said that a lot, haven't I, today?
I'm trying to be fair, huh?
There could be a lot of phrases that don't work.
I don't know necessarily which ones do or don't.
Seemed like my name was fine.
Seemed like Free Hong Kon was fine, but that G, not good enough.
It could be there's a lot of banned phrases, but regardless of how many are banned, Free Hong Kong seems to be banned.
That's messed up.
Why can't I have that message?
That's messed up.
Check out the story from the National Review.
Guess which phrase you can't place on a jersey on the NBA's custom store.
Free Hong Kong!
If you try to enter that construction, the site says, we are unable to customize this item with the text you have entered, please try a different entry.
Or you can put in other phrases of the same length, or just change the spelling to Free Hong Kang, and the site will allow the buyer to proceed.
One can also enter Free Tibet, China sucks, any other phrase works, anything but Free Hong Kong.
That's the story.
A lot of people have tried.
This disgusts me.
When we have the censorship issue with China, if we want to call out China, if we as Americans want free Hong Kong on our jerseys, why not?
Let me try something else.
Let me see if I can do this.
Let's try blue lives and uh okay fine matter.
Okay it's not letting me oh is there a character limit?
Why can't I type in Blue Lives Matter?
I guess too many letters.
Yeah.
Alright, well, there you go.
You get the point.
Let me tell you this story real quick.
tweets Free Watch in support of suspended NBA reporter silent about effort to free Hong
Kong from Chinese oppression.
Let me tell you the story real quick, and I'll tell you why I'm showing you this NBA
stuff.
You may remember that there was a big controversy with the NBA.
And, you know, we had a lot of personalities in the NBA, coaches, players, saying, oh, we shouldn't criticize China.
Why?
Because China butters their bread.
They get good money from China.
But China is engaging in the repression, suppression of the Hong Kong people.
You see, Hong Kong, for the longest time, my understanding is that it was a British colony, so they enjoy many freedoms.
Well, now that it's going back to China, China doesn't want them to have freedoms, and China wants to crush them.
And they are.
Many people are fleeing Hong Kong.
It's kind of scary what's happening there.
Well, I don't care where you live.
Free speech is a right.
Be it a Chinese citizen or a citizen of Hong Kong or any other country, you have a right to free speech.
It exists.
The government can try and take it away from you.
Some governments seek to protect it.
Now, with our corporations and institutions defending China, we have a real threat to our culture and the right to free speech.
With this story, free watch, you may have heard, it was Josh Hawley who sent an email saying, I can't remember, let me read you the story, make sure I get the context right.
Here's what they said.
On Sunday, NBA star LeBron James tweeted Free Wodge in response to ESPN's suspension of NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski, who replied F-U to a critical email from Republican Senator Josh Hawley about the NBA's relationship with Communist China.
Hawley said, if the NBA is going to be doing, you know, Black Lives Matter, why don't they do Blue Lives Matter, support our troops, or Free Hong Kong.
His response?
F you.
He got suspended for it.
What did LeBron tweet?
Free watch.
Amazing, man.
LeBron, you gonna tweet out in support of the people who are having their rights crushed?
No.
You're gonna tweet out in support of the guy who essentially defended China?
I'm not happy with where things are going, man.
I don't think we...
Can allow our culture, our industries, our sports, our movies, our video games to keep bending over backwards to placate the authoritarian Chinese dictatorship, the Communist Chinese Party.
They say the Free Watch campaign started after ESPN suspended.
You know, I told you all that.
However, after the reporter's suspension, the NBA players immediately launched a campaign to force ESPN to return Wojnarowski to duty at the end of the suspension.
Still, while James is all hot and bothered about the ESPN reporter's freedom, he seems utterly unconcerned The Chinese government is oppressing the citizens of Hong Kong with repeated and vicious crackdowns on their freedom of speech, their freedom of assembly, and their freedom to resist beatings, imprisonment, and even death because they believe in a political ideal.
Last week, Hong Kong freedom activist Joshua Wong slammed Wojnarowski's FU reply to Hawley's request to the NBA that China's oppression is recognized.
For those of us fighting for our very lives against Chinese repression on a daily basis, this is a really big slap in the face.
The multi-billion American sports industry, including NBA, ESPN, and King James, ought to stop just talking loud at home, then kowtowing to Beijing, Wong said, of Wojo's reply to Hawley.
Meanwhile, China continues to oppress citizens of Hong Kong.
Last week, Hong Kong's Chinese minders began deleting movies, cancelling TV shows, and taking books off shelves that China feels threaten China's ideology.
The same day, Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung told students not to sing songs that go against China's policies.
Chinese security forces even recently began forcibly collecting DNA from accused freedom fighters so they can be more easily arrested, tortured, and perhaps even disappeared by police because they support democracy for Hong Kong.
LeBron James has steadfastly refused to comment on China's oppression.
I'm not, it's, it's, it's, we, look man.
China's got a serious advantage.
They really do, man.
Authoritarianism is no way to live.
It is a nightmare.
But it's very, very hard to win your liberty.
It is very, very easy to drift into authority.
And China has the ability to defeat us.
They do?
Don't think we're invincible.
We are not invincible.
We are very strong.
And freedom gives us an advantage, too.
But China has its advantages.
They can manipulate.
They can coordinate attacks against us.
And at the same time, our own people and our country would burn our own flag, condemn our own country, support Chinese oppression.
Because they have free speech.
And I'm glad they do.
In China, it's easy for them to control because the people there, they don't have free speech.
No one will speak up.
They will be crushed, arrested, silenced.
In the US, there are certain things you can't talk about because of the court of public opinion and people are getting cancelled.
Many of these people who support this would support China as well.
I don't believe that we can stand for that.
We need to make sure that we as a culture come together around free speech.
And I'll tell you what, men.
There's been a big push recently from actual leftists, high-profile ones, because they're at risk of getting cancelled now, too.
Perhaps a little too late, unfortunately.
You supported this and now you reap what you have sown.
There are people in Hollywood complaining they can't get jobs anymore.
There are high-profile academics and writers who are scared that cancel culture has gone too far, but you should have spoken up a long time ago.
But I will take what I can get!
If you now insist on speaking up and speaking out against the suppression of speech and our rights, then do it.
And do so with my blessing, and I will give you my respect.
But that means free speech for everybody.
If we go down this path, if we do not call out people like LeBron, organizations like the NBA, and these big industries that are going to give China whatever they want, then we are marching slowly off a cliff.
There will come a time when you will no longer recognize the country you live in, and all these far-lefty antifatypes won't be able to burn their flag.
The flag will look different.
The police will act differently.
And we will enter an authoritarian world you wish you would never... You will wish you had fought against it.
But that's the big challenge, man.
China may not be the most powerful, but they do have that advantage.
You see, when it comes to COVID, they can weld people into their homes.
They can offer up fat cash to American capitalists who will eat it up and say whatever you want them to say.
In China, people don't speak up out of a fear that they will be crushed physically.
In the U.S., people don't speak up because, well, they don't want to lose that sweet, sweet green.
You know what I'm saying?
LeBron James doesn't want to talk bad about China.
He's getting a fat paycheck, man.
What are you talking about?
That's the benefit of freedom.
You can sell out your own country, people, and culture if it means you get a bigger mansion.
But what kind of future are you leaving for your kids?
Not a good one.
So listen, man.
It's not just the NBA.
It was, you know, Hearthstone.
It's Blizzard.
It's the movie industry.
Changing symbols.
Changing words.
Because they don't want to offend the Chinese censors.
If we just keep giving in, it will not be pretty what happens in the future.
China?
They can do what they want.
But within reason.
And we're entering really dangerous territory.
Why?
China's running concentration camps.
At what point do we stand up and say enough?
At what point do our cultural leaders, icons, stand up and say no?
