S572 - MASSIVE Backfire Against Prosecutor May Have Just Gotten Derek Chauvin Acquitted In Floyd Trial
MASSIVE Backfire Against Prosecutor May Have Just Gotten Derek Chauvin Acquitted In Floyd Trial. Expert witnesses keep stating that Chauvin was entitled to use more force than he did.
State witnesses even go on to say they would or have done similar things to Derek Chauvin.
Already the worry is in the air that black lives matter and antifa activists are preparing for riots.
Some conservatives point out that at this point the trial is over, intent is off the table.
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In the criminal trial of Derek Chauvin, witnesses brought up by the prosecution keep backfiring on the state's case.
One expert witness today even said that Derek Chauvin would have been in the right if he used even more force, potentially lethal force, against George Floyd.
And in fact, he chose the lesser force option.
That probably throws intent out the window and may lead to Derek Chauvin's acquittal.
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Now, let's get into that first story.
The criminal trial for former police officer Derek Chauvin is currently underway.
At the time of this recording, there is a live broadcast of witness testimony.
And there are some things I can point out, but we'll have to wait until the end of the day for a full analysis, which we do have for yesterday.
And I gotta tell you, we have not yet seen the defense's witnesses, but in the murder trial for George Floyd, the prosecution is faltering over and over again, and their witnesses keep backfiring.
I'm just gonna say it.
While many people are pointing out that perhaps the prosecution is just bad at their jobs, could it be that they're maybe throwing the match?
They don't want Chauvin to go to jail.
They know that many police officers will resign at a time when they are desperate to get more officers into Minneapolis PD.
There's a big recruitment drive they're trying to do.
And what would happen if Chauvin gets convicted after being trained or told to do certain things that he did?
Many officers might actually end up leaving.
So what's happening now is, for whatever reason, the witnesses being brought forward by the prosecution, by the state, Somehow keep backing up the defense.
Recently we heard, in today's trial, one of their star witnesses, this guy from LA who's a use of force trainer, who said that Chauvin used excessive force, went on to admit to the defense that Derek Chauvin was well within his rights to actually tase George Floyd.
And he explained that his matrix, this matrix they have for use of force, George Floyd was actively resisting.
Thus, Chauvin was allowed to use a neck restraint and even tase George Floyd.
This is crazy.
He's a force expert who's supposed to be there for the state.
Basically said that Chauvin chose a lesser option.
He could have used more force and actually backed up upon this.
There's an analysis from Legal Insurrection which is mind-blowing.
Because if you watch the mainstream media, they're only giving you headlines about Derek Chauvin doing bad.
About how the witnesses for the state are saying all of these things that he did wrong.
I'll put it this way.
Imagine you're watching a boxing match.
You're half paying attention.
You're not really watching.
Maybe you're reading a book and the fight's on in the background.
And you hear that commentator going, Fighter A lands a punch!
Fighter A lands a punch!
Wow!
Fighter A keeps landing punches!
In your mind, you're imagining Fighter A punching Fighter B over and over again.
The problem is, the commentator isn't telling you that for every one hit Fighter A gets in, Fighter B gets in three!
So when the fight ends, you're like, oh, Fighter A clearly won.
Because all of the headlines, all the commentary said this was good for Fighter A.
And then all of a sudden they call it.
Fighter B wins the match.
This is what I think may happen with Derek Chauvin.
The state's case is miserable.
And I'm looking at other legal opinions where they're just like, look at this, legal insurrection says the prosecution is visibly shaken after cross-examination of MPD force and medical experts.
But the mainstream press knows they will get more clicks if they feed you the line they think you want to hear.
I'll be honest with all of you.
I think for us in independent media, there's an inverse relationship to this.
That it's, you know, if I came out and said everything was going bad for Chauvin, maybe people wouldn't click this, they could just read it in the mainstream press.
But I think there's a reason why we're independent personalities, and why people who come on to YouTube and social media look for the other view.
Now it's true.
There have been excellent points made by the prosecution.
The issue I'm bringing up is not that Derek Chauvin is innocent, not that he's likely going to be thrown into the slammer for 40 years.
It's that the media isn't telling you the burden of proof is on the state.
So each and every time the defense throws one tiny little twig into the spokes, it's enough to get an acquittal.
But the media, MSNBC, these analysts on TV are acting as though the burden is on the defense to prove innocence when it's not.
You gotta see this.
I mean, there's a video they played today where the defense said, it sounds like Floyd said he ate too many drugs.
And people are saying, I didn't hear that.
The witness said he didn't hear.
It doesn't matter.
Reasonable doubt for the jury.
The defense knows what they're doing.
I gotta read you some of this from Legal Insurrection.
This is an amazing article giving you a different view from the mainstream media, and it's very important.
And then I'll show you some of what was said today, which is just, in my opinion, shocking.
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We're going to have an amazing conversation later tonight.
But for the time being, let's go through the analysis from legal insurrection.
They say, Chauvin trial, day seven wrap-up, a horrible day for the prosecution.
The prosecution is visibly shaken after cross-examination of MPD force and medical experts, they say.
Anyone interested... Oh, I'm sorry.
Today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for the prosecution to a degree that I haven't seen since the trial of George Zimmerman.
I also want to stress this article is written by Andrew Branca, giving his legal expertise.
If you have no more than an hour to watch the video of today's proceedings, then I urge you to spend 44 minutes watching the cross-examination of state witness Johnny Mersel, the state's use of force training expert, and 22 minutes watching the cross-examination of Nicole McKenzie, the state's medical care training expert.
In both instances, the result can only be called a train wreck of a disaster for the prosecution.
Indeed, after the judge dismissed Mersel from the witness stand, Prosecutor Schleider appeared visibly shaken and angry, and he ought to have, given the mauling his case just received.
At one point, Mersel testified that he himself had personally kept a suspect physically restrained until EMS had arrived on scene.
Behavior which the state had been arguing for over a week was misconduct on the part of Chauvin.
I'm sorry, this is nuts!
The state kept saying that as soon as George Floyd was calm and restrained, there was no point to continue the restraint.
That's not true.
And even their own witness was like, no, actually, that's not true.
You do want to keep him restrained.
Today, earlier, another use of force expert said, In agreement with the defense, when asked, just because you have someone restrained and they're being calm or they're not moving does not mean you just get up because you have to take all these other considerations into play.
There's an MMA fighter who testified that Derek Chauvin was using a blood choke.
Well, this MMA fighter may have just undercut the whole case because in this testimony today, the defense pointed out the cops are holding this guy back Wow.
The narrative is now Derek Chauvin is on top of George Floyd, whether it was right or wrong, and people are screaming at him.
And he sees the police holding back this crowd.
What does that mean?
Well, according to the expert today, basically, if you've got someone restrained and there's an angry crowd around you, you can't just let this person up in the event that the crowd comes in, violence breaks out, everything has to be locked down to a much harsher degree.
I gotta say it again.
This guy even wanted to say that the moment Derek Chauvin arrived, he could have just pulled out the taser and shocked George Floyd.
And the defense then said, so, by not doing that and instead restraining him, he was using lesser force.
And the witness agreed.
That was just my mind-blowing.
Imagine you're on the jury and they're like, Derek Chauvin actually used less force than he was permitted to use.
What?!
The witness called it excessive force.
Okay, okay, I gotta slow down.
It's crazy.
With the media constantly saying only one fighter is landing punches, what happens then if Derek Chauvin gets acquitted?
And I think he may.
I don't know for sure.
I'm not a psychic.
There's a lot more in this case.
But we haven't even gotten to the defense's case yet.
Defense's witnesses haven't even showed up.
It's the state's witnesses for now.
This dude gets acquitted.
Everyone's going to be like, but I heard over and over again from the press that Chauvin was wrong.
He was wrong.
He was wrong.
They're not telling you what the defense is saying.
And so in the end, people will expect a guilty verdict and they won't get it.
And they'll say, aha, this proves the system is broken.
It's the media doing it.
He goes on to say, even worse, not only did the cross-examination of McKenzie by the defense also go badly for prosecution, it went so badly that Nelson, the defense attorney, informed the court that he intended to recall McKenzie as a defense witness when he presented his case in chief.
Wow!
The state's witness, who is here to prove the case for the state that Chauvin should go to prison, it was so devastating to the prosecution, the defense said, we want that person to come back to testify again.
That's just, wow, is this going bad.
Bad, bad, bad for the state.
There are two other witnesses today, neither of which went particularly badly for the state, although in the case of one of them, I expect it was only because the prosecution was saved by the bell when the court recessed early in the day.
That doesn't save the prosecution, that witness will be back tomorrow, and I anticipate that the defense is going to have a field day with him on cross-examination as well.
I want to make sure I stress the narratives coming from the mainstream press are not wrong.
It is true that today the witness said Chauvin used excessive force.
Fact.
They did say that is not an approved, that is not, you know, the MP doesn't train in that or that is not an official restraint.
But you see, the problem is, as Legal Insurrection points out, because the state is purposefully using out-of-context statements, the defense comes in, fills in that context, and immediately rebuts what the state has said, and it's bad.
I'm going to skip over some of these other points and bring you just to the worst of the worst.
They say, states witness MPD Lt.
Johnny Mercer, Use of Force Trainer.
They say, interestingly, Mercer testified at the start that he was currently on medical leave.
A prior state witness police officer, Sgt.
Evans, who took over the Floyd scene from Sgt.
Ploeger, had also testified he was on leave.
Maybe just a coincidence.
In any case, when on a medical leave, Lt.
Mercer works in the MPD Training Division, in charge of Use of Force Training and Policy Instruction.
He was active in that capacity during the period preceding the Fort Floyd events, during which Chauvin would have received his department's use of force training and policy instruction, which is what makes Mersell's testimony relevant.
Mersell is also a genuine fan of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, saying, that he had fallen in love with the sport.
This was elicited on direct, led by prosecutor Schleider, no doubt to buttress Mersel's credibility, as was the direct testimony of Mersel about the expertise in hand-to-hand force techniques as both a trainer and a street cop, and his mastery of MPD use-of-force policies.
Little did Schleider know how Mersel's credibility would shortly boomerang on the prosecution.
Schleider did his usual routine, where he portrayed use of force options as being cast in absolute and binary terms, if A then B, if X then Y. Any variance of this was either out of MPD policy, or at least untrained by MPD, and hence a wrong act.
Schleider made use of the MPD use of force continuum, and presented it in the most childish and sterile context possible.
If at this level of the continuum, officer can do this but not that, correct.
What they don't tell you is that if George Floyd was just resisting actively, you can maintain a level of force.
That's true as well.
The defense brings this up.
again yes. Basically he was saying if George Floyd is not resisting you can't use a restraint,
correct? Or you can't use a you know force to this degree, correct? What they don't tell you
is that if George Floyd was just resisting actively you can maintain a level of force,
that's true as well. The defense brings this up they say, Schleider would also pose simplified and hypothetical
scenarios only minimally representative of what occurred with Floyd and ask if the use of say a
neck restraint in that hypothetical would be reasonable.
Of course, the answer for Mersel, as intended, that narrow and specific question, would be no, unreasonable.
Missing from all of this direct, of course, was any context around the complex dynamics and circumstances that often surround a police use-of-force event.
That Schleider wants to avoid any such discussion is understandable, because doing so provides an appearance for at least reasonableness, if not outright justification, for Chauvin's use-of-force decisions and conduct with respect to Floyd.
Another common routine from Schleider, when doing direct on state's witnesses who have purported use-of-force expertise, is to show them the photo of Chauvin apparently, but perhaps not actually, kneeling on Floyd's neck, and asking, is this an MPD-trained neck restraint?
Invariably, the answer is in the negative.
That makes for a good headline, but in fact it's not very informative on the actual issues of the case.
Why?
Just because a technique may not be an MPD-trained technique does not make it outside of policy, does not mean that it was legally unjustified, and certainly does not mean it contributed to Floyd's death, which is what the trial is supposed to be about.
Once again, Schleider touched on positional asphyxia, and once again I feel obliged to note that this doesn't really help the state prove Chauvin's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in the context of Floyd's ingestion of three-fold fatal dose of fentanyl.
He says, certainly, if I did—this is huge, okay?
I tweeted this.
Listen to this carefully.
The writer says, if I had to choose between two situations, one in which I was placed in a prone position while handcuffed for 10 minutes, and another in which I was forced to ingest a three-fold fatal dose of fentanyl, I know which I'd pick, and quickly.
There's simply no reasonable comparison between those two risks to life.
I want to pause right now and show you a tweet from Will Chamberlain.
Will of course is a lawyer.
I don't believe his practice is criminal in any capacity, but he does understand certain issues of how the law works and courts work.
Will says, Wow!
Chauvin's lawyer just played a short excerpt of George Floyd while being held on the ground screaming out, Ah!
I ate too many drugs.
This trial shouldn't be happening.
Update, here's the video.
Now, I want to point something out.
In this video, the witness is asked, does it sound to you like George Floyd yelled, I ate too many drugs?
The witness says, I can't hear it.
And that's fair, because honestly, I would not say with 100% confidence that George Floyd did say that at all.
I can kind of hear it, but there's something you need to understand about being influenced in terms of audio.
If there's low quality audio, someone could tell you you're hearing Yanny when they're actually saying Laurel, which I'm sure you're familiar with that whole thing.
Some people will just hear something different.
And, well, that's just the way it is.
There have been numerous experiments where they show someone saying, pa, as in Peter, but they show a mouth saying fa, and people hear fa.
It's a weird thing, how sound works.
By asking someone, did you hear this?
You are essentially setting up someone to look for that sound.
However, Will Chamberlain brings up the important point.
Someone responded saying, even if it's true, since when has consuming drugs been reason to kill someone?
Will says, you don't understand the defense at all.
Drug use isn't the justification.
It undermines causation.
Chauvin didn't cause Floyd's death and overdose did.
And Will then says, we aren't even to defense witnesses yet.
This is going so, so badly for the prosecution.
No, hands down.
As I pointed out earlier, a lot of people in the media and a lot of leftists and activists keep saying things like, wow, the prosecution said this, the prosecution said this, the witness said this, that Chauvin wasn't supposed to do that, he wasn't trained to do it.
You're talking about murder.
Murder requires the intent to kill, for second degree, and the intent to cause harm, for the third degree, and it requires negligence for manslaughter.
How can you prove any of those things when the state's own witnesses are like, actually, Chauvin could have used more force.
Man, that's just, that's the craziest thing.
Check this out.
Lou Regrouse says, This is from today.
Now Nelson is going over what Chauvin knew as he arrived on the scene, and then observing Floyd actively resisting.
This is important.
In the continuum for the use of force, there's passive resistance, active resistance, and active aggression.
According to the state's own witnesses, George Floyd was in a state of active resistance, using his legs to push and try and get out of the car.
Active resistance.
He then says, Steiger admits Chauvin would have been within his right to use a taser at that moment.
I'm sorry, my friends.
I'm going to say it one more time.
That was brutal.
My jaw dropped when I heard that.
The defense then said, so it sounds like Chauvin approached, was within his right of using a shock device or taser, but instead decided to do a restraint instead and pull back because sometimes you need to de-escalate.
He's now got the state's own witness admitting that Chauvin did not use excessive force.
In fact, he used less force, which is incredible because this witness was saying that kneeling on Floyd was excessive, and then admitted on cross-examination, actually, he could have used more force.
My jaw dropped.
Let me show you some of these articles.
From Medical News Today, tasers can stop the heart and kill.
From the ACLU, tasers no longer a non-lethal alternative for law enforcement from May 3, 2012.
Tasers are not non-lethal.
I don't even think they're less lethal.
I think some departments have classified them as impact weapons, meaning they kill.
Think about that for two seconds.
The state's own witness today.
Okay, so this is not Mercil.
Mercil was the guy from yesterday.
And we'll go back to that commentary and we'll read about what was going on because it was bad.
But I want to just deviate right here to talk about today's witness.
A use-of-force expert who does trainings straight-up said he could have applied potentially lethal force to Chauvin as soon as he got there, and he did not!
Reasonable doubt.
Let me spell it out for you.
Derek Chauvin, according to today's witness, was within his right to use potentially lethal force immediately and chose not to do it.
Maybe murder three, if they say, well, he didn't want to tase him because he didn't want him to die, but he did want to hurt him, and then he died.
Then you have the drug statement.
Then you have Maurice Lester Hall, the friend of Floyd, pleading the fifth, saying he could be charged with third-degree murder over supplying drugs to George Floyd.
I'm sorry, man.
If the headlines aren't giving you the full picture, this is going to be bad because people are going to expect a conviction and it ain't coming.
The ACLU wrote in 2012, they say, in theory, a taser is intended to serve as a non-lethal method of control for law enforcement officers when they need to physically restrain a dangerous person.
But as new circulation study demonstrates, tasers cannot so simply be categorized as non-lethal.
In addition, there are far too many instances in which officers have impulsively deployed tasers.
The new evidence that tasers can cause cardiac arrest and death, coupled with the disturbing trend of officers using tasers in flagrantly unnecessary situations, makes it all the more troubling that states do not uniformly or consistently govern or regulate officers' use of tasers.
This means that taser policies vary greatly between place departments, often leading to vague, outdated, and inaccurate guidelines that result in misunderstanding about the misuse of these allegedly non-lethal weapons.
This is an old article from the ACLU.
I'm showing this to you because while the police are allowed to use tasers, in this instance, Chauvin could have very well outright just tased George Floyd, and he didn't.
He pulled back.
There was no intent to kill the guy.
Amazing.
It's just, we haven't even gotten to the defense's witness yet, and already the prosecution's case has just fallen to shambles.
Let's read now about the redirect of this, uh, uh, of this Mersel, who is with the Minneapolis Police Department.
They say, The direct of Mersel was really just more of Schleider, the Schleider show we've already seen with the other state witnesses, kind of checking the boxes, but not even all the boxes needed to support the state's narrative of guilt, and always by only exposing the jury to half the context, which is a dangerous ploy.
Basing your narrative of guilt on only half the context is a dangerous ploy because, thank God, we enjoy an adversarial legal system.
And that means the defense gets to pop right up and expose the jury to the other half of the context, the half consistent with the narrative of innocence, and in this case, they get to do so with your own witness.
And that's precisely what happened with Mercil, and in a big, big way.
Check this out.
Nelson began by asking questions related to Mercil's time as a street cop, with a particular emphasis on the tendency of suspects being subject to arrest to come up with all kinds of nonsense about why they shouldn't be arrested.
Dangerous job being a police officer, yes.
Are people generally unhappy about being arrested?
Very rarely are they happy, Mersell answered.
Do suspects frequently engage in a wide variety of behaviors to avoid arrest, including fighting, arguing, making excuses?
Yes, they do, answered Mersell.
Indeed, when asked if he himself had ever disbelieved a suspect's claim of medical emergency as an apparent effort to avoid arrest, Mersel answered he has personally, he personally had done so.
All of this, of course, undercuts the part of the prosecution's narrative that is relying on Floyd's purported pleas and excuses about claustrophobia and anxiety and crying out for mama.
Perhaps all of that is real, but a reasonable officer must also consider that maybe much of it is simply an effort to avoid arrest.
The witness from today, who is not Merzl, this is the other gentleman, interestingly stated, when asked, had there ever been someone you restrained that, once you released the restraint, began fighting you?
And he said, yes.
I mean, it's right there.
Chauvin apparently is 5'9 and 140 pounds, according to the defense, or according to, I believe, this article, actually.
George Floyd is 6'6", 220 or 230 pounds.
This was also asked of these use-of-force experts.
If someone is smaller and has someone restrained, doesn't it make sense that they would maintain that restraint out of fear that this person could overpower them and they still pose a risk?
Yes.
There's so much to go through, man.
I'm so, like, excited.
Not in the sense that, like, I'm positive, but, like, just, like, amped up by what's going on because it's crazy.
In, in, wow.
Just repeatedly, we see the state's witnesses coming back and saying, actually, yeah, that may have been justified.
It's just, it's falling apart for the prosecution.
Check this out.
They say this.
Nelson also once again put the use of pressure and bodyweight techniques in a favorable light.
The state wants to present Chauvin's knee in a negative light, as deadly mechanical asphyxiation, or as a blood choke as attested to by MMA Williams.
In fact, however, the use of pressure and bodyweight to restrain a suspect was adopted by the MPD because it was a lesser intensity of force than the prior practices of using strikes, even barehanded or with batons, or even with weighted gloves, to compel compliance.
Mercel concurred.
To take home the take-home message for the jury is that Chauvin's knee, far from being a public execution in a public street, was a lesser force than would have otherwise been required.
Now, I'm gonna slow down.
Let's bring this together.
Yesterday, The defense got the jury to hear from the state's own witnesses that using the knee was a lesser use of force.
And today, he followed up with their next witness.
Chauvin could have used his taser against a man who was actively resisting.
Yes.
But he chose to use a lesser force.
And now the pieces come together.
How are you going to convict a man of murder?
When the defense says to you, murder requires the intent to kill.
Based on the fact that Chauvin used lesser force, that doesn't seem to be the case.
He then says, murder three requires the intent to cause harm.
Certainly he could have used more force and chose not to.
Murder three probably out.
Negligence.
I also think he's going to get acquitted on manslaughter because that would require some kind of negligence that resulted in the death of George Floyd.
They say, Schleider has described use of force in a very static and binary way.
Once a suspect stops resisting, the officer should immediately stop his use of force, period.
But Nelson got Mersel to agree that if the suspect had been forcibly resisting the officer only moments before, that would be a factor weighing in favor of continuing to apply force even after apparent resistance had ceased.
That is, it's not just what's happening in the moment that counts, but what happened prior to the moment as well.
Schleyer pulled the trick again with the last witness of the day, Jody Steiger, from LAPD acting as an expert witness for the state, and I don't expect it to work out well there either, and as we now know, it did not.
He goes on to mention, additional factors that a reasonable officer would take into account in deciding how much force to apply, and for how long, include a disparity in size between the officer and the suspect.
And as we know, the 6'6", 230-pound Floyd was substantially larger than the 5'9", 140-pound Chauvin, as well as the circumstance in which a suspect not only fought police, but fought multiple officers exactly as Floyd did in this instance.
In today's trial, in the day of today, the trial for today, the defense asked the witness, Jody Steiger, the LAPD guy, about Chauvin being called initially to a counterfeiting circumstance, low priority, and then told to don't worry about it, someone else is there.
He was then later called back saying it's a priority one.
Flip your lights on and get there quick.
He can hear from the dispatcher.
They're scuffling.
They're fighting.
George Floyd is actively resisting.
He arrives on scene and sees this very large man resisting his officers, using his feet to kick out of the car while saying he can't breathe.
Chauvin then had to assess.
He's actively resisting.
What technique do I use?
Taser.
Probably the maximum appropriate force for the circumstance.
No.
I'm going to help them restrain the man and keep him on the ground.
Meanwhile, he's surrounded by people screaming at him, and they say, they try to make it seem like Chauvin should have known what these people were saying.
How are you supposed to make out what people are saying when everyone's screaming at the same time, and you've got a large, actively resisting man that you're trying to stop?
I'm not saying Chauvin is innocent of any wrongdoing.
What I am saying outright is there is reasonable doubt.
What I am saying is the state is failing to prove its case.
And maybe it's on purpose?
That's a bit of a conspiracy theory, but I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be true.
In the end, what matters is reasonable doubt.
They go on to say, when asked if additional use of force factors included if the suspect was believed to be on drugs, and whether being on drugs could give a suspect exceptionally great strength, Mersel agreed to both statements.
When Chauvin arrived, he was informed, and this is according to the defense and agreed with by the witness, That Floyd appeared to be under the influence.
So here's a guy.
Someone's on drugs, they're actively resisting, and they're large.
So what did Chauvin do?
He decided not to use his taser.
This context is mind-blowing.
Because if you knew this from the beginning, your view on what happened with the George Floyd incident would be very, very different.
Now, I don't know if George Floyd actually said he ate too many drugs or too many pills or whatever.
But the defense is doing a great job in bringing that up because, as we know from the judge himself back in September, it appeared Floyd put something on his tongue and swallowed it.
Could it be that Floyd was in the middle of a drug deal with Maurice Lester Hall, who was pleading the fifth because he thinks he could be charged over supplying drugs to Floyd, which contributed to his death?
Could it be that George Floyd ingested these drugs and then that was the principal factor in his death?
Or at the very least, without the causation of death being solely unshoven, Murder 2 is gone.
Period.
Murder 2 requires the intent to murder someone in passion.
I don't see how you prove that at that point.
Murder three?
That's on Maury's Lester Hall, who's pleading the fifth.
And manslaughter?
They made it seem like this is the opposite of negligence.
I'm not saying it's true.
I'm not saying I agree with the defense.
I'm saying, from the perspective of just hearing the arguments, the defense has now laid out that it was the opposite of negligence.
That Chauvin actually took precautionary measures to not cause excessive harm to George Floyd.
This is nuts, man.
Check this out.
When asked if a carotid choke, or what MPD would refer to as an unconscious neck restraint, required both of the carotid arteries to be compressed, Mersel answered that it did.
So much for the MMA expert.
The MMA guy said it was a blood choke.
If a police officer is facing active aggression, they're allowed to use what's called an unconscious neck restraint.
That's where they choke you until you pass out.
They cut off the flow to your brain.
Derek Chauvin didn't do that.
As evidenced by the fact that for an extended period of time, Chauvin's knee on George Floyd's shoulder or neck or base of the neck, whatever you want to call it, did not result in the immediate cessation of resistance from George Floyd.
Let me read.
They say, Unconsciousness occurred when a carotid choke was placed.
Mercil answered less than 10 seconds.
Clearly, Floyd was not being subject to a carotid choke for the large majority of the nine minutes, or so Chauvin had his knee in place, and likely never during that period.
When asked if Mercil trained officers that a suspect who had become unconscious could regain consciousness, get back into the fight, and perhaps even be more aggressive, Mercil responded that he did.
This is, of course, is a rationale for Chauvin to maintain his knee across Floyd's back, even after Floyd lost consciousness.
As noted above, Nelson also explored with Mersell whether there were circumstances in which it would be appropriate for an officer to maintain a neck restraint for a substantial period of time.
Mersell said, yes!
This is the state witness, the state's case, just blowing up in their faces.
I'm just shocked by this.
Well, no, maybe I shouldn't be.
The state is at fault.
The war on drugs is at fault.
Throwing Chauvin in prison won't change any of that.
So it's no surprise, then, that the state is doing a terrible job in actually trying to prosecute Chauvin, and activists are probably going to say it.
I think many on the left will look at a video like this and say outright, nah, we get it.
The state is not trying to prosecute Chauvin.
They're trying to throw the case on purpose, but make it seem like they put up a fight.
I'm not saying that's true, but the leftists will certainly say it.
They say, the state's own use-of-force expert testified on cross-examination that he had personally engaged in the use-of-force conduct that the state had been using to demonize Chauvin as unlawful.
That's not a good day for the state, quite frankly.
The state's like, look what he did!
You can't do that, right?
And the guy goes, oh, I mean, actually, we do that, and I did it.
On the issue of providing timely medical care, an issue that the state pushes with particular energy, Nelson and Mercell agree that while MPD policy is to provide care as soon as possible, that must take into consideration the safety of the scene.
And that the MPD policy actually requires that it first be safe for the officer to provide care before the officer has the duty to provide care.
Indeed, factors such as whether a suspect has been just fighting with officers was huge in determining whether an officer could reasonably provide care, especially if that care would be chest compressions requiring the suspect to have their handcuffs removed.
Mersel answered in the affirmative.
Later on in Redirect, Schleider would attempt to diminish the damage of this bit of testimony by asking Mersel if bystanders merely taking video would constitute a reason to not provide care, and the answer, of course, was no.
But that merely provided Nelson with the layup opportunity on recross to ask whether a mob shouting insults and outright threats would constitute such a reason.
And that was conduct for the mob in this event.
And the answer to that, of course, was yes.
All right.
The state tried saying, look, there's some people yelling.
That's not a reason to not provide care.
And the guy goes, sure.
And then defense says, in this particular instance, the people were shouting threats and being held back.
And the witness goes, well, yeah, that's a good reason not to stop what you're doing.
You're in a dangerous situation.
In this regard, then, the people surrounding George Floyd and Chauvin screaming obscenities and yelling actually contributed To the death of George Floyd.
In this context.
I'm not saying it's true.
I'm not saying I agree with anyone.
I'm just telling you what the defense is saying.
This is, wow.
This is just so much more.
If that all sounds bad enough for the prosecution, you ain't seen nothing yet.
It was at this point that Nelson showed Mercel a series of photographs captured from the body-worn camera of Officer Lane.
Now this we know.
I brought this up yesterday.
That the witness said it appeared the leg was not on the neck at all, but on the shoulder blades.
In other words, the use of the restraint can be justified not only to compel compliance of the suspect in the first place, but to ensure that the suspect maintains compliance moving forward, especially given the experience and concern that unconscious suspects can revive and be even more violent than they were prior, even if that restraint is being held in place for as long as 10 minutes.
And that's not just for the safety of the officer, but also for the officer's partners, for bystanders, and even the suspect himself.
Just devastating for the state's narrative, and all of it coming from the state's own MPD use-of-force expert.
Look at this.
It was after Nelson was done with Cross that Schleider attempted to salvage something from his train wreck for the prosecution by showing a still photo of the bystanders, pointing to some holding phones, and asking if people taking videos was good enough reason to maintain a restraint.
Mercel answered that video taken by bystanders was not sufficient reason.
That's when on cross, here's the grand slam my friends, Nelson pulled up the exact same photo, the prosecution had just used, and pointed out in the picture, MMA Williams was clearly being physically restrained from advancing on the officers by the arm of another bystander pulling him back.
Would the threat of imminent physical violence from bystanders be a sufficient reason to maintain restraint on a suspect?
If the crowd is shouting that they're going to slap you, or that you're a p-word, that you're a bum, would that be sufficient to cause the officers to be alarmed about the prospect of imminent physical violence from the bystanders?
The state's witness, Mersel, said, yes.
This is nuts.
You read the mainstream press, they're telling you it's going bad for the defense.
Well, they're not really.
They're just giving you the framing.
Police say Chauvin shouldn't have done it.
Police say excessive force.
Today's witness said it was excessive force what Chauvin did.
That's an important factor, and considerate.
The jury may as well, and Chauvin could be convicted.
But the media doesn't run the headline that the defense got the witness to admit Chauvin used less force than he was legally allowed, or by policy allowed.
Without that context, it sounds like they're saying Chauvin was in the wrong.
In the full context, Derek Chauvin chose a lesser use of force.
That's it.
I don't see how an acquittal could happen.
I mean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I don't think I can see a conviction.
I just don't.
It seems like acquittal is all but guaranteed.
I could be wrong.
I'm not an expert.
I'm only reading what the legal experts are saying.
I'm from both sides.
The left is saying only the good stuff, though, and that worries me.
Because I'm reading both.
And what you need to understand is the burden is on the state at the defense.
If the state needs 99 clear points to prove Chauvin did this, the defense need only one reasonable doubt.
I think we got that.
I think the defense is going to- defense hasn't even started their case, brought in their witnesses.
We're going to see closing arguments and the defense is going to say, you heard from the state's own witnesses that Chauvin was entitled to use more force than he did and he chose not to.
Certainly that would suggest reasonable doubt as to whether or not there was an intent to murder.
That seems ridiculous.
To cause harm?
Absolutely not.
Or even negligence.
If Chauvin chose to use the maximum force he could have, it would have been worse for George Floyd.
The mere fact that Chauvin decided to use less force should be reasonable doubt for all of the charges.
We'll sit back and we'll see.
More is to come.
The trial is not over.
Maybe things will change.
But I kind of doubt it.
I don't think I'm right.
I don't think I can see the future.
So, look.
We'll see how it plays out.
Chauvin may very well be convicted for a lot of reasons.
The prosecution may come back out with some better arguments.
It may actually happen.
They do have good arguments.
Don't forget it.
Don't think it's just because I'm bringing up this, it's a slam dunk for Chauvin.
It's not.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up tonight!
YouTube.com slash TimCastIRL, and we are going to have a prominent commentator, police expert, gun rights advocate, I believe, all those things.
Well, I should probably save it for the actual conversation.
But we're gonna have a fairly prominent personality come in and talk to us about this stuff.
It's gonna be fun, interesting, and important.
So make sure you subscribe at YouTube.com slash TimCastIRL.
We will be live at 8 p.m.
Thanks for hanging out, and we will see you all then.
Last night, over at the TimCast IRL podcast, we discussed how Joe Biden wants to build the wall.
No joke.
Donald Trump campaigned on building a wall.
Joe Biden campaigned on ending the wall.
And now that the border and migrant crisis has reached a massive 20-year high, Joe Biden is now saying, okay, well, maybe we gotta build a wall because walls work.
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I mean they kept saying walls don't work, walls don't stop this.
We see a migrant crisis unlike anything we've seen in 20 years.
Joe Biden has been forced to admit his failure and now he is considering restarting construction on the border wall.
But you know what's absolutely insane about all of this?
Is how the media has now flip-flopped.
What is wrong with these people?
They hated Donald Trump so much?
No.
Maybe not.
Maybe they actually didn't care all that much about Donald Trump.
Maybe the real issue was that yelling about Trump was a quick path to cash.
Because now we got stories like this.
From the New York Times, Bret Stephens.
Biden should finish the wall!
What?
The New York Times is now pro-wall?
Oh, wow, I'm impressed.
How about this one from the Austin American-Statesman at USA Today Network website?
Why Biden should build... Oh, okay, they're just republishing the same thing.
All right, the New York Times is basically saying, we should have the wall.
Wow, that's an amazing flip-flop in my opinion, but I'll tell you why.
I mentioned the border crisis.
Let's talk about how serious the border crisis is actually getting.
From the New York Post, Rhett McCarthy requests briefing on terror suspects caught crossing the border.
That's right.
Apparently a couple of guys who are on the most wanted list were caught.
They've deleted the information because it's national security reasons, but yeah.
You know, we heard quite a bit from people like Trump.
From Trump, specifically.
That when these caravans were coming in, you know, terrorists were trying to sneak in with them.
And everybody kept saying that wasn't true.
Here's the problem.
If they do come in with the caravans, or they do come across the southern border, it's top secret.
It's confidential.
They're not going to tell you they found these people, so you're not going to see it in the news.
And then they say, see, Trump is wrong.
Well, here you go, baby.
Here's the news.
New York Post.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has requested a classified briefing from the FBI and CIA on the arrest of two Yemeni nationals on the terror watch list who illegally crossed the border amid the record migrant surge.
McCarthy made the request in a letter to CIA Director William Burns and FBI Director Christopher Wray, sent on Tuesday evening, asking that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Harris also be permitted at the briefing.
I hope Harris, along with congressional leaders, could benefit from this briefing, the California lawmaker said, noting the Vice President was tasked by Biden with addressing the diplomatic measures related to the crisis.
The top-ranking House Republican went on to share some of the intel provided to him by Customs and Border Protection agents during his visit to the region last month, noting that agents conveyed to us that they have apprehended individuals from not only Mexico and Central America, but also countries including China, Iran, Yemen, and Turkey.
Wow.
He says, while I am grateful to the Border Patrol for doing all they can, I have great concern about the number of bad actors that have escaped arrest and are residing in the U.S., he warned.
We simply have no way of knowing if other terrorists have crossed the border undetected.
Federal authorities revealed on Monday that two Yemeni men on the FBI's terror watch list had been arrested in recent months for illegally entering the U.S.
from Mexico.
The men, ages 33 and 26, were busted near the Calexico Port of Entry in California in separate incidents on January 29th and March 30th, CBP said.
So these guys weren't together.
This is two different instances.
Where people who are on a terror watch list were apprehended in the span of only about a month and a half.
Now that's creepy.
The older man was found with a mobile phone SIM card under his insole of his shoe, the agency also said.
Records checks conducted after both men were caught revealed they were on a government watch list for terrorism suspects and a no-fly list.
They say CBD, that means CBP, did not release the identities of the other men, of either of the men.
In a since-deleted release about the men, CBP said the 33-year-old man had been transferred to an ICE facility, which handles deporting people back to their home countries.
The 26-year-old man, meanwhile, was being held in federal custody pending removal.
The terror watchlist includes people who are known to be or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activities, according to the FBI.
Customs and Border Protection officials removed a press release from their website that announced the arrest of the two men.
Officials deleted the release because it was not properly reviewed and contained certain disclosure and policy information related to national security, CBP spokesman Justin Long told The Post Tuesday.
The press release, which is archived online on the Wayback Machine, was originally published Monday, but is no longer accessible on CBP's website.
When its link is clicked, readers are sent to a page that says Access Denied, and you are not authorized to access this page.
It's not clear when the release was removed.
The Biden administration's undoing of Trump's border policies has prompted a flood of Central American and Mexican illegal immigrants at the U.S.
border, including thousands of unescorted children.
I want to point something out.
I have friends who are not American.
Friends all over the world.
Many of them want to come to America.
And there's always this joke, and it's creepy, about how, if only they were criminals.
That's right.
See, law-abiding citizens in their home country, you know, people from their home countries, they obey the law.
When they want to come to the U.S., they do it the legal way, and it's very difficult.
And it's just sad to me that I have friends who want to come to this country, who can't, because, well, it takes paperwork, it takes time, you gotta wait in line, it's not so easy.
They can eventually find a way to get here, there's visas, but it actually is very hard for people from certain countries.
And they jokingly say, if only we were like the criminals, the people who break the law, who just show up, get let in, and you're free to go.
That's incredible.
And what does it say to good, honest...
Citizens who want to come here when they know that.
That, that, that, that, that pisses me off.
It pisses me off that I'm talking to my friend like, we gotta, you know, we gotta find a way, you know, how to get your visa processed, what are the tourism requirements so you can come and visit the United States.
Because I've traveled all over the world for, when I worked for Vice, when I worked for Fusion, and I met a lot of people.
A lot of good people.
I remember one time I was interviewing this refugee, a Syrian refugee, and he said that sometimes, you know, he just looks up and sees these planes and thinks to himself how crazy it is that just because of this little piece of paper, he can't be on that plane coming to America.
This is a guy who loved watching South Park and Family Guy, and he spoke English from watching these shows, and he had to flee Syria because of the war.
He went to Turkey, and he just thought about how crazy it was that, you know, there's that plane.
All those people are on it, and they can just easily go there.
Now, what if this dude decided to be a criminal?
He wasn't.
That's the problem.
What Joe Biden has done with his policies has basically said to all of the law-abiding citizens who don't break the law, who don't go to Mexico and try and cross the border, he's basically said, special treatment for criminals and not for law-abiding citizens.
That's messed up, isn't it?
Because then what do you think's gonna happen?
It's the same thing with gun restrictions.
They're like, oh, we gotta get rid of all these guns.
Dude, the legal gun owners aren't doing anything.
They're like minding their own business, and there's a whole lot of them.
If there was really a problem with guns, you'd know it by now, but the reality is the problem is with crazy people.
I can respect those who are like, we don't want crazy people to have weapons.
I get that.
You can't take it away from the law-abiding citizens, because all that does, it literally changes nothing.
So here we go.
Refugees, migrants, tourists, people in other countries are being told outright, you're a good, honest, hardworking person, you can't come.
Now, the criminals, the criminal immigrants, you know, smugglers and traffickers, oh, they're allowed.
Yeah, they get marched right in.
Man, is it messed up, I tell you this.
Central Americans looking for refuge from Northern Triangle countries—El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—have taken these policy moves, as well as the overwhelmingly more welcoming tone from Democrats, as a sign that this president is inviting them to cross the border.
At least, that was according to a couple reports from ABC and NBC.
Insisting that the border was not facing a crisis, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in early March the problems the agency faced should be blamed on the previous administration.
Oh, you know what?
Spare me, dude.
Donald Trump, he approached that border with an iron fist.
Big beautiful wall, 30 feet high, concrete from sea to shining sea.
Yeah, no, that's ridiculous and insane.
Instead, we got select bollard fencing.
And it still works.
Donald Trump went over the top.
He was talking about a giant concrete wall, which doesn't really make sense, but it's intimidating.
It's the idea.
It's that Trump was slamming his fist on the table saying, enough.
And we had the migrant protection protocols keeping people in Mexico.
Joe Biden changes this.
Everything goes crazy.
They said the data overwhelmingly shows that migrants were flooding the border because they believed Biden would welcome them with open arms.
Late last month, Mexican President André Manuel López Obrador blamed the new president for the crisis, arguing that the expectations he set left migrants with the perception they would be let into the U.S.
My friends, they are being let into the U.S.
Surprise, surprise.
Joe Biden now wants to build that wall.
Well, I'll tell you this.
Maybe I guess at least some Trump supporters will be satisfied with this because this is a major win for Trump supporters.
Here's what I'd like y'all to do.
If you find yourself as a Trump supporter who was chanting to yourself, to your friends, to your country, build that wall.
And the left mocked you for it.
Well, now you get to show them this.
Now when you go and talk to your liberal friends or family, when you're at a family dinner and they're like, listen, Donald Trump was bad, you can go, well, Joe Biden's building the wall.
Joe Biden reopened the child detention centers.
Donald Trump closed them.
Bring it.
What are they gonna say?
What are they gonna say?
You're gonna be sitting down and you're gonna have like, you know, your liberal aunt or whatever, and she's gonna be like, well, Donald Trump was doing those concentration camps.
Actually, he shut them down.
Joe Biden opened them.
Well, the wall was right.
Joe Biden wants to rebuild the wall.
He wants to restart the wall.
Here, let me pull it up for you from the Independent, a left-wing publication.
It's that simple, isn't it?
Here's what they say.
Construction of Trump's border wall may continue under Biden.
Administration admits.
Construction on Donald Trump's border wall may continue under Joe Biden's administration.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told department employees that he may be green lighting work on the wall to plug gaps in the current wall.
Wait, wait, you mean to tell me that he wants to make Trump's wall bigger?
The wall just got 20 feet longer?
So Trump secured select areas.
There's still gaps.
He didn't build a massive wall from sea to shining sea, but he did secure certain areas.
There are still gaps.
Donald Trump is not president anymore.
This means Trump's administration is out.
Trump's plans and policies have been set aside or canceled outright or frozen.
Joe Biden is now picking up the project and saying, come on, man, we're going to make Donald Trump's wall bigger.
It's got to be bigger.
There's no migrant crisis.
Yeah, there you go.
The Washington Times reported that it reviewed notes from a recent discussion between Mayorkas and employees of ICE.
It's not a single answer to a single question.
There are different projects that the chief of the Border Patrol has presented and the acting commissioner of CBP presented to me, Mr. Mayorkas reportedly said.
The president has communicated quite clearly his decision that the emergency that triggered the devotion of DOD funds to the construction of the border wall has ended.
But that leaves room to make decisions as the administration, as part of the administration, in particular areas of the wall that need renovation.
Particular projects that need to be finished.
Oh-ho!
Those plans include filling gaps, installing gates, and adding technology to parts of the wall that have been finished, but have not been outfed.
Is Joe Biden upping the ante and making the wall even more secure?
Hey look man, I'll take the win.
Joe Biden reopens these child migrant detention centers.
I don't like them.
I don't like the idea that these kids are being separated from their families or they're in these horrible conditions.
But what you need to realize is the alternative is worse.
There's this really scary video, man.
I don't know if you guys have seen it.
It's horrifying.
Nine-year-old kid wandering the desert.
CBP pulls up and they film this.
Bless the hearts of these CBP agents, man.
These people are heroes.
They find this nine-year-old kid crying.
See, these smugglers, these traffickers, use these kids as props so they can cross the border and say, I'm just with my child.
And then once they're off, they're like, later, kid.
And this kid's walking around crying, because what they do is, they cross the border, and later kid, or they bring the kid back and keep bouncing him back and forth, so that if someone gets caught, they can be like, oh, well, I'm with my kid.
I'm a refugee, they say.
No, these are criminals.
They're refugees, don't get me wrong.
Yeah, I want to help them.
But this CBP crew, I believe it was CBP, they pull up, this kid walks up to him crying, begging for help, wandering the desert.
How about this?
How about you abolish ICE?
How about you abolish DHS?
All those things the left wanted to do.
No CBP.
No Customs and Border Protection.
Because I talked about that too.
And then leave this nine-year-old kid to wander the desert and die.
These people on the left don't understand I suppose it's true of a lot of people.
They don't understand how to plan ahead.
It's like, dude, please learn how to play chess.
You know what I mean?
If I move my pawn here, what will they do?
Oh, they took it.
And I got nothing for it.
Don't make moves that do that.
You move your knight, you want to make sure that your knight is secured and backed up by other pieces.
So if they take your piece, you take it back.
You plan ahead.
You strategize.
So the left comes out and they say, we're seeing awful things in these facilities.
So what do they propose?
I get it.
Get rid of the facility.
It's like, dude, did you stop to think about what happens if those facilities go away?
Well, Donald Trump shut them down.
Why?
Because he's a populist.
And when the people were like, we demand an end to these facilities, he said, you got it.
Then what?
Okay, well now we got to keep the people in Mexico.
Joe Biden doesn't think ahead.
Joe Biden says, come on man, you know, come on in, you know, open up the gates, no deportations.
Then they flood through.
It's a surge not seen in 15 or 20 years.
And then Joe Biden's like, oops, I guess we'll have to reopen these facilities.
Then he starts putting kids under bridges in McAllen, Texas.
Now he's going, uh, we probably got to rebuild that wall.
It's insane to me that they don't stop to think about the ramifications of their actions.
And this is what happens.
Children suffer because of it.
The story I tell is basically something I refer to as a Chinese finger trap problem, where sometimes the solutions are counterintuitive.
This is not necessarily the case, but I often talk about, in my experience, seeing a cop, for instance, at a protest.
Someone will be in the street and he'll be like, I gotta get this person out of the street.
I know.
If I arrest him, he won't be in the street anymore.
That's true.
If you arrest him, he won't be in the street.
The next day, 10 to 100 new protesters show up screaming about police brutality.
Why was he arrested?
He was protesting his free speech, blah blah blah.
This is what happens here.
They say, you've got kids in detention centers?
Shut down the detention centers.
Congratulations.
Then you don't have kids in detention centers, but then you have kids wandering the desert, dehydrated, sick, and dying.
There's no simple answer to this other than, well, there's no simple answer to this, but Joe Biden should absolutely be slamming his fist on the table saying, remain in Mexico, build the wall.
Because now it's worse than it's been in a long time.
And all Joe Biden has done so far is made everything worse and then backtracked.
Why were these past two and a half, nearly three months, why is it that we gave Biden the leeway in any capacity to screw this up so bad?
He screwed it up so bad, he's reversing course and bringing back Trump policy.
Yeah, well, all of these people on the left who voted for Joe Biden because Trump said nasty things, they're not going to care.
They're not going to pay attention.
But I tell you this, take these stories, show them to them and say, back this up.
Why is Joe Biden now saying we got to have a wall?
Why is Joe Biden saying we, you know, his administration, mind you, that we want to restart construction in key areas.
In fact, up the security on them with new technology as well.
That's above and beyond what Trump was doing.
What happened?
Was Trump right?
Did you vote for the guy?
Or at the very least, is Trump wrong, and now you voted for a guy who's doing the exact same thing?
Amazing, isn't it?
I love this from the New York Times.
We should finish the wall or the next Trump will.
Okay, what?
If you think the wall is bad, then don't build it.
And if another Trump comes around and builds it, okay, well, what?
I love it.
The New York Times, Bret Stephens writes, the most harrowing story I've read in the Times in recent
days was Miriam Jordan's account of a car crash last month in
Southern California involving a Ford expedition that had come from Mexico.
Straight through a breach in the border wall, the Ford was crammed with 25 people when it had tracked a
trailer rig on Route 115, 110 miles east of San Diego.
Few of the survivors have been able to describe what happened next.
The crunch of metal and glass, the bodies flung dozens of feet across the pavement, twelve people died on the spot, a thirteenth at a nearby hospital.
Jordan follows the stories of the victims and survivors, and there's a heartbreaking sameness to them.
People who have been driven by fear, or want, from their homes in Mexico and Central America, and who are willing to take grave risks and pay exorbitant sums to make it to the United States, These are not terrorists, gang members, low-lives, benefit-seekers, accepting their willingness to violate U.S.
immigration laws.
Lawbreakers.
They're literally lawbreakers.
Don't play those games, dude.
They are seeking the American dream.
I respect that.
Worthy of our compassion and respect.
Absolutely.
100%.
I'm sick of these woke leftists just being like, America's the worst and it's a slavocracy and 1619 and we hate this country.
I'm like, dude.
Tell that to the people who just illegally drove through the country and driving through desert risking their lives.
Or tell to the people who got, you know, tell to these kids, man.
Nah, they want to come here because America's awesome.
But, you know, they're lawbreakers.
Literally.
They're criminals.
I think it's funny.
I remember there's a, like, there's an argument.
You can't say illegal immigrant because people aren't illegal.
And I'm like, yeah, if you're using the word illegal to describe the person, I agree with that.
A person isn't illegal.
People exist.
It's like a weird semantic argument.
Sure.
And then I think the AP starts saying, unauthorized immigrant.
Unauthorized immigrant.
Okay, that one works.
They were trying to be neutral.
They didn't want to say illegal immigrant.
They didn't want to say immigrant.
They needed something different.
The left likes to say all immigrants are the same.
That's not true.
And the right differentiates between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.
And I was talking to a friend, and I was like, I think the main difference is that there's immigrants and criminal immigrants.
You know, like, they commit crimes.
So, like, there's... So, this was my assessment.
If you're saying a person can't be illegal, okay, I agree, but a person can be a criminal.
So you have legal immigrants and criminal immigrants.
Criminal immigrants are people who knowingly violate the law, There are people who smuggle children.
There are people who bring in drugs.
Not all of them do that.
Some people do just want a better life, and I respect their vision of the American dream.
But criminal's criminal.
Now, does that necessarily mean, you know, we should just leave laws in there?
Law does not equal morality.
But if you break the law, you're a criminal.
I mean, that's like... I don't know how else to say it, right?
So you have people who are willfully breaking the law.
Right.
Those people aren't illegal.
They're criminals.
All right.
You know, he says, no, they're only lawbreakers in violating US immigration law.
As I mentioned earlier in the segment, I have friends who want to come here who don't break the laws.
And so you have to think about someone who's willing to break the law versus someone who isn't.
And who would you rather have coming and working in your country?
The person who is unwilling to break the law or the person who is?
I'm sorry, man.
Very simply put, there are a lot of people who are desperate, and I don't want to blanket every single one of them, but if you have people who are absolutely willing to break the law, you have criminal immigrants, and then you have legal immigrants.
And if I had to choose between who we were going to allow to reap the benefits of the American Dream and who we were seeking to protect, it would be the law-abiding immigrants who want to come here and help out and live a good life.
Now, I think everybody deserves a chance, everybody deserves a second chance, and everybody, you know, I understand why they want to come here.
But if you're somebody who has a propensity for law-breaking or disrespect for our system of laws, I'm not entirely sure these are the people that would flourish in this country if they're willing to do that.
That's why we have legal immigration.
To make sure that people come here, that they can find work, they can function properly in society, and not wander through the desert and suffer or die or, you know, just be a net negative.
We want everyone to be a net positive.
If people come here and they don't know where they're going, they don't know what they're doing, well, they might drive through a barrier and get slammed into by a Mack truck or something and then a bunch of people die.
We're trying to avoid that.
I can't believe this video of this kid, man.
It's horrifying, this nine-year-old kid.
Show that to people and say, you want to get rid of CBP?
The truth is, most people don't.
But the Democrats have become, they've been ensnared by this radicalism from social media.
You think about the fact that if you poll the average person, they'll tell you voter ID is legitimate.
I think there was one poll saying, like, 73% of black voters in Georgia agree with voter ID.
Then you turn on the TV and they're like, nope, no one wants voter ID.
And it's like, but everybody kind of wants it.
The Democrats are pandering to extremists, and that's why you get policies like this.
And then it's funny to see New York Times even come out and be like, build that wall!
All right.
Well, I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 1 p.m.
on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all then.
In what's probably surprising to no one, quality of life in New York City plummets, taxes are skyrocketing, at least according to this opinion piece from Michael Goodwin for the New York Post.
And when I started reading about what was going on in New York, and honestly just from what I already know because of the pandemic, I started to think it wasn't an issue of voting, it wasn't an issue of governance, It's an issue of social enforcement, cultural enforcement, and culture.
They say politics is downstream from culture, and that's true.
And though we know that Governor Cuomo and Bill de Blasio did really, really awful jobs, the problem is the cost, the quality of life in New York going down is due to The people who live there.
The actions they take, the things they believe, the things they enforce, and the things they demand.
Voting probably wouldn't change that.
It's an issue of the media.
I want to read for you what he says about New York, Michael Goodwin.
And he brings up voter ID.
We have this other article from the National Review that says, why not fewer voters?
It's just from the other day.
I'm not entirely convinced that would change anything because ultimately, what we experience is due to marketing and media manipulation.
Over the New York Post, Michael Goodwin writes, No man's life, liberty, or property are safe when the
legislature is in session.
That's how Gideon Tucker, a New Yorker who knew Albany as a former legislator,
Secretary of State and judge, put it back in 1866.
His wisdom, as demonstrated repeatedly over the ages, is timeless.
Yet there is something different and especially troubling about this time.
The possibility of a permanent decline and the ultimate destruction of the New York we know is unmatched in modern memory.
With Republicans reduced to hecklers, Albany Democrats oblivious or reckless or both, are marching toward the cliff in an Alfred E. Newman, what me worry way, the rising chorus of stop goes unheeded.
I'm gonna pause for a second.
How many of you know who Alfred E. Newman is?
The guy from Mad Magazine.
It's been a long time since I've read that magazine.
Listen.
Since the pandemic started, we have seen a decay in small business in New York.
We've heard about how it's become a ghost town.
Crime is skyrocketing.
But the laws are meaningless to a certain degree.
Now, obviously, you should follow the law.
The laws get put in place due to laziness and lethargy, apathy from the culture, from the people.
It's also about what people are willing to enforce and willing to do.
When the state says, we're shutting you down, they go, okay.
When the state says, you must do X, and they go, okay, and then they get mad at you when you don't do it, Well, there's your problem.
A few people who don't know what they're doing dictate policy for 10 million, and more than enough of them are just willing to say, okay, whatever, and then everything burns down.
The reason why this is so important is because if you go back and look at the culture revolution in China, for instance, It wasn't necessarily government.
It was a cult-like ideology.
It was bottom-up.
And there was that one famous moment where they were told to melt down all of your tools.
I guess to make weapons or something.
And they ended up creating pig iron, they called it.
Brittle and useless!
But that's what they did when the commanding authorities had to do it.
When your society reaches a point where you have more sheep than shepherds, well then your society falls apart.
And it feels like we're dangerously close to that position.
Some lunatic in government, Cuomo for instance, who kills 15,000 people says, y'all need to go do this.
And then we sit here and watch everything burn down.
Much like the pig iron moment of the Chinese cultural revolution.
I wonder if people are going to look back at the pandemic and say, Well, look.
Texas ended its lockdown, and its COVID cases are going down.
Florida has a well below average COVID case rate.
Their lockdown ended some time ago.
Is it possible at a certain point they're gonna say some idiot governor demanded people lock things down and they destroyed their own economy resulting in collapse and catastrophe?
It's entirely possible indeed.
I mean, the big difference is in China, you know, you get like 50 million dead, maybe 100 million altogether.
In the United States, we have the deaths from COVID.
People aren't dying because their businesses are being destroyed.
Their lives are, and I'm sure this could result in people losing their lives.
Seriously, like people who can't afford insulin, for instance.
They're going to say, Washington is sending trainloads of money to blue states to bail out their high-tax, high-spend habits.
As longtime government guru Dick Ravitch writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Congress has been generous, allocating more than $12 billion to New York State, $6 billion to the city, $6 billion to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and $9 billion to the state's schools.
The states take raises.
The state's take raises the total budget about to be adopted to $212 billion, some $18 billion higher than the fiscal year that just ended.
Florida, which has 2 million more people, will make do with spending $97 billion.
But in Albany, it's never enough, not as long as the legislature is in session.
Despite the bailout and the December pandemic stimulus, and the ones before that, Governor Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers are launching $4 billion of new tax hikes.
Apparently, being the highest taxed state by most measurements doesn't satisfy them.
They want to be number one across the board.
Some people are saying that people might see a top tax rate 50% Incredible.
You tack in all the other taxes and you're basically spending everything.
Most people don't know this too.
New York City is one of the few cities with a city income tax.
They say naturally.
They say only corporations and the really rich will be hit but don't believe them.
Tax hikes trickle down and that they tend to reduce the economic activity of those who pay them.
A decline that eventually hits everyone.
Having the government redistribute more taxpayer money?
At this historic juncture, a terrible idea.
I'll give you a hard example.
This may sound counterintuitive, but raising tax rates could actually decrease tax revenue.
It's really simple.
If someone has a dollar, and they're taxed at 1%, every time they trade that dollar, the government gets 1% of that transaction.
So, more transactions are better for the government.
Volume, for instance.
There are some instances where, one specific example that I was told when I was younger, in Cook County, which is Chicago, they raised the sales tax by a fraction of a percent.
All of a sudden, this Home Depot shuts down, and then they reopen only a few miles away in DuPage County.
This was explained to me by my friend's dad who was a contractor that, listen, if you're gonna spend a couple hundred thousand dollars a year for your business and supplies from Home Depot, that fraction of a percent makes, it's big.
You're willing to drive an extra 10, 15 miles to pick up your supplies if you're gonna save tens of thousands of dollars.
So they will.
By increasing the sales tax rate, they actually lost business to other counties.
Something that needs to be considered.
It's not always absolute, of course.
It's possible that people just don't want to leave New York, but the other issue is Cuomo himself has already said in the past, God forbid if the rich leave, or something to that effect.
Well, bro, you raise taxes like this, they're gonna leave.
Ah, but there it is.
They already did.
When the pandemic kicked off, about half a million people from Manhattan from New York left.
Mostly upper-class individuals.
Tax hikes will kill more businesses and cause others to look for more hospitable turf.
WAGs already have dubbed Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio the employees of the month in Florida.
Besides, even if we're true that only the rich will get hit, raising taxes sends the wrong message in a state where so many people and businesses already have left or are thinking about it exactly.
What business would want to come here now?
Why should existing ones continue to pay more and more for dangerous and dirty streets and arbitrary pandemic shutdowns?
The answer for many is no, no, hell no.
And they have given up on New York.
The proof is in the sagging real estate market and the empty storefronts in even the best locations.
Not all of those leaving are rich, but they're all afraid.
And not just of the inevitable cost of living increases that follow as the taxes ripple through the housing, services, transportation, and every bottle of beer and bag of potato chips sold.
Let's stop right now and tell you exactly what this means.
It's entropy.
It's a downward spiral.
When Detroit started seeing people leave, eventually the cost of services have to go up to compensate for those that have left.
Services that have a specific size that can't be changed have a static cost.
Let me slow down.
Water, for instance.
This was big during Flint, and it explains a lot about the water crisis.
Let's say a city has a million people, and there's a water system delivering water to all parts of the city.
It costs $1,000,000 per month.
With 1,000,000 people, everybody pays $1 per month.
Not a big deal for the average person.
It's just a buck.
Here you go.
We get water.
Boom.
Now, what happens when half of those people leave?
All of a sudden, people see their water bills double.
Now they gotta spend $2 a month.
Now they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I wasn't prepared for a water bill at $2 a month.
The reality is it's more expensive than that.
Probably cost people like $50 to $70 for their water on their property.
Then when half the people leave, it doubles to like $150.
And now you have, because the city is shrinking because people are leaving, the cost per person keeps going up for basic goods and services.
With less people, there's less tax revenue.
It's a lot harder for them to generate the money they need.
Bills go up, and then the services get worse.
When the water bill gets too high, people say, I can't afford to pay this anymore, so they leave, and eventually the city collapses.
New York may be on track for something similar, and it's all due to the Democratic leadership.
They say.
Not all those leaving are rich, but they're all afraid.
Many are also understandably afraid of crime and public disorder.
A snapshot of NYPD stats over two years paints an unmistakable picture of a city in serious decline.
Murder climbed nearly 45% last year, and is up an additional 13.5% this year.
14.5% this year.
The increases translate into an additional 153 New Yorkers shot, stabbed, or strangled.
Shootings are up 72% in two years.
Car thefts are up a staggering 91%.
The city is in a death spiral, with unprovoked attacks and subway pushings adding more reason for rational fear.
Albany's answer?
Put more handcuffs on cops.
Turn just about every criminal suspect loose.
Empty the prisons and raise taxes.
Also, let's give money, 2.1 billion to be exact, to illegal immigrants by creating an excluded workers fund.
Coupled with sanctuary status, the big progressive handout will be heard all the way to Central America, if only such compassion extended to taxpayers.
Against that backdrop, there is zero surprise in the bulletin of bad news released by comptroller Tom DiNapoli.
He reported Tuesday that of the nearly 2 million jobs the state lost during the pandemic, less than half have been recovered, meaning a million fewer people are working than a year ago.
And that means less tax revenue.
That means trains are going to go up.
You want to ride the subway?
Cost is going to go up.
Uh-oh!
Poor people can't afford it.
They're going to jump the turnstile.
Then you're going to get cops taking those people into custody.
Then you have less workers.
It is a death spiral.
Among 12 sectors, the construction industry is the closest to full recovery and has gained back just 74% of the jobs it lost.
New Yorkers would be lucky if Albany had its version of the Hippocratic Oath requiring rulers to at least do no harm.
Instead, in a bid to raise even more money to spend, the state is authorizing recreational use of marijuana and allowing online sports betting.
I'm gonna stop there and say, that's actually a good thing.
I'm in favor of that.
People shouldn't be arrested for recreational marijuana.
And if people want to gamble, so be it.
The problem with gambling is, though, when people lose all their money.
I guess the problem with anything is addiction.
But I actually think that's... I think those things will help the city of New York.
Also, a lot of people have stocks in online gaming companies.
Combined with the decriminalization of most quality-of-life offenses, including street prostitution, Albany is hell-bent on heaping more degrading experiences on those hardy souls who don't or can't leave, all because it can't control its spending.
There's another lesson in Albany's actions, and this one pertains to Cuomo.
Beset by outrageous scandals that pile up by the day, and his survival dependent on two investigations, a pitch to his supporters is that he is an indispensable break on the tax-and-spend criminal coddling instincts of Democrats controlling the legislature.
Après moi, la deluge after me, the flood.
That might have been true once, but no longer.
Cuomo abandoned the centrist-leaning ideas he once held on taxes, spending, charter schools, and criminal justice.
He doesn't talk in woke terms, but his policies are almost indistinguishable from those who do.
His claim to be a stabilizing force politically is as valid as his claims to be a guardian of the elderly and women's rights.
Now that was spicy!
So to Gideon Tucker's warning about life, liberty, and property not being safe while the legislature is in session, we add Cuomo's destructive presence as another reason for New Yorkers to be extra fearful this time.
Now, here's where it gets interesting.
He says why we need voter ID.
And I saw that and I'm like, in talking about the collapse of New York, I'm not entirely convinced.
But I'll read what he has to say.
Mostly because it's the people of New York who believe this stuff and let it happen.
Cuomo is a nasty criminal.
They let it happen.
They vote for the guy.
Because they don't care.
Reader Matt Conley calls voter fraud identity theft and tells a story.
He writes, my youngest sibling lives in Missouri and found that a vote was cast under his name in Georgia.
He asked the Georgia Secretary of State's office if that vote could be removed and not included in the presidential recount.
He was told no.
After the Senate runoffs, my brother wanted to know if a vote was cast in his name again.
The Secretary's office told him that they took down the fake online account, but would not say if votes were cast.
Problem solved, in their mind.
Gambling is now legal in the White House.
They say the breathtaking size and cost of Joe Biden's plans appears to be worrying his media handmaidens.
A certain word keeps appearing in big headlines.
Biden bets on big government.
Biden bets big on $1.9 trillion.
Bets big, bets big, bets big.
Sounds as if they are afraid of his out-of-control gambling habit.
Voter ID is an interesting take on what's causing these problems, or I should say voter integrity.
We have this story from the National Review, Why Not Fewer Voters?
It's a legitimate question.
I don't know about fewer voters, but I do think voter security, and at least something to say it is a civic responsibility and duty, is powerful and it can be dangerous.
The Democrats seem to think you're a monster unless you outright just say everyone, everywhere should vote, even 16-year-olds.
But that's insane!
Could you imagine if you live, like you live in your house, 16-year-olds were voting on how to spend, how to pay the bills?
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Imagine this.
You know, let's say you're a dad and you got a 16-year-old kid or daughter or kids around that age.
And you're like, alright, we brought in five grand this month, and we gotta figure out how to appropriate the budget.
And then, we're all gonna vote.
Okay, so then you've got mom, dad, and three kids.
And the three kids are like, we vote for a bucket of cookie dough every week from the store.
Okay, I get it, kids aren't that dumb.
But they're not gonna understand why you're like, no, I have to pay for this service.
No, I have to pay for this thing.
I gotta pay interest.
Look, young people aren't gonna understand this stuff.
They're gonna be like, how about this month we just don't pay off the credit card bills and just pay the minimum, and that way we have extra money to buy the new TV we need.
And then you're like, because then we're gonna pay interest, which is money we lose and don't get back, and we still gotta pay back the money, so we're not actually paying down our debts.
We should pay off our debts first, then buy the TV next month.
But we want it now!
Look, I'm not saying all 16-year-olds are dumb.
I'm just saying that many don't know what they're talking about, and it's absurd to think that everyone should vote.
And I think if you're looking at like a high school, for instance, imagine if all of these kids in the high school were going to vote on what they should or shouldn't be doing, what the school should or shouldn't be doing, what they should be learning.
It's bad enough a lot of dumb people vote, but they're allowed to vote.
And just because you're stupid doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to speak and vote.
That's a right.
I think so.
I do like the idea of everyone being able to vote.
However, there's got to be something that acts as a simple barrier.
What I mean by that is not stopping people from voting, just saying, if you want to vote, you have to actually choose to go do it.
As opposed to, like, waking up one day with a bout in your lap and you're like, I don't know, whatever, sure, and then you're voting for something you don't even know anything about.
Maybe fewer voters makes more sense.
Maybe in that capacity, then, it wouldn't matter if the people of New York were apathetic, lazy, and disinterested.
Therein lies the big problem.
When we look at places like New York and the decline in the quality of life, one of the issues is that while social enforcement does play a big role, people just blindly doing whatever, the other problem is that these people who are apathetic, lethargic, nihilistic, and lazy, and that's not everybody, I'm saying some of these people exist, they'll just blindly click D or R on the voting machine.
That D, R, I don't care, I don't know, I don't care.
And that's when the lunatics take over.
If there were fewer voters, simply because it was like, if you wanna vote, you gotta walk up a flight of stairs.
Like, seriously, just that.
Then they're gonna be like, okay, what about people in wheelchairs?
Okay, if you're in a wheelchair, there's an elevator for you.
But you gotta go in the elevator, you gotta go up to the next floor.
Something that acts as literally a door you must walk through.
That's all I'm saying.
Then you'll get a lot of people saying like, dude, I don't, I don't, I didn't care that much.
If you don't know and you don't care, you don't vote.
If you want to vote, you vote.
I'm not saying that we should have some kind of, like, test or service guaranteeing citizenship like Starship Troopers.
I'm literally saying have someone walk through the front door and drop their ballot off.
That's it.
What we've been doing lately is the opposite of that, where it's like, I wake up and my mailbox is a ballot and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna fill it out.
Those are people who did not intentionally, like, don't want to vote.
Not necessarily everybody, but it means a lot of people who don't know and don't care are voting, and in the end, it will result in the people who are lethargic and nihilistic electing representatives who don't care.
Here's what we need.
We need a system where you have to earn the vote from the individual.
It's not easy.
Instead, we have people who vote because you're a Democrat, vote because you're a Republican, and that's a problem.
I think we should get rid of DNR on the ballots.
That way people have to know who they're voting for.
A lot of people disagree, but I think that matters.
A lot of people just want to blindly vote Republican, well then the same problem's gonna happen.
What we need is for people to go and make a choice that they are comfortable with.
Everybody should be allowed to vote.
But they should have to go and vote, and they should have to choose someone based on the person's name.
There's still problems there.
You know, what if someone's got a cool name like Max Power, and they're like, ooh, I'm gonna vote for that guy, and it turns out he's like a communist.
Well, there you go.
You shouldn't vote for that then.
Some people say, well, what happens if they just vote for whoever's name is up top?
Well, you know, we got problems, I guess.
Randomize the ballot.
Structure.
Some people probably still already do that.
There's big problems with this.
In the end though, I think the biggest problem is just that most people don't know, don't care, don't want to be involved.
So when Cuomo comes out and kills 15,000 people, they don't care.
They'll say whatever you want them to say.
I don't, I don't, I don't want to be involved, they say.
When it comes to voting, the guy on the TV said vote Democrat.
So they do.
And then you get Biden flip-flopping now saying, okay, maybe, maybe we will build Trump's wall.
In the end, places like New York crumble.
They crumble.
And it's because people who live there don't care.
And they're electing people who are just extracting resources and watching the place burn to the ground.
It's a Democrat policy.
It's a Democrat supermajority.
The same is true for California.
And they say that in California, you know, they're about five years ahead of the rest of the country.
It's only a matter of time before Democrats start passing policies that they did in California for the rest of the country.
In one example, there's the Protect the Right to Organize Act, the PRO Act.
It would basically restrict the right to freelance.
I say, you know what, fine, whatever, bring it on.
Then all these woke, rage-bait leftist writers will be out of work and they'll be like, why did we support this?
Yeah, well, too bad, the unions wanted it.
The unions want to force you to get hired so they can force you into the union.
And then you'll lose your freelancing gig.
Sorry, you only write 10 articles a month?
We can't hire you.
What's that?
You write 35 or more?
Well, now we definitely can't hire you.
We can't freelance that much.
And there it is.
If you want to write a handful of articles or do a handful of jobs for different companies, nope, too bad.
You've got to be an employee now.
That's what they're passing.
And that will be the destruction of the quality of life in many more places across this country if these things happen.
These policies are insane.
And in the end, you can see your big blue city probably Crumble.
In the end, I suppose, they'll just demand the federal government pay them, and that seems to have worked because they won the White House.
And there it is.
That's all that really matters, I suppose.
You can spend and be irresponsible, and then just demand the government print money to pay off your debts because you're burning the system to the ground.
