Ep. 2170 - The Atlantic’s GIANT Fake News Screwup

Folks, we have a ton coming up on today's show, the final episode of the case for Derek Chauvin, plus Malcolm Gladwell stops by to talk about all of that. And of course, all the big news of the day, the preparation for the Trump tariffs, the big race that's going on in Wisconsin for Supreme Court.

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The media are on the hunt for a bad story that can hang around President Trump's neck. President Trump continues to ride around 50 percent of the approval ratings, which is a historic high for him. The public is giving him an enormous amount of leeway because, of course. He is still at the beginning of his second presidency. There's tremendous warmth for many elements of his agenda, ranging from Doge.

to immigration, and so the media are on the lookout for a bad story. Now, they tried SignalGate, and SignalGate basically went nowhere because the truth is that everybody has at one point or another included somebody.

in a group chat by accident, and it gets very awkward and all the rest. And the actual result of signal chat was kind of an embarrassing snafu. But the military strikes on the Houthis were totally successful. And in fact, the United States military is currently eviscerating the Houthis in Yemen.

So people are sort of looking at that and saying, OK, not great, not wonderful. But is this a career ending mistake for people inside the Trump administration? Is this a total derailing of the Trump administration? Probably not. The media continue on their lookout. And this is one of the things that the Trump administration has to be very careful about. There are certain policy screw-ups that are so large that they can take down an administration, as I've been saying.

A bad economic downturn would seriously hamper President Trump's ability to do virtually anything, given the fact that he effectively has a one vote majority in the House of Representatives. But beyond that, there are also certain stories that are just so bad for an administration.

that they end up hampering their ability to do anything because association with the administration becomes sort of toxic. And there are many cases of this over the course of modern American history. The truth is the Hunter Biden laptop story hovered over. the Biden administration for the entirety of the Biden administration. The truth is that when it came to Barack Obama, Barack Obama's administration was seriously hampered, not just by Obamacare, but by Barack Obama's polarizing talk in 2012.

There are many such cases where a single story can shift an entire election cycle. This happened in 2006. Republicans looked like they were in decent shape for the midterm elections of 2006. And then there was a Republican congressperson named Mark Foley, who it turned out had been sleeping with some of his aides, allegedly. And because of that, Republicans ended up getting shellacked. So all that is happening right now is the media are on the hunt for some sort of screw up that is so bad.

that it seriously harms the Trump administration. And the place that they are digging right now is in the immigration realm because Trump is moving fast and breaking things in many realms, including the immigration realm. And so there is a story by Nick Miroff from The Atlantic that supposedly.

was going to bring down the Trump administration, do serious damage to the Trump administration. It's their lead today at the Atlantic. It's called an administrative error sends a Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison. And this was going to be a big takedown, right?

The idea being that the most popular element of Trump's agenda by far right now is his immigration portfolio. President Trump has done more on the border than any president in modern American history by far. Basically, illegal immigration levels went from. historic highs under Joe Biden to basically non-existent on our southern border.

under President Trump. And that is thanks, of course, to President Trump. It's thanks to Tom Homan. The borders are. It's thanks to Kristi Noam, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary. It's thanks to Secretary of State Rubio, who's been very involved in deportation proceedings.

It is a whole of administration efforts, thanks to Stephen Miller, top advisor to the president. It is by far the most successful element of the Trump administration thus far. And so if Democrats can find a sympathetic case of somebody being victimized.

This is going to be the point of the spear at the beginning of their resistance. And it sort of has to be because they are actually not capable fully of shifting away from their open borders mentality. And in our, unfortunately, reactionary politics. a bunch of false choices tend to obtain. So it's either open border or totally closed border, nothing in between. In any case, this piece from Nick Miroff says, an administrative error since a Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison.

And this is like the big, big story that is going to break the Trump administration. Because. After all, the Atlantic has been on the hunt for this. Jeffrey Goldberg was the editor of the Atlantic, who was included accidentally in that national security chat. That was the big story of last week. The big story of this week is going to be the Atlantic reporting.

a bureaucratic script that sends an innocent man to go hang out with gang members from Tren de Aragua in El Salvador. Quote, the Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador.

but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the mega prison where he's now locked up. Now, on the face of that, that's really bad, right? I mean, that's a bad story. If they just took a random guy who had protected status from El Salvador, and then he was...

taken, and thrown into a prison in El Salvador, and he was just like an innocent guy, that's a really bad story, obviously. That'd be a very big screw-up. And if the administration is saying they can't do anything to fix it, that's an even bigger screw-up.

According to The Atlantic, the case appears to be the first time the Trump administration has admitted to errors when it sent three plane loads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador's grim terrorism confinement center on March 15th.

Attorneys for several Venezuelan deportees have said the Trump administration falsely labeled their clients gang members because of their tattoos. Trump officials have disputed those claims. But in Monday's court filings, attorneys for the government admitted the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported accidentally.

Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error, the government told the court. Trump's lawyers said the court has no ability to bring him back now that Abrego Garcia is in Salvadoran custody.

The lawyer for Abrego Garcia is asking for the court to order the Trump administration to ask for Abrego Garcia's return. Trump administration attorneys told the court to dismiss the request on multiple grounds, including that Trump's supremacy in foreign affairs outweighs the interest of Abrego Garcia.

and his family. So the lawyer says, if this is true, the immigration laws are meaningless. All of them. The government can support whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want. No court can do anything once it's done. So here's the part where the Atlantic gets itself into trouble.

So, so far, bad story for the administration. They took a man who shouldn't have been deported, and they deported him, and the Trump administration admits he shouldn't have been deported, right? That's bad. The Atlantic says,

Abrego Garcia is married to a U.S. citizen, has a five-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim that he has a criminal record, but called him a danger to the community and an active member of MS-13.

The Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization. The lawyer for this guy says the charges are false. And the gang label stems from a 2019 incident when Abrego Garcia and three other men were detained in a Home Depot parking lot by a police detective in Prince George's County, Maryland.

During questioning, one of the men told officers Obrigo Garcia was a gang member, but the man offered no proof and police said they didn't believe him. According to filings, police did not identify him as a gang member. However, here is the thing. Okay, this is the part where the Atlantic screws it up.

This is what makes this story, at least partially, fake news. An immigration judge is John Hassan, who's a good reporter. An immigration judge found that Garcia was an MS-13 member, a flight risk and a threat to the community six years ago.

An immigration judge found that. And that is not included in the story. Instead, you get the story from this guy's lawyer that says he was just an innocent person who was wrapped up in a bunch of bad testimony from people with whom he was hanging out in a Home Depot parking lot.

But according to the actual legal filings, Abrego Garcia remains in ICE custody because the immigration judge with the executive office for immigration review denied Abrego Garcia bond at a hearing on April 24th, 2019, setting danger to the community. Because the evidence showed he's a verified member of Mara Salvatrucha, which is MS-13. The IJ also determined that he was a flight risk. Okay, now, again, there was an administrative error here.

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So what exactly was the administrative error? According to the filings, on March 12, 2025, ICE Homeland Security Investigations arrested Abrego Garcia due to his prominent role in MS-13. Over the next two days, Abrego Garcia was transferred to the staging area for removal flights.

The operation that led to Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador is designed to include only individuals with no impediments to removal. ICE was the wear of a grant of withholding of removal at the time of Abrego Garcia's removal from the United States. Reference was made to the status.

on internal forms. Originally, he was not on the initial manifest of the Title VIII flight. So what happened is an immigration judge had labeled this guy years ago a flight risk and a member of MS-13. And then despite that, there was an order that was a withholdal of removal.

That was put on him because of his credible fear, apparently, that he was going to be harmed by people back in his home country. So that was the screw up. He was an alternate. He was on the list as an alternate. Like you can't find the people who are primaries, find the people who are alternate.

and then go through the procedure and remove them. As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego Garcia should not be removed. Through administrative error, according to the filings, Abrego Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador.

This was an oversight. The removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrago Garcia's purported membership in MS-13. So, again, this is the part that is the screw up from The Atlantic. How does the how exactly is it that the Atlantic fails to mention that an immigration judge literally found that there was credible evidence that he was MS-13, which changes the entire nature of the story? It turns this from a.

horrifyingly terrible story in which an innocent person with no connections to any form of criminal activity and a five-year-old son with disabilities and an American wife is removed for no good reason. It's a story where a credibly accused and legally found MS-13 gang member, according to this immigration judge, is removed by accident despite a withholding of removal order. In other words, it's a bureaucratic screw up and the guy shouldn't have been removed.

But it is not a human tragedy if somebody who is involved in MS-13 ends up being removed from the country. It's this sort of desperate hunger for a story to use as a baton against the Trump administration that leads so many members of the... news media, the mainstream legacy media to play up the headline. Again, the headline from the Atlantic in all of this was not man found to be.

credibly accused MS-13 member removed by accident. It was an administrative error since a Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison, which makes it sound. Like he's like natural born citizen in Maryland. Just a good old dad coaching ball at the local at the local park. And then suddenly ice descends upon him and sends him to El Salvador. So.

The media keep a clowning themselves. Vice President J.D. Vance responded to this and correctly was dunking on the story. So he said, Kyle Chaney, a legal affairs reporter, is... Apparently unable or unwilling to look at the facts here, in 2019, an immigration judge under the Biden administration determined the deported man was in fact a member of the MS-13 gang. He also apparently had multiple traffic violations for which he failed to appear in court. A real winner.

It is telling the entire American media is going to run a propaganda operation today, making you think an innocent father of three was apprehended by a Gulag. Here are the relevant facts. This man is an illegal immigrant with no right to be in our country. An immigration judge during the Biden administration determined he was a member.

of the MS-13 gang because he is not a citizen. He does not get a full jury trial by peers. In other words, whatever due process he was entitled to, he received. So again, I think that two things can be true at once. Number one, they really, really need to, inside the Trump administration, be careful about the things they are doing because the legacy media are on the hunt for screw ups.

And second of all, the legacy media being on the hunt for screw ups means they're going to ignore deeply relevant details that change the entire nature of stories in pursuit of the Trump administration. Now, meanwhile, on the immigration front. A judge has now blocked President Trump from ending deportation protections for Venezuelans. So the Department of Homeland Security was going to allow temporary protected status to expire on April 7th for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, and it centers on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to rescind temporary protected status for Venezuelans shortly after being confirmed.

The Biden administration cited Venezuela's extreme poverty and economic and political crises under Maduro's autocratic rule in extending the protection. Noem said that the conditions in Venezuela no longer met the criteria for its citizens to qualify for temporary protected status.

The district court judge suggested that this was unlawful and quote unquote smacks of racism. He said that her rationale for ending protections for people from the South American country is entirely lacking in evidentiary support. But here is what Bill Malugan, reporter for Fox News, points out. Temporary protected status is a status that is established by the executive branch of government. It is not, in fact, established by the judiciary.

U.S. law says this is not subject to judicial review. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld that in the first term. There is no judicial review of any determination of the DHS secretary with respect to the designation or termination or extension of a designation of a foreign state.

under this subsection. In fact, there's a Ninth Circuit Court decision from the prior Trump administration that sided with the Trump administration when he was seeking to terminate temporary protected status for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. So. These judges are stepping into arenas where they actually do not have any authority in an attempt to resist Trump. This is a big lose for them, by the way. It turns out that Americans are very much in favor of removing.

illegal immigrants from the country, particularly illegal immigrants who are here and committing acts of criminality and associated with gangs. So Democrats can overstep here as well. Now, one of the big questions on the Democratic side of the aisle, of course, is who exactly is going to be at the head of the party? And believe it or not, I believe that Hillary Clinton is trying to throw her hat into the ring. How do I know? Well, Hillary Clinton only emerges from the woodwork every so often.

to write an op-ed for the New York Times if she's got something else on her mind. She has a piece in the New York Times today titled, How Much Dumber Will This Get? Now remember, Hillary Clinton is 77 years old. That means that in three years. when theoretically she would be running for the presidency again, she'd be 80. That is no longer a barrier to entry. President Trump is currently 78 years old. He's a year older than Hillary Clinton. 77 is like a spring chicken by our modern standards.

And the Democratic bench is pretty empty, pretty empty. So Hillary Clinton is emerging hypocritically to now talk about SignalGate. She says, it's not the hypocrisy that bothers me. It's the stupidity.

We're all shocked that President Trump and his team don't actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What's much worse is that the top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app.

and unwittingly invited a journalist into chat. That's dangerous, and it's just dumb. Now, I gotta say, it is amazing that the New York Times went to Hillary Clinton, of all humans, to jabber about SignalGate, because this sword cuts both ways. If she's saying Republicans are hypocrites for not caring about SignalGate,

by caring about her classified documents mishandling? She is a hypocrite for saying that she cares about SignalGate, but she does not care about her own classified documents mishandling. Nowhere in this piece does she actually address the fact.

that she had a separate hard drive that she set up in her bathroom that contained all sorts of classified information. But it's pretty clear here that she actually is trying to set up, believe it or not, for another presidential run, quote, in a dangerous and complex world, it's not enough to be strong.

You must also be smart. As Secretary of State during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might, and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower.

The Trump approach is dumb power. These are the kinds of words of a person who's trying to throw her hat into the ring as a candidate. Fascinating to see how empty the cupboard is at Democratic headquarters that they have to pull Hillary Clinton out.

from behind the unused cinnamon. Pretty impressive. Now, listen, not all hope is dead for Democrats today. There are a couple of big elections nationwide. One of them is happening in the Florida 6th Congressional District. That is Mike Waltz's old district, Rhonda Sands' old district, President Trump.

won that district by 30 points in the last election cycle. Right now, Senator from Florida, Randy Fine, is locked in a very competitive battle with a Democrat named Josh Weil, mainly because Democrats have poured something like $10 million into that district. hoping to steal it while Republicans are asleep. There's no way that an R plus 30 district should go Democrat. Yesterday, I should participate in a tele-rally for Senator Fine, along with Representative Byron Donald.

To get out the vote for Senator Fein, it's very important that Republicans win that race and win it fairly handily. They need to win it because if they lose that seat, then basically Mike Johnson's margin of error in the House shrinks to zero because he always has to deal with the constant no vote of Thomas Massey.

among others. But also Republicans need to win fairly handily there just to show Democrats that they don't actually have a chance of sneaking back in through the window. That is one big race that is happening today. The other big race that is happening today.

is the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. It does have nationwide consequences, as the Daily Wire points out. Democrats are expected to challenge Wisconsin's current congressional maps if Crawford wins. Judge Susan Crawford is the very left-wing judge who's being put up.

For the Supreme Court, the conservative candidate is Brad Schimel. The outcome could determine how the court rules on abortion, voter ID laws, and union reforms as well. Schimel, who's the former Republican AG of Wisconsin, said in a recent interview he's running to save the court from activist judges like Crawford.

saying the court has turned into the most dangerous body in state government under its current 4-3 liberal majority. The woman who is running against him, Crawford, is extraordinarily far to the left on pretty much every issue it is possible to be to the left.

$90 million has been poured into this race. That's how important it is because a redistricting in Wisconsin could shift the balance of power in the United States Congress. If a left-wing Supreme Court in Wisconsin redraws the congressional boundaries. then Democrats could pick up a seat or two and that would be enough to shift the balance of power in the Congress of the United States. Among Crawford's other rather infamous rulings were one spot.

highlighting a case where she sentenced a man convicted of sexually assaulting two young girls in a pool to four years in prison, which is well below what prosecutors had requested. Crawford said she doesn't regret the decision, asserting that she followed the law at the time. Elon Musk, of course.

is putting heavy resources into this particular race. So it'll be fascinating to see how all of that turns out. Speaking of Elon Musk, the attacks continue on people who are driving Teslas, which is insane to me. It only took a little bit of political magic.

For Democrats to turn full scale against electric vehicles, apparently. The number one electric vehicle company on planet Earth is now their enemy because Elon Musk happens to be an ally of President Trump, who's seeking to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. inside the government. Here is some footage of protesters outside a Tesla factory or Tesla dealership, and they're doing their best to, you know, fight the man.

Oh man, this is the best they can do. For folks who can't see, they're doing coordinated line dancing, holding signs that show Tesla with a swastika. Meanwhile, a man accused of firebombing a Tesla dealership in Colorado is now facing federal charges, according to AG Pambondi.

Cooper Joe Frederick, 24, was arrested in Plano, Texas, on suspicion of attacking a Tesla dealership on March 7th in Loveland, Colorado. Bondi said, you can run, but you can't hide. Justice is coming. This is, in fact, terrorism, by the way.

When you attack people or property with the intent of effectuating political change, that is an act of terrorism definitionally. So good for Pambani for doing the thing. And if you want it to stop, you will have to do the thing because I think that we are now arriving in an age of political terrorism. and chaos if it does not stop and stop right quick. Everything ranging from property damage to full-on shootings in the streets cheered on by members of the left wing are now on the table.

Luigi Mangione is a hero to a bunch of people on the left, including people like comedian Bill Burr. Speaking of which, I have to say that the Comedians Club is getting less and less interesting and funny. Amber Ruffin is a comedian, an alleged comedian, who is supposed to... do her bit at the White House Correspondence Dinner. And she was canceled because she is so overtly, annoyingly anti-Trump. And so she was explaining what her plans were.

a hundred percent interested in being like ha you're here look at your stupid head you're burned i care like you're kind of a bunch of murderers I mean, I think it just, they got their feelings hurt. And they want that false equivalency that the media does. They want that. It feels great. It makes them feel like human beings. But they shouldn't get to feel that way because they're not.

That's solid stuff right there. You're a bunch of murderers. Slow clap for these geniuses. Really smart stuff right there. Well, that lady is not very funny.

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He's not allowed to run for president in 2028. The 22nd Amendment says you can only serve two terms. There are some people who are trying to put forth the rather strained constitutional interpretation that theoretically he could run as vice president of the United States because the rule in the Constitution.

is that the qualifications for the presidency of the United States are the same qualifications as for the vice presidency of the United States. One interpretation means, OK, well, he's no longer qualified to be president of the United States since he's done it twice. The other interpretation means that the Constitution just meant that.

You have to be a natural born citizen and 35 years of age. OK, it's not happening, but he's still trolling. Here's President Trump in the White House yesterday. If you were allowed for some reason to run for a third term. Is there a thought that the Democrats could try to run Barack Obama against you? I'd love that. Or his third term? I'd love that. That would be a good one. I'd like that. Well, you know.

Caroline Levitt, whose job it is to defend what the president says. She was out there defending President Trump over his comments regarding a possible third term. Again, this is just trollery. OK, it ain't going to happen. And people, I think, understand that it is trollery.

But one of the funnier aspects of the Trump administration, this is true during Trump one and Trump two, is Trump would do something that was clearly a troll. And then members of his administration would walk out there and basically have to defend the troll as though it's totally serious. So here we go.

It's funny to me that journalists ask the president this question. He gives an honest and candid answer and then they spiral about his answer. He was asked this and you heard him and he's right. People love the job this president is doing. And as he said. We are focused on this term. We have four more years to go and look at what the president has done. OK, meanwhile, Democrats are in fact spiraling. Anna Navarra, again, one of the one of the brilliant women at The View.

She says we must take this seriously. It is deeply important. We must stop this tyranny. Look, you know, no matter how insane, stupid, harebrained and lawless, I think something. He says, might be, I have learned the lesson of taking him seriously. But what was interesting is this was a hot topic for all of us. And none of us picked it this morning because we're all on to him. He is the distractor in chief. So he doesn't want us to keep...

talking about SignalGate, which is a real threat to national security. And every day, more details are revealed that show us how incompetent and reckless his national security team is. Okay, so again, if they want to spiral on this, let them spiral, man. Because, you know, honestly, if they want to hone in on President Trump's trolling, good luck to them. They're just following like a cat with a laser pointer.

every aim that President Trump is putting on the wall. The reality is, if Democrats are smart, what they should be doing is they should be focusing in on what is likely to happen tomorrow, Liberation Day, according to the President of the United States, but really giant tariff day.

So President Trump says that he has settled on a trade plan, but he has not revealed it yet, which, of course, is like the worst way to do this sort of policy. It really is a bad way to do this policy because markets are looking for stability. Markets are looking for predictability.

If you are worried that the president is going to dump a bunch of giant tariffs on you tomorrow, how exactly do you plan for that? It sort of paralyzed the markets. According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump said he had settled on a plan for his latest batch of tariffs expected this week, but didn't reveal what he had decided.

after his economic team struggled to coalesce around a U.S. trade strategy. Quote, I've settled it. Yeah, Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday. Trump's team has pitched him on several ideas of how to tariff other countries, including a 20% global tariff on virtually all imports.

Throughout Monday, some of his aides were under the impression he hadn't committed to a particular path. The people's stressed conversations remained fluid. Trump's comments that he had decided on an approach caught some White House advisors off guard.

President Trump both wants to raise revenue with tariffs and use them as leverage to get other nations to lower their own duties or make other policy changes. But if tariffs are subject to negotiation and could be lowered over time, that would raise doubts about how much revenue could ultimately be expected from their imposition.

So it is totally unclear what President Trump is going to do today. The markets seem kind of sanguine about this. They seem as though they think that President Trump is not going to do serious tariffs tomorrow, that President Trump is basically.

signaling that he's going to do big tariffs, but it's going to be smaller than anticipated. I certainly hope that that is the case because I think that this is truly not good economic policy. If President Trump goes heavy, however, the markets are going to respond in very negative ways. According to Axios, the reality of multinational American businesses is that if these tariffs are suddenly applied, it is going to clock nearly everyone.

The tariffs contrast with the 2018-2019 period in Trump's previous term when tariffs were more targeted to specific items from specific countries. All signs that these quote-unquote reciprocal tariffs meant to penalize other nations seen as dealing unfairly will be stacked on top of other tariffs.

like those ostensibly meant to penalize Mexico, Canada, and China. Trump told reporters on Sunday, you'd start with all countries. White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro, of course, said, as we played on the show yesterday, new tariffs would raise $600 billion a year for the federal government.

That, by the way, would be almost a 10x increase in terms of tariff revenue, which was $77 billion. As Axios points out, Navarro's comments imply $6 trillion in increased tariff revenue over the next decade. So these are big tariffs, if he indeed does them. So we'll see. The market, again, seems to be banking on the idea that Trump is not going to go full Monty here. We're going to find out in very short order whether that is true or not.

Alrighty, now, our final episode in the case for Derek Chauvin, our five-part series on why the Trump administration should issue a federal pardon for Derek Chauvin. After that, we'll be joined by the famous author, Malcolm Gladwell, to talk about his perspective. He disagrees. you

The death of George Floyd sparked what would become the most destructive period of civil unrest in modern American history. Protests erupted in all 50 states, not just in major urban centers, but in small towns across rural America. By early June 2020, over 200 cities had imposed curfews.

More than 30 states and Washington, D.C. activated over 96,000 National Guard, State Guard, 82nd Airborne, and 3rd Infantry Regiment Service members. This represented one of the largest military operations outside of war in American history. While the mainstream media continued to claim that these were mostly peaceful protests, the reality on the ground was very different.

By the end of June 2020, at least 14,000 people had been arrested. At least 19 people died in relation to the riots. Property damage from arson, vandalism, and looting between May 26th and June 8th caused approximately $1 to $2 billion in insured damages nationally. damage from civil disorder in U.S. history, surpassing even the 1992 L.A. riots. Minneapolis itself saw catastrophic destruction. There were two deaths, 604 arrests, an estimated $550 million in property damage to 1,500 properties.

The city's third police precinct was overrun and burned to the ground. Businesses that had survived for generations were destroyed overnight. All of this destruction occurred before any semblance of due process was afforded to Derek Chauvin. In Seattle, protesters established what they called the

Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, later renamed to CHOP, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. For weeks, six blocks of a major American city were essentially surrendered to anarchists, Antifa, and radical activists. Police were forbidden from entering. Businesses were held hostage.

When President Trump urged Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to take back her city, she glibly referred to the occupation as a summer of love. It wasn't until multiple shootings occurred within the zone that city officials finally acted to dismantle it. As American cities burned, Democratic politicians saw an opportunity for political gain. On June 8th, 2020, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers draped themselves in kente cloth.

a traditional Ghanaian textile, and knelt in the capital's Emancipation Hall for a carefully choreographed photo op. The display was performed of virtue signaling at its most egregious. As Jade Bentel, a Ghanaian-Nigerian researcher at Oxford University, noted, quote,

for them to be warned by publicity-obsessed politicians as activism in 2020. The Kente Cloth stunt was widely mocked across the political spectrum, with one screenwriter's reading, quote, what if they, like, just pass some laws instead of dressing up like a Wakandan chess set?

Following their theatrical display, Democrats then introduced the Justice in Policing Act, a bill that would have imposed federal mandates on local police departments, restricted qualified immunity, and fundamentally altered policing in America.

The legislation ultimately failed, but it set the stage for a broader push to a movement that would have catastrophic consequences for public safety in cities across America. And who benefited from all this chaos? Well, certainly not the black communities these riots supposedly aimed to help. No, the real beneficiary was Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which raked in a staggering $90 million.

And what did they do with this windfall? According to their own tax filings, only 33% went to actual charitable organizations. Meanwhile, BLM co-founder Patrice Cullors, a self-described... trained Marxist, somehow discovered her capitalist spirit and paid her graffiti artist brother $840,000 for security services. She paid another $970,000 to a company owned by her child's father for creative services and $2.1 million to a consulting firm.

owned by another board member. And let's not forget the $6 million L.A. mansion they purchased. The intellectual underpinnings of this movement were equally fraudulent. ACAB, All Cops Are Bastards, became the rallying cry of college students who would call 911 if their iPhone went missing.

Then came defund the police, possibly the worst political slogan in American history. When normal people heard defund, they thought it meant actually removing funding from police departments. But then when poll numbers cratered, suddenly progressives insisted it actually meant fund mental health services instead. The cities that did defund their police departments like Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle saw crime rates skyrocket.

and have since quietly restored or even increased police budgets. It turns out that communities, especially minority communities, actually want more police presence, not less. This political transformation extended far beyond local governance and beyond Washington, D.C.

Professional sports leagues ditched their cultural role as an American unifier in favor of overt progressive activism. When the NBA restarted its season in July 2020, every single player knelt during the national anthem. They wore Black Lives Matter shirts and jerseys with messages like equality.

I am a man and ally. NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced he would not enforce the league's longstanding rule requiring players to stand during the anthem. The league painted Black Lives Matter on its courts in enormous lettering. Post-game interviews shifted from discussions of basketball to political commentary on systemic racism.

The NFL, still grappling with the Colin Kaepernick controversy from 2016, began to fully embrace BLM messaging. End zones were painted with social justice slogans. Players were encouraged to wear the names of individuals killed by police on their helmets. Lift Every Voice and Sing, often called the Black National Anthem, was performed before games alongside the Star-Spangled Banner. These protests represented a complete reversal of public opinion in just two years. In 2018,

Polling showed that 54% of Americans thought it was inappropriate for athletes to kneel during the national anthem. By September 2020, that position had now flipped entirely, with 56% of Americans saying they supported protests at sports games, with only 42% opposing them.

The summer of 2020 witnessed the most rapid cultural transformation in modern American history. Virtually overnight, major corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies enthusiastically embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Amazon, Netflix, and other tech giants pledged billions of dollars to racial justice causes. Universities issued statements condemning systemic racism and implemented mandatory anti-racism training for students.

The standards of merit and achievement that long guided American institutions were suddenly deemed expressions of white supremacy, standardized testing for elite schools was eliminated in the name of equity. Corporate hiring and promotion decisions became increasingly based on intersectionality rather than qualifications or competence. This transformation was not limited to the private sector.

Federal agencies under the Biden administration issued executive orders mandating DEI training and establishing equity offices. The military, once a meritocratic institution focused solely on national defense, diverted resources to diversity initiatives and unconscious bias training.

The speed and comprehensiveness of this revolution was unprecedented. Dissent was not merely discouraged, but actively punished. Employees who questioned DEI policies found themselves isolated, demoted, or even terminated. Academics who raised concerns about the empirical bases for these sweeping changes faced calls for removal or resignation. Social media platforms and advertisers egregiously censored anyone who challenged the prevailing narrative.

The Derek Chauvin case is the origin story for this sweeping cultural revolution. George Floyd's murder is the founding myth which justified a complete reorganization of American society. Any criticism of BLM, any defensive due process for Chauvin, any hint of support for law enforcement was deemed evidence of racism and grounds for personal and professional cancellation.

According to the responses to this series, it perhaps still is. While American society underwent this radical transformation, Derek Chauvin faced his own personal hell. After his conviction in state court on charges of second degree unintentional murder, third degree murder, and second degree manslaughter, he was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. He subsequently pled guilty to federal civil rights charges and received a 21-year federal sentence to run concurrently with his state sentence.

Chauvin specifically requested to serve his time in federal prison, even though it meant he would serve a longer sentence. As a former police officer convicted of killing a black man, Chauvin believed he faced extraordinary danger in state prison. But in federal custody, Chauvin's safety still could not be guaranteed.

On November 24th, 2023, the day after Thanksgiving, specifically chosen for its symbolism as Black Friday, Chauvin was stabbed 22 times by fellow inmate John Terzak at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona.

Terzak, a former gang member serving a 30-year sentence, later told investigators he had targeted Chauvin for, quote, killing Floyd. According to court documents, Terzak told correctional officers he would have succeeded in killing Chauvin had guards not responded so quickly.

The attack occurred in the prison's law library, where Chauvin was apparently left without adequate protection, despite his high-profile status and the obvious target on his back. After that stabbing, Chauvin was hospitalized and later transferred to the Federal Transfer Center.

in Oklahoma, and then to the Federal Correctional Institution in Big Spring, Texas, a low security prison. His family expressed ongoing concerns about his safety, noting it remains a mystery how the perpetrator was able to obtain and possess dangerous materials that were able to be formed into an improvised knife. and how a guard was unable to reach and apprehend the perpetrator until Derek had been stabbed 22 times.

Throughout his incarceration, Chauvin has continued to fight his conviction through the appellate courts. In November 2023, the Supreme Court rejected his appeal of the state conviction without comment or a recorded vote. He should have, however, through the appellate process, been granted a new trial due to the prejudice of pretrial media attention.

jury intimidation, and the trial court's failure to change venue, all of which violated Chauvin's constitutional right to due process and a fair trial. Also in November 2023, Chauvin filed a motion asking the judge in his federal case to vacate his guilty plea. This new motion cited theories

from Kansas pathologist Dr. William Schatel. The heart of Chauvin's new legal strategy centers on a tumor found during Floyd's autopsy, believed to be a paraganglioma, which was deemed insignificant by Hennepin County medical examiner Dr. Andrew Baker.

But this assessment is now being challenged by a new medical theory. Dr. Shaitzel has proposed that Floyd may have died from a catecholamine crisis triggered by this rare tumor, potentially causing a rare condition called tacitsubomyocarditis, or broken heart syndrome.

While extreme physical or emotional stress is thought to cause Takutsobu's myocarditis, Dr. Schetzel's theory is that Floyd's tumor could have secreted excessive levels of catecholamines, which are hormones or neurotransmitters, therefore severely impacting Floyd's cardiovascular system.

In layman's terms, this means Floyd's death could have been caused by a perfect storm of his own serious medical conditions completely independent of Chauvin's actions. Medical literature supports the plausibility of this theory.

According to a 2021 study, a catecholamine crisis from such tumors carries a significant mortality rate of approximately 15%. And further research has documented that heart failure and heart attacks caused by paraganglioma-induced catecholamine crises are common causes of death in patients.

with these same conditions. On December 16, 2024, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson granted a pivotal motion allowing Chauvin's defense team to analyze George Floyd's heart tissue and fluid samples from his autopsy. In his ruling, Judge Magnuson acknowledged the gravity of this request.

He wrote, quote, given the significant nature of the criminal case that Mr. Chauvin was convicted of, and given that the discovery that Mr. Chauvin seeks could support Dr. Schatzel's opinion of how Mr. Floyd died, the court finds that there is good cause to allow Mr. Chauvin to take the discovery that he seeks. The ruling specifically permits the microscopic examination of Floyd's heart tissue, photographs, and testing of bodily fluids for catecholamine levels.

Predictably, the Biden Justice Department fought viciously against this pursuit of truth, filing a motion to reconsider, pathetically claiming that Chauvin's request defies belief and had no legal basis. But Judge Magnuson wasn't having it.

On December 19th, he firmly rejected the government's attempt to block the examination, stating, quote, the court is not persuaded by the government's arguments, which provide no compelling reason that the court should change his previous determination. While pursuing these federal proceedings, Chauvin has also initiated state-level efforts to re-examine his case.

On November 23rd, 2024, Chauvin's newly hired attorney, Gregory Joseph, filed a 15-page petition for post-conviction relief in Minnesota State Court. The petition makes several significant claims, including actual innocence. ineffective assistance of counsel, discovery violations, and related violations of due process and a fair trial under the United States Constitution.

It alleges that the full details of the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's report and toxicology report were not provided to Chauvin until July 2023, well after conviction and sentencing. One of the central elements of this new petition involves the paraganglioma tumor. The filing claims that at least one doctor contacted Chauvin's original attorney, the judge, Peter Cahill, and the state prosecutors during the trial to alert them.

about the potential significance of this tumor, but these communications were allegedly not disclosed to Chauvin until August 2023, over two years after his original sentencing. Chauvin has stated that had he known about Dr. Schatzel's theory regarding paraganglioma and its potential role in Floyd's death, he would not have entered a guilty plea for the federal charges. This claim forms a key component of his argument for ineffective assistance of counsel.

Chauvin's post-conviction legal efforts faced significant challenges, not least his personal circumstances after being attacked in prison. According to Chauvin, the stabbing attack, which took place in the prison's law library, resulted in the destruction of many of his legal documents.

some due to blood contamination, others confiscated as evident in the prosecution of his attacker. Court filings by Chauvin's legal team allege that Chauvin has had no ability to aid in his own defense for more than seven months following the attack with limited access to online resources and communication. His legal situation is further complicated by the retirement of Judge Peter Cahill, who presided over his original state trial. Chauvin's case is now being handled by Judge Paul Scoggin.

These legal maneuvers face long odds. The system that convicted Chauvin has shown little interest in revisiting his case, despite the substantial questions about his guilt that we've explored throughout this series. For abiding by his training and policing his community for 19 years, Chauvin has now been abandoned by the system he once served.

This brings us to the culmination of our series, the case for a presidential pardon for Derek Chauvin. Such a pardon would not erase the state charges, as presidential pardon power only extends to federal offenses, but it would free Chauvin from his federal sentence and allow him to spend less time incarcerated. In summation. The case for pardon rests on several key pillars. First, medical evidence simply does not support the narrative.

that Chauvin murdered George Floyd. As we detailed in episode three, the autopsy revealed no damage to Floyd's trachea or airway structures. It found potentially lethal levels of fentanyl in his system alongside methamphetamine and documented severe heart disease with arteries that were 75 to 90%.

Dr. Baker, the county medical examiner, acknowledged that if Floyd, quote, were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an overdose. Add to this the ongoing investigation into Dr. Schatzel's tumor theory, and it becomes even clearer that a pardon is necessary.

Chauvin has maintained he would never have pled guilty to federal charges had he known about Schatzel's theory. When combined with the documented heart disease, drug toxicity, and lack of airway trauma, Schatzel presents a compelling alternative explanation for Floyd's death that reasonable jurors should have been allowed to consider.

Second, Chauvin's state trial was fundamentally flawed. As we discussed in episode four, the $27 million settlement announced during jury selection, the failure to change venue, the statements by politicians, including President Biden, prejudging the case, and the explicit threats of further violence if Chauvin was acquitted. all made a fair trial impossible. No jury could render an impartial verdict under such conditions. A pardon would therefore stand as a powerful reminder. Third.

Chauvin has already suffered disproportionately for his actions. He's been demonized in the media as a racist, abandoned by his department, divorced by his wife, and nearly killed in prison. The 22 stab wounds he received from a fellow inmate represent a form of extrajudicial punishment no defendant should have to endure regardless of the alleged crime.

Fourth, a pardon would begin to heal the immense damage done to law enforcement and public safety in the country. Since the summer of 2020, police departments nationwide have faced a recruiting and retention crisis.

Officers are leaving the profession in record numbers, unwilling to risk becoming the next Derek Chauvin sacrifice to appease the mob, regardless of fact. The resulting personnel shortages have contributed to skyrocketing crime rates in blue cities across America, with the poorest communities suffering the most.

Finally, the Derek Chauvin case was the inciting incident, the catalyst, the founding myth upon which this entire destructive cultural revolution was built. Think about it. The summer of 2020 set the match to the DEI powder keg that exploded through every American institution.

Before George Floyd, we weren't putting pronouns in email signatures. Before Chauvin's railroading, universities were not dismantling standardized testing as white supremacy. Before the Minneapolis courtroom travesty, corporate America was not forcing employees to confess white privilege in mandatory struggle sessions.

President Trump has done remarkable work in his first months back in office, dismantling the entire DEI bureaucracy, banning critical race theory from federal training, ending the gender ideology madness in schools. Matt Walsh has seen similar advancements with his record-breaking films, What is a Woman and Am I Racist?

The same can be said for a lot of the work we do at The Daily Wire. But we cannot truly exercise this woke demon without addressing the fictional incident that inspired it all. The Floyd narrative was the founding document for woke America. To fully restore the America we love, the America that judges. people by the content of their character and their actions rather than the color of their skin. We must formally repudiate the narrative that George Floyd was brutally murdered by Derek Chauvin.

The truth is that Derek Chauvin did not receive justice. He was sacrificed by scared politicians and eager race hustlers to appease a social media frenzy and advance a progressive agenda. His conviction was secured through intimidation and the threat of further violence. not through a fair and impartial assessment of evidence.

His current imprisonment represents a failure of our justice system and a triumph of mob rule. I urge you to visit PardonDerek.com and sign our petition asking President Trump to grant Derek Chauvin a federal pardon. We'll also put the website to donate to Derek Chauvin's legal defense fund in the description.

The pardon power exists precisely for cases like this one, where the regular mechanisms of justice have failed, where political considerations have overridden the fair application of the law, and where mercy is warranted in the face of extraordinary circumstance.

Well, joining us online to discuss all this is Malcolm Gladwell. Of course, you know him as the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his great books, The Tipping Point and Blink. He's also the host of the Revisionist History podcast, which reconsiders things both overlooked.

and Misunderstood, as well as the Broken Record podcast as well. Malcolm, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. So let's talk about the case that I'm making for the pardon of Derek Chauvin. My understanding is that you oppose. You've made pretty clear that you think that the that the case against Chauvin is solid and that the judgment was correct. What do you make of the case? Yeah, well, it's funny. You you did.

an in-depth analysis of the case, which I just listened to last night. I did the same thing on my podcast, two episodes on the case. Reaching different, you're right, reaching different conclusions. Although I think, you know, there are lots of interesting issues that you raise. It's a complicated case. I think we could start there.

More complicated, I think, than people realize. And complicated by the fact that, as you go into this in some detail in one of your episodes, that Floyd, at the time of his arrest, is not a well man. He's on fentanyl. He's got his heart's lungs are full of fluidness. He's got, what is it? Not 75% blockage of his arteries to his heart. So it's complicated. And in difficult cases, you know that.

Legal axiom, difficult cases make bad law. We're in a difficult case here. My big issue with your analysis is I think when you look at the autopsy results and you see that George Floyd... was a very sick man before his arrest. He's vulnerable. That supports the argument against Chauvin. It doesn't undermine it. Because, and the second thing I would say, and this bears in this as well, is that

I'm much more focused on Thomas Lane, who is the first of the police officers on the scene. And Thomas Lane, throughout the entire incident, is constantly telling Derek Chauvin... to get off floyd that floyd is real not well that he's having difficulty breathing and Lane is the one who brings up excited delirium, which you bring up as you see that as that. I think that's where you and I agree. I think that's why he dies. He dies because of...

Some combination of his drug use, his pre-existing conditions, and the fact that he is in a position where he's in respiratory distress because he's prone. He's got weight on his, sometime on his neck and largely on his back and chest. And have you ever been, Ben, have you ever been in the exact position that Floyd was in? I had someone do that to me.

I mean, I'm sure it's unpleasant. I mean, the reality, however, is that you and I agree on many of the underlying facts here. One of the questions, legally speaking, obviously, is. the question of proximate cause. Was it the stress on Floyd? Was it positional asphyxia, which was the case that was made by the prosecution that actually led to Floyd's death? Was that the proximate cause of his death? Or was it, in fact,

the excited delirium that was started by the fact that he was arrested in the first place. He's already claiming that he can't breathe before he's even taken it out of the car and put it on the ground. So if the idea is that he's in respiratory distress, so grave that he was going to die before anything else happened, and if the original attorney...

The original medical examiner said in the report that if we'd found George Floyd dead in his home, he immediately would have attributed it to drug overdose and contributed to by his preexisting conditions. then that does lead to, at the very least, reasonable doubt as to whether the real question here was the weight on his back or the weight on his neck or whether the real question was the underlying health conditions that George Floyd was experiencing. And when you talk about Thomas Lane.

We should note here that Thomas Lane, who was telling Chauvin to move Floyd onto his side. The Minneapolis Police Department protocol suggests that actually you're supposed to keep the suspect in prone position until a code four can be called, meaning that the scene is clear.

Paramedics didn't even call a code for when they arrived because the scene was not clear. There are many people who are around who are yelling, who are threatening. You can see that in sort of reverse angles of the footage. And so, as you say, it's a very complicated case. They're yelling the people who are around.

are yelling for Chauvin to get off Floyd. But that's irrelevant if you're threatening, meaning that there are people who are threatening around saying, get off Floyd, or we're going to come do something to you, presumably. And that is why Chauvin, you can see in the video, he's actually yelling at the crowd. He's yelling back at the crowd. to get back and remove themselves. And so, you know, the question of whether this was, you know, in fact, a second degree unintentional murder.

or whether this is a police procedure that met the wrong guy who had an eggshell skull syndrome, essentially, in terms of sort of legal speak. That's really the question. And as far as Thomas Lane, Thomas Lane, by the way, ends up in jail for three years, which to me is totally unjustifiable. I think that's a travesty. I mean, and so this is one of the questions I really want to ask you about sort of the justice system is that the other three officers who are there.

all end up going to jail. And so that does suggest to me that there is certainly a political motivation and external circumstances that are affecting the judgment of judges and juries and prosecutors in cases like this, which is incredibly dangerous for the justice system. Yeah. Yeah. I did the second of, I did two part series on the case and the second, my, the second part was essentially a defense of Thomas Lane. And I don't think of Thomas Lane.

deserve to go to prison. Thomas Lane, to my mind, is the only voice of reason at the scene. He's the one who says this man is not well. Thomas Lane's the one who calls 911. And he calls 911 not just because... Floyd has cut his mouth, but because he believes that he is suffering from excited delirium and that he's in a very vulnerable state. And then Lane says to Chauvin repeatedly, this guy's...

not doing well, you got to get off him and you got to put him in the recovery position. I would also point out that, you know, when you was making a distinction between these two, is he someone who was going to be... who was going to die because he had these pre-existing issues, or does he die because of positional asphyxia, you know, what the cops did to him? My suggestion is that it's a combination of both.

The reason why, and I wanted to, I brought up this morning, I was looking at the Minneapolis use of force guidelines and is one of the things they say is the maximal restraint technique, which is what. Chauvin's doing, shall only be used in situations where handcuffed subjects are combative and still pose a threat to themselves, officers, who others, or could cause significant damage to property if not properly restrained.

And I think the issue here is that, and the reason everyone got so upset with Chauvin's behavior, is that having restrained Floyd... Having gotten him under control, he doesn't get off. And you're not supposed to do that, have someone in that position for nine minutes. And the reason, the reason... The reason it's so dangerous to put someone in that position for nine minutes is not that she'll kill. If someone put me in that position for nine minutes, I'm not going to die.

I'll be very uncomfortable. I'll be short of breath, but I won't die. But the reason you don't do it for 90 minutes to someone who you've just arrested is you don't know what their underlying conditions is. You don't know whether they have a heart condition. You don't know whether they have COVID and lungs filled with fluid. And so you have to be careful. There's a point that the Minneapolis head of detectives makes in the trial when he says,

He repeats that police adage, when someone is in your custody, he's in your care. And Lane has that position. He's like, this man is now in our care and he's suffering. And Chauvin seems indifferent. And that's the issue now.

That's separate from the legal question. But the legal question is the one that I'm talking about here. So when it comes to the question of, for example, proximate cause, you say that it's both things combined, that it's the excited delirium and it's the weight on his back that killed him.

That's the case that the prosecution attempts to make. My contention is that that case cannot be. It's not possible for that case to be proved even remotely beyond a reasonable doubt, given the autopsy results and given the fact that, again. When you're citing the Minneapolis Department of the police department's use of force guidelines, there is, in fact, a proviso which says that if the crowd is not secure, then a lot of that goes out the window.

And this is one of the questions. And in the tape, again, you see Chauvin gesturing. Well, well, Floyd is going under. Well, well, Floyd is his breathing stops. It's about the last 50 seconds of the tape. He's not not breathing for the entire nine minutes. He stops breathing, apparently, according to the tape, the last 50 seconds or so, which.

Listen, it's all tragic and horrifying. But at that point in the video, you can see that Chauvin is not focused on Floyd. Chauvin is focused on trying to get the crowd back. He's literally pointing at the crowd with the baton, telling them that they need to get back. And when the paramedics arrive, the paramedics don't even call a code four.

The paramedic, which says seen all clear, the paramedics don't do that. And so my position here is that policing is inherently, and you've written about this, ugly, difficult work in which you're finding people at the lowest moment of their lives.

And that means that anything on tape, if Chauvin had not died, this would look like an ugly arrest. I mean, if Floyd had not died, it would look like an ugly arrest. I mean, there was an arrest that was quite similar, actually, that Chauvin did a few years back.

Before this, during a domestic violence call where he used exactly the same position, the person did not die. He was not reprimanded. He shouldn't have been reprimanded. It was a domestic violence call. There's a reason why this procedure was in the Minneapolis Police Department playbook.

In the first place, I mean, down to an actual picture that looks like that was not allowed at trial, by the way, that looks like Chauvin on Floyd's neck. I mean, there's like an actual silhouetted picture that looks exactly like that in the guidebook for the Minneapolis Police Department.

And so the case that I'm making here is that essentially multifold. One is that there is no way just from the fact of the case to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that Derek Chauvin is responsible for George Floyd's death. Given the autopsy results, Floyd's prior health condition.

The fact that he's saying he can't breathe for multiple times before he's even put on the ground. So there's a proximate cause problem. Then there's the question of, even if you want to make a case for excessive use of force, which fine, let's say that that case exists. That case does not exist for second degree murder. That's a totally different charge. Then you have the question.

of the jury. The jury was clearly intimidated in this case. This was the most highly profiled criminal justice case since the OJ Simpson case. You had the Minneapolis city government giving a $27 million settlement to George Floyd's family in the middle of jury selection.

You had Joe Biden declaring during the case that he was hoping that Chauvin would be found guilty. I mean, this is one of the least unbiased cases ever. I think the Thomas Lane conviction is perfect evidence of the fact that these cases were biased beyond.

you know, all recognition. And that's terrible for the justice system. I think the thing that you and I are doing right now, a reasonable discussion about the George Floyd death and Chauvin's responsibility for that is precisely the thing that never happened during his trial or the lead up to the trial.

And that's one of the reasons why I think that you saw this sort of explosion in public sentiment that really had almost nothing to do with the case. I mean, one of the things that was never even alleged in the case by federal prosecutors or by state prosecutors is that any of this happened because George Floyd was black.

That was the thing that was never alleged. There was no evidence ever presented at any of the trials or in the media that Chauvin was a racist. And in fact, the other officers who are standing around, one was white, one was Hmong, and one was black. And so the idea that this was a race-based case, which became the predicate.

for the entire Black Lives Matter summer, resulting in massive 20 million person protests and $2 billion in property damage, was predicated on a narrative that was unfolded from a case that could not bear the weight of that narrative. Let me ask you this.

So one of the things I think that the difference in the approach that you took in your series and the approach that we took in ours was that we were focused on the question of whether Derek Chauvin was a good police officer. And you were focused on the question of...

whether the legal system treated him fairly. And they're different questions, as you point out. But I would love for you to respond to our question. Do you think that the way he conducted himself on the night of the George Floyd arrest... was good police work. So as a non-police officer, I have a hard time answering that question because again, if I looked at just a raw tape of a police officer doing his job in a normal night, it would look ugly to me as a civilian. That's just the reality.

I mean, I've seen a lot. Sorry, go ahead. Thomas Lane does not believe that Derek Chauvin was doing good police work on the night of the George Floyd arrest. So there are other officers, peer officers. who were there on the scene, who were aghast at what Chauvin was doing. Genevieve Hansen, who is one of the first to arrive on the scene, who is a firefighter.

a Minneapolis firefighter who was out for a walk that night. She's the one, one of the most vocal voices in the crowd who's screaming to show up and get off them. He's dying. Get off them. He's dying. She's someone who's very familiar with. with first responding work. And she was aghast at his behavior. The chief of, the 9-11 dispatcher on the night of, who was watching the whole thing on.

The Minneapolis Police Department had a camera on the corner of 38th and Chicago. So she was able to watch it. She's the first person to watch the video. She watched it in real time from the 9-11 dispatch office. She's so unbelievably... shocked at what she's seeing that she asks whether the camera's frozen. She can't believe he's still on, he's still doing that technique for nine minutes on Floyd. And she calls for the first time in her seven years as a, as a N911 dispatcher.

calls the sergeant in the local precinct and says, you've got to get down there. Something bad is going on. So there's lots of people, credible people that night who are observing his technique and are saying, this is not... this is not the way police officers are supposed to handle a case. And if the guy has been saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, as you point out correctly, this is a crucial point that I'm so happy you made.

Floyd saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, before they put him on the ground, right? It's the first thing he says. He's clearly in distress even before they put handcuffs on him. But if a man saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. over and over again, the last thing you want to do is put him in a prone position with your knee on his neck and his back. There are a few points we made here. One is that the police are taught that if you can talk, you can breathe.

I mean, that actually is one of the things that the police are taught. Second of all, as far as the examination of Chauvin's behavior. I think that the sort of hard, bright line distinction that you're making between good police work and bad police work is not actually the reality of policing for the vast majority of police.

Just as for anybody in their job, I think that not every day is a great day or a horrible day in terms of how you do your job. A lot of it lives in this messy gray middle that really is. horrifyingly bad to live in when you're a police officer. I mean, I know a lot of police officers in a lot of different police departments. And I think that one of the ways that you can tell what police officers thought of this trial and of Chauvin's behavior.

isn't the sort of revealed preference that you see in the aftermath of this. What do police officers start to do? And there's clear evidence this was happening. Police officers stop enforcing the law.

Police officers are so afraid that if they do good police work, it is going to be perceived by the civilian population and possible prosecutors as bad police work that they say, I'm just not going to engage. I'm going to pull back. And you get a massive increase in murder rate all across the country in our major cities.

for approximately two years. And that is- It's worse than that. It's worse than that. When you talk about revealed preference, what police officers did following that case was to leave the- police forces around the country in droves. I mean, that's even more dramatic. That's a real reveal preference. And so because of that reveal preference, I guess what I'm saying is...

Yes, you can find police officers who are going to look at that tape and say that's bad police work. And I talked to police officers who said that's bad police work. I also talked to police officers who said, I don't know what I would do in that situation because police work is inherently in the moment. You're making hard and fast decisions in the moment involving like.

your physical body and other people's physical bodies. And you have to prep for that. Sometimes it goes the wrong way. If George Floyd had lived, none of this ever would have made the news. If George Floyd had been white, it probably wouldn't have made the news is the sad truth of it, even if it should have made the news. And so the police officers were saying, listen. I lived 80% of my life in this messy middle between the beautiful arrest and taking the cat out of the tree.

And a police officer just gunning down an unarmed man for no apparent reason. 85, 90% of my time is spent in that messy gray area. And if that messy gray area is going to be policed with a bright line drawn by civilians who have never done a police ride along.

then I can't do this job. I'm going to end up in jail for doing exactly what I do every single day. And so when we talk about these issues, I think that's why it's so important to examine it. Yeah, I think your angle, was he a bad police officer? Was the police action right?

That, of course, is a perfectly relevant question. But when it comes to should a man be in jail for 23 years based on what is a messy middle case at best? And based on, you know, leaving aside even the question of proximate clause and I think reasonable doubt. Again, I think it would be very difficult for an objective person to listen to the conversation we're having and say beyond a reasonable doubt was clearly met in this case.

And beyond a reasonable doubt is a very strict standard in the criminal justice system. And there's just no way to get to beyond a reasonable doubt given the conflicting facts, the autopsy report, the jury intimidation, and all the rest of it. But putting all that aside.

I think that if the question that you've asked and you've talked about it a lot is public policy with regard to police officers, there's two sides to that coin. One is we would all like beautiful pictures of the police taking cats out of trees. And then there is the reality of what police work actually is.

which is inherently dealing with people on their worst day, many of whom have serious criminal backgrounds and who have and who have resisted arrest and have done bad things in the past and police officers who are doing this day in and day out in their daily work.

is the same as your daily work in the sense it's a thing you do every single day. It is not you in a sort of unique situation where you get to be a hero or you get to be a villain. Yeah. No, I, and believe me, I have been writing about this for... much of my career. I think it's a deeply important and fascinating question that this is the hardest, this is one of the hardest professions we have. And the consequences of screwing up or making...

a bad judgment call as a police officer are very often that you go to prison. And so that's not true of, you know, if I make a bad judgment call, I don't go to prison, right? Nobody shoots me. Nobody, you know, so I totally understand that it's hard. One of the things I did when I was doing my series on revisionist history about this was called up a bunch of police chiefs and asked them on this question about...

you know, about had them walk to the George Floyd case with me to get their perspective. And what they talk about is it is absolutely the case that a lot of police work is inherently complicated. And one, I talked to this really wonderful.

police chief named Daniel Oates, who was talking about, you can't even use use of force complaints as a proxy for how good a police officer is. It's just, there's too much noise in the system. You don't know. It depends where they're working. And you make this point. where they're working, how many hours they're working. But he did say, look, at any given time, there are on a police force, 5% of your force is not up to the task.

One of the real public health, his take home lesson from George Floyd was it is too hard for police officers to get rid of the 5% who aren't any good. And that's union rules. And, you know, if I, if you told me that the number one reform. that came out of George Floyd was that we cracked down on the excessive protections for bad police officers that union contracts have created. I would say I'm happy. That's not what happened.

And that's one of the reasons I'm not happy with it. But I do think there are really thoughtful ways in which we could have responded to this that would have made policing better. This guy, Daniel Osers, and many other police officers, many other police chiefs would say, look, we could prevent these cases in the future if you just gave us a little more discretion about who we can...

hire and fire on our police departments. I mean, by the way, it's impossible. I agree. I agree. I mean, I think that if you combine two policies, it would actually alleviate this a lot. One, you massively increase the size of police forces because police officers are generally. overworked. They're generally in precincts where there's too much. Police are sort of misallocated.

In low crime areas, there are too many police and in high crime areas, there actually are not enough police by a long stretch. I mean, this is particularly in my old hometown of Los Angeles where the police to police to civilian ratio is just extraordinary. I mean, it's one police officer.

for tens of thousands of citizens. And there's just no way for them to actually be able to cover that ground. And if you actually want fewer criminal justice interactions, you need low crime rates. That's the way that you actually minimize criminal justice interactions and the way you get low crime rates.

is regular, consistent enforcement of the law. So you actually need to massively expand police forces. And yes, you're right. Get rid, make it easier to get rid of police officers who clearly do the wrong thing. So when it comes to public policy, again, I wish those had been the conversations that were had. And instead it turned into.

Massive protests about the nature of American racism and slavery and Jim Crow and all this kind of stuff. Problems that are basically incurable because there's no actual prognosis for what you're supposed to do next. Yeah, it's funny. I was doing my research for my series on vicious history, and I read this really, really thoughtful analysis of the case, talking about...

this question of union regulations and how collective bargaining agreements with police unions have made it really hard to fire bad cops. And that's a public policy reform we really need to push. And I realized when I was finished reading it, it was written by someone who was high up at Black Lives Matter. So the point is, they did say this, but it didn't. You're right. It's not. I thought this was a really important part of the message that got.

ignored or, and they themselves weren't making this argument by the end. And I think that was a mistake. I think that if I was redoing, rethinking the Black Lives Matter response, In retrospect, I'd do it differently. I think they should have talked much more about those kinds of very pragmatic structural changes we could make to the system that would make it easier for police officers to do their job. I'm totally with you, by the way, on hiring more.

more police. That's, you know, we have misallocated this in America. We spend way too much money on prisons and way too little money on cops. And every criminologist who's ever studied crime will tell you this is... It is such a better investment to invest up front in the prevention of crime than it is to invest at the end of the process. But there's something else I want to bring up with you.

on Chauvin. We're doing too much agreeing here, Ben. We're supposed to be at each other's throats. So I wanted to, here's my biggest problem with your series. I think I read it. I think I listened to it all. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't believe you talked about the John Pope case. No, I didn't. So the John Pope case is the one where I really, it's... It's from three years earlier. And it's a mom calls 911 and says, my son has assaulted me. And we have...

all of the body cam footage, the whole thing. I'm sorry, I made a mistake. I actually did talk about this case, but go ahead. I apologize. Oh, you did? Yes, yes, yes. Because to my mind, that case, which is Chauvin goes into a room.

And there's a 14-year-old boy playing on his phone. And Chauvin says, get up. And the boy says, I didn't do anything. My mom's drunk. She always calls 9-11. Chauvin says, get up. The boy slowly gets up. And Chauvin... after like five seconds, goes to the boy, smacks him over the head repeatedly with his flashlight, draws blood, puts him in a choke hold, throws him on the ground, and then...

puts his knee on his neck and his other knee on his back and holds him there for 13 minutes. Now, when you see that, you're like, this was a kid, a 14-year-old. Every time I watch that video, I start crying. It's so... And after watching that video, I was like, Chauvin is not a police officer. You can't do that to a 14-year-old kid whose mom's drunk. You can't like, I just saw that he's in the wrong profession. He's got to do something else. And to my mind, this whole thing, the other cops.

We see it in what's called the John Pope video. There are like six other cops in the room. And when Chauvin gets on the boy's neck, and the boy's whimpering like a 14-year-old would. You have kids, right? Yes. The way that a kid would. who doesn't understand what's going on. Why is this man like beating me up with a flashlight and sitting on my neck because my mom's drunk? Well, it's, listen, again, this is- It's heartbreaking. And the other way, the other cops-

all file out of the room. They can't take it. They know that Chauvin is a bad egg. They really do. There's only one problem with that particular case, which is that no complaint was actually even filed at the time. Meaning that – so it's very difficult to make the case that he ought to have been fired over an incident in which no complaint was even filed by the family at the time. But in retrospect, it's a clue to the kind of police officer Derek Sullivan. I mean that's –

That's fair. It's also true that John Pope, again, it's terrible because he's 14. Also, he's a very big kid, but it's a domestic violence call. There are complicating factors that make it slightly more complicated than just the tape. But the fact that no complaint was filed makes it very difficult for the police even to take action.

even if that was a bad situation. So, you know, again, when you go through the police's history, I mean, Chauvin had an 18, 19 year history with Minneapolis Police Department. The complaint rate against Chauvin was effectively no higher than it was against a lot of other officers that were in his same precinct. And the number of complaints that actually ended in reprimand was quite low for Chauvin. And so based on that, it is.

Again, if we're going to litigate the John Pope situation on its own, I would want to look more deeply into actually all the surrounding circumstances. What was the call like? What exactly was the thing that was being alleged? The tape alone, I think, is one of the things that my takeaway is from the Chauvin case and many other cases that are like this is that the tape alone doesn't tell the whole story.

Because tape alone is always going to look bad. And even if I agreed with you that the tape looked bad there, that still would not convict Derek Chauvin in a court of law of the second degree unintentional murder. of George Floyd. No, it wouldn't. But it's a, you're right. But it's a clue. Any more than, by the way, any more than George Floyd's previous criminal history, including cases.

Where he actually had claimed being taken out of a car that he couldn't breathe. That actually happened a few years beforehand. Any more than that would exonerate Chauvin. The only significance of the John Pope video is that. And this points to a structural problem within the Minneapolis Police Department. No one seems to have watched that video until after the Chauvin case. But had someone watched it at the time, I think that there would have...

been serious questions raised about Chauvin's future on the Minneapolis Police Department. And we would never have had George Floyd case because he wouldn't have been around to do it. I mean, so it does say, I do think that there is a management failure here where... The reason we have these body cam cameras is that they do collect, you know, meaningful evidence about an officer's behavior and the situation in which they're operating. And that video, you know.

The Floyd video is complicated. The John Poe video is not complicated. He's beating up a kid. Did you watch it, Ben? Yeah, I have. It's disturbing. I mean, again. Come on. It's more than disturbing. Well, I mean, my emotional reaction to a police video is precisely the thing that I'm trying to avoid. Yeah. I know you like facts over feelings, but sometimes feelings tell us something important about a situation.

I mean, again, I think that feelings can tell us what we feel about a situation. I'm not sure that they inform the facts of the situation, but that's where we're going to have to disagree yet again. So it's good. We're ending on a point of disagreement. Malcolm Gladwell, thank you so much for taking the time. It's been an interesting discussion. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, Ben, it was a pleasure. All right, guys, coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag. Remember, if you want to ask me a question and have your question answered, well, there's only one way to do that. That's to become a member. You need to head over right now. to Daily Wire Plus and become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.