¶ Introduction
All right, I hope you enjoyed part one of that conversation that was very much focused on the military, we delved into some larger issues. My second interview Herman Lopez. He's actually a New York Times reporter that is now part of the editorial board and actually at the end of our conversation about policing in America, and he's been on the criminal justice beat for decade in various news organizations.
So I think you'll really appreciate the expertise that he provides, and frankly, a very sober and dispassionate explanation of you know, what are the explanations as to why, as to why we have so many unsolved murders. But I do want to make one quick point about DC. There's an interesting little various generational divides and the question is DC safer today than ever.
Before or not?
¶ DC is much safer today than it was in the 90s
Well, some of this, by the way, depends on how old you are. So for instance, I moved here. I moved to d C in nineteen ninety. That's when I
went to school. GW moved here in the June of nineteen ninety, and in fact, my first week was when there was the whole Marion Barry, you know, the the at the crack cocaine bust, and that was just consumed the city's politics and was consuming and it was sort of in the nineties in general, it was a low point for d C as a community as a and it was sort of really So, I look at d C today and while if you compare d c's you know, the security of d C today to say, ten years ago,
you feel as if things are not as good as they were. If you're someone like me and you compared to where d C was and to the nineties, you think, what do you, guys, this is you don't understand more parts of DC today are are are great places to hang out and all of those things than ever before. So if you're wondering in some ways why you're hearing different descriptions of d C, do take note of how old the person is that's telling you this. I think if you're somebody who's who's been in DC for the
last fifteen or twenty years, you have won. You know, It's all depends on where you where your baseline was, right, and if that was your baseline, it feels as if DC's a little less secure than it was fifteen or twenty years ago. If you're someone like me and remembered when the waterfront was not the best place to be that where the Nationals Park is, and when you had to go get your car inspected, you were you literally, you know, you did so as in as sunny of
a day as possible. There wasn't It wasn't just that neighborhood. There were lots of neighborhoods that felt that way.
And so.
The trajectory of DC in my lifetime has been safer and better and more of the city more open to everybody, more more, you know, just feels like a better place to live. But so I think if you're wondering why there's sometimes a disconnect, do take note, you know, are those people like me who've been in d C since the late eighties, early nineties, or is it people that came to d C, say right after nine to eleven. Anyway, just thought i'd make that little notation there. So with that,
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Herman Lopez. And
¶ German Lopez joins the Chuck Toddcast!
joining me now from The New York Times is Herman Lopez. When I booked him, he was a reporter on the reporter side and now he has joined the opinion section, and we'll get to in a minute, but he was the author of an article a few about a month ago on some new data that was released about how nearly half of all murders in America go unsolved. The point is that essentially, if you murder someone in America, you got a fifty to fifty chance to get away with it. And that is not quite fifty to fifty.
But we're going to get into the reasons for this. But I can't think of a more timely conversation given suddenly the President is currently interested in crime that he in the visuals that he can see, when if this were the focus, that the real issue of criminal justice, of the issue of crime in America arguably.
Might be this.
This is a nationwide problem that isn't something that can be solved one jurisdiction at a time, and yet it's something I thought this was one of those headlines and boy, this should get people's attention, and it seemed to land with crickets. So what happens when that happens, You do
your best to try to surface it. So I've invited Herman onto the podcast because I really want to explore this issue more, and because if we really want to solve feel safe in America, perhaps, you know, we might want to start with solving the most egregious crimes to take place against humanity, like murder. Herman, Welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. So let's start with the piece.
¶ Lack of law enforcement resources towards solving homicides
You've been covering criminal justice issues for over a decade, so this is obviously on your beat. I just found this framing to be really clarifying and I real because here's this one story that once you start to peel the onion, you realize, oh, we don't have enough cops. Oh, we don't have enough these resources. Oh we don't have
enough these resources. And so when you think about people's complaints about law and order in general, that if you actually began with this focus, perhaps everything else sort of falls into place if you can crack this part of the code. But it is, but you're the expert. This is your beat, So tell me how you went about this and what kind of why you framed it the way you decided to frame it.
Yeah. So I've been fascinated by clearance rates. That's what the statistic is called. Essentially, how many murders are cleared means how many resultant in arrest. I've been fascinated by
¶ Other countries have much higher rates of solving murder cases
this for years because the US has historically been very behind rich countries like where we're talking about, like Japan or Germany or Australia, those kinds of examples, like they have clearance rates in the nineties like ninety plus percent. Japan famously solves almost all of its murders. They have fewer of them, so it's easier for them to do that, but they have fewer of them. So the US historically is usually around fifty to sixty percent, especially after COVID.
The most recent data suggests it's bumped up a little too, around sixty percent. But I should say that even that's a little misleading because that includes murders that happened in previous years that were solved in the year where the data was reported. So if you actually subtract those pre murders, the clearance rate is more around forty percent depending on the city, which is even obviously even more than half of people who kill someone in that year will get
away with it, at least for that year. And for me, this is just this is just arming that there's a thing in criminal justices somewhere. There are three ways to deter someone. One is the severity of the punishment. So you know, if somebody thinks they're going to face long prison punishment, they might decide, I'm not going to do that crime. If they think they're going to get away with it, then that's the other thing is a certainty
of punishment is important. So if somebody thinks they're going to get away with it, then you know they might think, I'm going to do this crime anyway. I mean, a long prison punishment penalty isn't going to matter if you think you can get away with the crime. And the third thing is the speed of punishment, because people not only have to be certain, but it has to come fast. Like I murdered someone and a few days later I
was arrested. That sends the signals to the rest of the community that like, look, the police are taking this very sore and you're gonna get caught exactly, and yeah, how does this compare to thirty years ago?
Has this always been the case? Is this historically a consistent pattern here of essentially unresolved murder cases.
¶ It's possible police are more focused on preventive policing
Now it's clearance rates in general have gone down over
the past few decades. I should say that there's some discussion among criminal justice experts about how much of this was like, you know, police were just locking up anyone they could pick up, Like you think about the level of evidence that they gather now you know, DNA evidence, the forensic stuff, like they and also generally they had to clear a higher bar because like, courts no longer accept just police picking up anyone off the street and
claiming that they're a murderer, and so prosecutors will send back those cases and police know that, so they'll be more careful with their arrest. So in general we've seen a decline in clearance rates, but it's not clear how much of that is that, Like you know, to some it might be that police have gotten better at their jobs because they're not being as abusive with criminal slice. But to some degree, it probably is that police aren't
taking this as seriously as they once used to. It used to be a big part of policing in the US that they focused on clearance rates, and over time we've transitioned to this model of more proactive policing, so we try to stop crime before it happens. And as we've done that, we've put less emphasis on actually solving crimes once they do happen, and yet we have more data than ever right DNA.
It's you know, between I look at two things, you know, I.
Mean, let me frame it another way.
The perception of safety in America I think has gotten
¶ The chance of leaving evidence is higher than ever
better in my lifetime, not worse. And I think the number one reason is this surveillance, meaning every you know, the likelihood that you're going to be on camera doing the crime, whether it's violent crime or petty crime, but the idea that the likelihood the will be evidence that you did it is never been higher. The ability to use DNA evidence to find a particle that will connect a suspect to the crime and make it possible to get a conviction.
We've never had more tools at our disposal.
And yet the counter point is here, we have all of this, all of these extra tools that the police didn't have.
So obviously it does.
Mean, oh my god, how many people got convicted for crimes that they probably didn't commit. So that's one thing you worry about when you look at the twentieth century versus of twenty first. But why is it that these new tools haven't been able to actually increase the likelihood that police can solve these crimes.
Well, I think there's a few things going on. In some cases, police just haven't really caught up with a modern era and are not using cares as much as
¶ We have better tools than ever for solving cases
they could be. There's also like civil libertarians really take issue with the idea of surveillance, and they have tried to legally restrain police, and like, look, they have some legitimate complaints. I'm not saying that like the police should have access to like every new technology and abuse it accordingly, but like there is some pushback there, and police have to deal with that. They ultimately answer to you know, city councils and mayors and governors and all that. But
another issue is frankly just just funding police. That there are actually if you walk around a modern city. I live in Cincinnati, So when I walk around, there are these like polls of that old cameras and actually audio devices at the top, and they can hear gunshots, they record people on the street. People can actually see these probably never modern city, and they become more popular recently, but police haven't adopted them as widely as you would think.
So you know, when you think about like how people are getting away with murder in this modern surveillance state. That's part of it is that they can't necessarily access all the cameras, and they really might not have cameras around to begin with, depending on what you're talking about. All right, but what about on the DNA side of things? Right?
In some ways, there's never been more ways to find evidence that. Frankly, it was evidence that existed before, but we didn't have the technology to.
Identify it.
Right now we have the technology to identify DNA evidence. Is this another case of lack of adoption or is this it's just not as easy as it as TV
¶ Analyzing evidence isn't as easy as TV makes it look
makes it look.
I would say that it's not as easy as TV makes it look. And the biggest thing you have to consider is the proliferation of guns in the US. You are just much less likely to leave behind the evidence if you're if you're shooting someone, then if you're stabbing them. So you think about, you know, if you think about like a CSI episode, it's often like a husband killing his wife or something along those lines, like people who intimately know each other, and the episode's about uncovering that.
Those are usually crimes where you know they're they're up close. There's physical evidence everywhere in a lot of these shootings, I mean, people are just driving by a house and gunning people down, and nobody even sees the face of the shooter. Like they might still know who the shooter was or have their suspicions, but they might not have actually seen them. So so if you think about it in that situation, that that makes it much much harder to salt these crimes. Is it easy to classify the
unsolved cases? Is there a pattern here?
It's it's more of it's it's the murders that are harder to are for our murders that take place where the where it is a gunman and where the gunman is you know, ten feet away or more like, is there is it that can you can you divvy it up that concrete?
Yeah, so there are, Like I would say, there are layers. One, if it's a shooter, then distance obviously matters as well, and then gang related because if the crime gang related crimes are more likely to be not necessarily anonymous, but the victim and shooter might not know each other, at
least the victim's family might not know the shooter. That's more likely to happen also gangs are just better at covering up crimes since they have more experience with it, so they might know how to avoid getting caught to begin with. And so those I think those three factors
really play a big role. And the US does generally have more shootings and more gang crime than other countries, so that would explain some of the discrepancy when you look at Japan, which has very few guns, very little gang activity that results in murder, so that I think that's one of the biggest things driving it is just you know, the US has a lot of guns and gangs are using them. So okay, that's another part of this.
If how many of these unst murders are likely gang related,
¶ How many murders are gang related?
it's hard to.
Say because it depends on the city by city, and the statistics frankly aren't that great. But in some cities it's the vast majority of shootings are are gang related. Well maybe not some cities, but at least in some neighborhoods, the vast majority of shootings, I should say, our game related.
So when you're looking at that level of things, there can be like, you know, your entire community might be riddled by crime that's unsolved, And that's another thing that's striking I should say about these clearance rate statistics is like, you know, we're talking about national statistics, right, but when you start looking at the city and neighborhood level, there are some places where clearance rates can drop to like single digits like nine percent and lower because there's so
few attention going to the issue.
Well, part it's that or is there fear like eyewitnesses don't want to cooperate.
There's that aspect as well. That's absolutely part of it. I mean, it's also just a vicious cycle. Right, If you know that people are getting away with murder, you are less likely to testify as a witness because you have no confidence that the police can actually protect you if you come forward, speak up, testifying court. Right, Like, the criminal justice system fundamentally relies on our belief that it is protecting us our trust, and if you don't
have that then pretty it starts fraying. And I think that's what we see when we look at these clearance rate numbers, especially in minority and poor neighborhoods. They have lots of reasons, not just the clear low clearance rates
¶ Lack of trust in minority communicates leads to lower solve rates
to not trust beliefs, and that leads to all sorts of problems and solving murders.
You know, I think about I grew up in Miami in the eighties, seventies and eighties, and in the eighties we were the murder capital of the world. And I will tell you I never fell unsafe, right because it was there was a belief and I think over time we learned this is that ninety percent of these murders were both the victim and the shooter.
It was all part of the same world. Right.
It felt like as if, yes, this was happening in Miami, but this was disputes between cartels. These days, we you know, the difference between gang and a cartel is just the name, right, Arguably it's the same thing. And you know, and there was this feeling that, well, if you're not involved in the various activities, you're going to be safe.
Is that still the case?
Is that how you would tell people that you know they because you know it's you know, because.
I've always felt I felt that way when I was here in d C. Too.
Is that I lived in DC when it was the murder capital of the world in the early nineties, and yet I never felt all right, I know, right, Well, I remember I had had my grandfather's wife when I went and decided to go to school in DC. This is in nineteen eighty nine. She goes like, it's so unsafe there, and I went and Ella, we live in Miami, like we just like they made an entire television there's a huge television show called Miami.
Vice that that is, you know. And yet I said, do you feel unsafe? You know?
¶ It feels much worse in high crime communities than the statistics
And it was sort of like having this conversation and so and that's this sort of you know, and how concentrated. I guess it goes back to it's always felt as if these things are concentrated in these communities. Is that still the case?
Yes, that is definitely the case that crime is just
super concentrated in general. I mean, some cities had programs where they literally focus on like just dozens or even hundreds of people within the city and demonstrably brought crime down that There's a famous example in Boston called the Boston Miracle, where they famously focus on just like these slivers of offenders, like people they knew were doing certain crimes, and crime just plummeted by fifty percent in the city throughout the course of this program and it's that can
hide it from other people. But I think the reverse of that is in those communities where there are all these people committing crimes, it feels much much worse than even the crime statistics might suggest.
So why, I mean, this seems like the obvious thing, which is you surge law enforcement resources to your most vulnerable neighborhoods. Why if it worked in Boston, why isn't this replicated around the country.
There's a lot of you know, political interests that go into policing. I would say, so, you know, one thing is actually solving crimes or deterring crimes, right, Like, we have good evidence that if police are just in a block, people are less likely to commit crime. Who's going to be stupid enough to shoot someone else in front of a police officer, right, It's called a scarecrow effect in criminology. And so yes, you can just you can surge resources there.
But the other thing is a perception of crime, and I think this is just as important. There are plenty of neighborhoods. I see this in cincinn where there are like police patrolling all these nice businesses because the business owners in the area want to feel safe. And of course they're entitled to feel safe, but the reality is crime is probably not happening in those places where there are lots of wealthier businesses, right like just in nature,
that's not how crime works. So I think police have to deal with that conflict, and that limits their resources. And you know, you often see this with like surges of police in cities where they just start targeting what
are frankly the wrong neighborhoods. They're like the idea of surging police officers in a block or neighborhood or whatever that does a strong empirical evidence and it does have some effect no matter where you are, but it could have a bigger impact in the neighborhoods that frankly just have less political capitals, so they can't really ask for police help as easily as you know, wealthier businesses could.
¶ We haven't best targeted police resources
So are we in a situation where we know what would work, We just don't we don't have the political will, or we're still trying to figure out best practices.
I mean, I would say it's a little bit of both in the end, but I would mostly lean on the first thing, which is we know what to do and we just have not really used the resources for it. You see this kind of thing all the time in politics. So in his first term, for example, President Trump actually
his budgets repeatedly suggested cutting police funding. And I think one thing that's interesting about that is not necessarily that it led to police cuts, because Congress by and farded but for the most are did not pass those budgets. But there was no conversation about whether they should increase funding in certain neighborhoods, right, Like, the conversation was like, should we do Trump's budget or not? And the answer was not okay, so like should we? There was never
really a conversation about this. And obviously you have the defund the police movement, which which had a big effect as well, And so I think in the end, the conversation has been really focused on, like, you know, how limited can we keep police resources? Like what's the least we can spend on this? But I think that runs into a bunch of problems. Number one, you can't solve
crimes easily detectives. You know, you want smart people on those jobs, and smart people are going to demand higher salaries and too, Like even if you're just worried about the police accountability issue, that we've heard so much of with Black Lives Matter and all that. Like, one way that you make sure police officers are better is by making sure that you know that they have higher education, or go through certain training, or are just smarter better people.
And like, smarter better people are generally going to be able to get jobs elsewhere with more competitive pay, So why would they go to a police department? And like it, I think in this way you can really think about, like, you know, there's a dearth of resources going to these department and a lot of them have dealt with shortfalls in recent years, like staffing shortages where they cannot hire
nearly as many cops as they want to hire. Here in Cincinnati, the police apartment is supposed to be staffed at around one thousand, one thousand, one hundred cops. It's missing one hundred to two hundred people in a history in every major METROARREA. Yes, I was about to say, that's the story in every major metro area. And some of that is, you know, it's social, like liberals do not want to become cops anymore because they do not see it as a good profession, right, And some of
it is political. Is political in that sense, and then some of it is just financial. They literally can't entice enough cops to come in with proper pay. Well you hear this.
You know, some police officers feel like they're not respected anymore, So why bother? Right, you hear that conversation? And right, you just talked about the divide. I mean, you know, I think about Joe Biden and Bill Clinton in the mid nineties and one hundred thousand cops the street and
¶ There are plenty of solutions available, politicians have to fund them
the surge of that, and how that was universally popular, and of course then it became a divisive issue inside the Democratic Party a generation later. Right, And because incarceration rates seem to be rise among more vulnerable groups that you know, it looks like a lot of profiling was taking place. So you know, I guess that this is the problem. If you could take politics out of this issue and just made it a hey, do you want to solve this problem? And here are best practices to
do it. These are the funding levels we need, this is the training levels we should have, and these are the metrics police departments have to meet. And if you don't meet it, you lose certain funding. I mean, it seems like this isn't you know, like most things in our political sphere of debate, the solution isn't that there's seventeen solutions sitting on a shelf. You just got to decide which one is politically viable in the moment, right.
And you know, I think one of the things that makes it tricky is that the concerns and criticisms are legitimate to some degree. Right, A lot of a lot of bad cops get away with things that they should not be getting away with, and so it's understandable that people feel the way they do. I mean, we've all seen the police shooting videos of the last few years. They're horrendous, and like.
I'm sorry, if you're an African American male in this country, you do have a lot I understand why you have some distress to the cops because you feel singled out, you feel profiled.
Well, not only do you feel profiled, but you feel like they are not protecting you because of the clearance rates stuff we're talking about, right, Like, I mean, I think are a majority.
I was just going to say, do we know as a majority of unsolved murders people of color?
¶ The clearance rate for cases with black victims are much lower
I'm not sure if it's a majority necessarily, Probably depends on the year, but the clearance rates for black black victims, like murders where there are black victims are much worse. So in general, we do know that's the case, and I think it's useful for people to just put themselves in the shoes of someone living in that environment where you know, police harass them for petty nonsense that that
doesn't really do much for for anyone's public safety. There are murders all the time and shootings all the time. They literally hear gunshots when they're just going to bed, and.
Byether, if there are gunshots in my community, there'd be outrage and there'd be all sorts of politicians surging around. And you sit there and you're like that happens in the south part of the county. Everybody just says, oh, yeah, it's just another night where I hear gunshots, right exactly.
And then on top of that, you know, whoever did the shooting is probably going to get away with it. Like I mean, just imagine living in that environment. What's that tell you? You think I have there's no one who can protect me here. I shouldn't. I can't trust the police. It's understandable to have that sentiment and I think that the fact that those criticisms, those complaints are valid, just makes it much harder to, you know, as a politician, argue that we should be spending more on police.
You grounded your story in Louisville, not too far from Cincinnati, and in some ways they're very you could I guess there's probably some similarities between the two cities. Louisville has been a little bit more in the news for its actions of its police department, and they've had they've had some federal oversight and what they've done and haven't done, et cetera. Brianna Taylor obviously, the incident, the murder of Brianna Taylor being sort of a touchstone there so unpacked
¶ What would it take to make Louisville's PD better?
Louisville's police department. You know, it was sort of your It was your the example you led with what would it take to make that a better police department?
I mean, I think the first thing and they would tell you this because because I asked them a lot of questions and this is the one that they emphasized is they just need to have full staffing. They are there are The last time I look at the numbers they were they were like severely understuffed, like by the hundreds of police officers. It's a big city, so you know that number might sound like big, but that's how few. That's how many police officers they need to hire. I
think that's the first thing. That The second thing is they really do need to rebuild trust with like the community, trust that they've lost. I mean, they have losso for very understandable reasons, like the community is upset for very legitimate grounds, and now they need to work to show the community that they're protecting them. That makes it difficult to to actually get to the job of solving murders right, Like the community doesn't trust you. You know, solving murders
requires witnesses, so they need those people. And the third thing that I heard from a lot of experts is just look, they should increase the use of modern technology. You know, we talked about cameras like that that's a big thing, and they've said that they've started to do some of that. They told me this much. But at the end of the day, you know, there are still a lot of places where there are blind spots. There are still a lot of shootings where they will tell
¶ Departments struggle to find officers in communities with low trust
you they have no physical evidence or surveillance footage or whatever. So that to me suggests they could be doing more along those grounds, even if it's not like, you know, how many people want a camera installed in the middle of their street. But like you could try to work with a community. People have cameras all over their houses nowadays, right, So like you could try to work with the community to like actually know that those things are there, that
you can access them and so forth. So those are three big steps, but I think it would make a tremendous difference. I would. I will say though, that the hiring part of this is probably the most difficult, just because you know, they simply cannot find enough officers, and especially enough officers from Louisville in a community that does not trust them, right.
I mean the biggest thing is, you know, you want your police force to look like the community you're policing, right, And that seems to be a challenge for many of these forces, right.
I think you know, in other countries they've done like reconciliation things like that when when there are the government messes up and they want to rebuild trust and all that, and they basically come forward admit their mistake. They do these long reports, And I'm not sure how much that stuff helps, but I doubt it can hurt. Like, at this point, many police departments have seriously lost the trust of their communities and they just they need to show
that they care. Hear them. I hear the officers too all the time, who are very upset that, like, you know, they feel underappreciated because many of them are doing good job and still they're being lumped in with all these other.
Criticis welcome to every industry, right, Like in the middle of journalism, right, you're like, yes, they're bad actors, but like they're in the minority, I swear right, right, I mean we talk about this in so many walks of life and that the you know, the five percent of bad apples end up defining ninety percent of the actors, and that that doesn't help anybody, right, But I.
Think frankly, like if you're an officer, I mean you should know your your public accountable. Like that's just how
¶ Politicians weaponize public anger against police departments
things work, right, This is a job serving the public, and sometimes you're going to hear things that you don't like, and like it's just somehow police departments have to figure out how to build that resilience and I think sometimes the messaging back and forth, I will say, like from from critics and from their supporters just does not help. It seems to escalate the conflict rather than toning it down.
Well, because the politicians are weaponizing it. They're exploding if they're exploiting the anger among cops. We see politicians do that. They don't people don't care about cops. Thin blue line, right, you know, back to the blue and we don't. And then you know, you see it. You see it with those who feel as if the cops have been abusive
and all of that. So you this is a I feel like the politicians have made the conversation between the actual police and community and the communities themselves harder to have because of the political I don't know if we call them overtones or undertones in this case, but right, I.
Think that's exactly right framing though, because it is basically Paul to if you talk to like actual people on the ground, they have much more i would say, moderate views, but the conversation is dominated by extremists. I think a
¶ High crime neighborhoods want more policing, not less
classic example of this is in around twenty twenty, when it was a height of defund the police. If you went into community meetings with police officers. Very often, what you would see it was white progressives saying defund the police, and then it was black mom saying no, no, no, I want my cops on my street. Yeah right, I want my son to be protected. Please get these drug dealers out, et cetera. And like, I think, to me, that's really because those those are the stories I heard.
I mean, I talked to a bunch of family members of victims, and they were all black, because they are the disproportionate victims of these murders, and all of them said the same thing, like, look, I know that cops do a lot of wrong things things, but ultimately I want them to have my back when something this bad happens to me, when I lose a family member and so forth. And I think, you know, I mean, we say that's of all sorts of political issues, right, that
the extremist kind of take over the conversation. But I just don't think that that is not really representative of
¶ Is recruiting detectives as difficult as recruiting officers?
the everyday American, And I think it's important to keep that in mind.
Let's talk about the puzzle solvers themselves, meaning the actual homicide detectives. I would think that to recruit in that is actually is that also difficult that specific part of the law enforcement community, or is that actually seen as sort of a more prestigious, prestigious gig in the world of policing.
I mean, it's certainly seen as more prestigious, But I guess it depends on some cops. You know, some cops really revel in the idea of like being a patrol officer and their bid and their neighborhood and all that. But I think generally police departments to treat as like
a higher, prestigious, more position. But the thing is that it requires a lot a lot of work, right, Like you might be called odd hours because a murder just happened, and as we know, murders are much or any really any prime is much easier to solve if you're on the scene fast. So that's one thing. It requires a lot of training and intellectual work that you might not do in day to day policing. And it's just and then on top so once you start stacking those requirements,
I come back to the issue of pay. Right, Like, somebody who is really well equipped to be a detective, you know, they might also choose to do other investigative work. They could work for authentk tic, they could be a journalist, they could do all sorts of things, and those jobs generally pay higher than a police detective might make, especially when we're talking about you know, smaller towns and so forth.
I mean, is it as simple as police departments if you hit a certain funding level, you get bonus money. Is that an incentive that's worth pursuing or would that be the equivalent of putting bounties out there that might actually backfire right where there's an incentive to just find to just close the case.
And you know, yeah, I guess that would worry The thing I would worry me about something like that is like it would basically help the winners, you know, you know what I mean. Like, if you're already hitting a seventy percent clearance, right, let's say, do you really need the more funny than somebody's struggling at forty percent? Like
that would be my concern with it. But I mean, in general, I'm not totally sure how to do it, but I think we need to figure out a way to fund, like funnel resources into places that are solving or struggling the most with solving murders and dealing with more murders is the FBI at all?
I mean, look, I don't want to get into the current leadership of the FBI because I really fear what we've done, and politicizing the leadership of the FBI is a very dangerous course. But let's let's let's pretend we live in this neutral world right now and the FBI is sort of the FBI you and I have been used to dealing with, which is functionally has tried to be a political right up up until this most recent set of leaders this most current leadership.
¶ Is there a better role for the FBI in solving murders?
Are they too you know?
I get the sense that we've that in some ways the FBI is less and less helpful to local police because we've now asked the FBI to do so many other things, whether it's having to do with terror, counter terrorism, UH, domestic intelligence and things like this. But is there a better role for the FBI in helping increase the possibility that we solve more murders?
I mean, police departments can ask for FBI to succumb in and help them sometimes when they do, but you are right that to some degree, and all police departments, including the FBI, have suffered this from the past few years where we just asked them to do more and more and more. So on the FBI level. You know you mentioned counter terrorism, they also just drug trafficking in general, and dealing with like all those kinds of.
Cyber They're dealing with CYBERBRT right in a way that I think domestic police forces just I mean, I look at it everyone to get to cyber because that's a whole separate conversation. But I'm going to assume that neither the Cincinnati or Louisville police departments know what they're doing on cyber And I don't mean that in any criticism. That's just not what they were designed to do.
No, And at the same time, the local and state police departments are dealing with their own like over right, they're asked to like response to these mental health care cases, where what do they do. They're not psychologists, they're not psychiatrists, And they have to be on the scene in some cases because if people are acting violently or might have guns or whatever it might be. But like they don't know how to deal with that person, and like you know,
it's in the end. You see a lot of police officers say this, like I took this job to become a police officer, not a social worker, and often the work can feel like like you're doing social work. But in terms of the FBI, I think, you know, it can play positivele. I think one of the biggest things that can do is just lead by example, Like it can show like the country what exactly the federal government
is prioritizing. And I would say not just the FBI, really all federal law enforcement agencies can play that role. And you know, we haven't, at least in the last under this administration, we haven't really had proof of that that they're like taking this issue seriously by any means. And frankly, crime only seems to come up when it's like politically convenient for the president more than when it he's actually taking as seriously as an issue. So I
think that that makes it difficult. Like you know, the ultimately a lot of policing work, a lot of criminal justice work happens at the state and local level. The vast majority of it happens there. But one thing the federal government can do is like tell you where what you should be prioritizing. And because to put it charitably, we're getting mixed messages from the federal government over the last year. It's really difficult for police departments to do that,
¶ What to make of the current crime rates?
and they're not getting clear messages on what the priorities are.
Big picture here, let's talk about the issue of the crime rate. Is in the news right what to believe, what not to believe? I sort of look at it. I feel like the further away we get from COVID, the more obvious it is that, yes, there was a spike in COVID in all sorts of crimes, right, violent ones and nonviolent ones, and now that we're back sort of engaging in the society that we had on February first, twenty twenty, that we're back to sort of typical crime rates.
I hate to put them in.
Those terms, but essentially, you know, yes, that might be a spike here there in a specific incident or a specific gang war, things like this, but for the most part, what we've experienced in the first two decades of the twenty first century is where we are today.
Is that a fair way of putting it. I would put up optimistic and pessimistic spin on it. The optimistic
¶ Murder rates have collapsed, but higher than peer nations
spin is it's actually the murder rate this year is on track to be much lower than it has been for at least sixty five years. That's when the FBI started tracking national data. So on a national level, the murder rate has really collapsed, and that's that's great news. The pessimistic spin on it is that, like the murder rate, based on this year's numbers, will probably come at four per one hundred thousand. I don't expect anybody to know
off the top of their head what that means. But if you compare that to like European or like Japan or Australia, like other countries, wealthy countries, that's not great. And like that's really the fundamental problem in the US is that like, even when crime is coming down, it's still at a at a at a default baseline much higher than it is, particularly murders, than there is in other places.
Just by curiosity, would you was this that also true thirty five and forty years ago, that our baseline was higher than the baseline of the rest of the western world.
Oh, especially if you're looking at thirty five years ago. Pretty much everybody saw like murders rise and fall after starting around the seventies and eighties.
But the US, it's pretty clear now that was all drug trafficking related, right, the spike it well, you know, the cocaine stuff and crack.
I think that's a big part of it. There are also other theories, like there's honestly like a billion theories about it. One is that you know, lead and gasoline was making people more aggressive, because we have good evidence that like lead is warps people's minds, right, and like leaded gasoline took off around the era preceding that, and then we got rid of it. Asked crime started talking about that.
I've heard that view too. I get it right the whole, you know.
Yeah, but the thing I find persuas about that is that it would explain of global drop since that was a global attin. But it's also true, you know, we saw drug trafficking obviously take off in the US with crack,
¶ The civil rates movement created crime and upheaval
cocaine and so on and so forth. I also think there was a lot of social discord at the time. So you know, you had Watergate, you had the Vietnam War, you had the Cold War in general.
In the background, you had civil rights movement, which was a civil truths right we were becoming that was I always remind people we've only been a multi racial democracy for about fifty five sixty years r right exactly, And what you're describing is the first decade of US as a multiracial democracy, and you could argue that maybe that also created tension.
Yeah, this is something that's just much harder to measure empirically. But when you have periods of like you know, the social fabric kind of collapsing, and we saw this with COVID, it seems like crime just spikes, and like you know, again, the criminal justice sim relies on trust, so does our government in general. Right, So when it makes sense intuitively that if people don't trust the government, they might bring the laws more.
¶ Trust is down, but crime is down... why?
Okay, trust is down, and yet crime is down. Yes, So that is another thing. You pointed to phones earlier. I think it's an understated aspect of this. And I wouldn't just say phones, I'd say screens in general are keeping kids inside, right, Like, that's that's a big thing. The other thing is in the nineties especially, we did a lot to improve policing in the US, Like you talked about Bill Clinton's measures to like flood streets with police officers.
I was a big thing. But also they learned how to use like all sorts of new technologies to actually track crime, see where it's happening on a map, flood police officers in the area. The New York City Police Department in particular, is really good at this, and it's one of the It's well, it's the safest city in the country, but even when you compare to like other countries, it's it's relatively safe. It's interesting with the NYPD.
Right, here's here's a law enforcement agency that fifty years ago didn't have the best reputation, and now it's considered the crown jewel, isn't it.
Yeah. I mean obviously they still have problems. Like anytime you say something like you just said, you're going to get people saying out, how about this, this, and it's like there's plenty of this, this and this. Yeah, true, it's true. Also, it's just a giant city. When you with a lot of police officers, some of them are bound to be doing stupid, bad things all the time.
But yes, it really is. And I think the the other thing I would add is just like you know that even though trust and government didn't improve, the end of the Cold War really brought this like whole America and America is good. It's like sense of patriotism that didn't really exist. And I don't know, I don't have a study telling you that that's probably but my that that caused the decline crime, But my hunt is that probably helped. I mean, it was just a moment where
¶ German's journey to becoming a criminal justice reporter
Americans were more united in general because they felt that they had just won this long, ongoing conflict. Before we go, tell me about your journey to become.
A criminal justice reporter.
You know, it's always right. This is literally the the the.
You always you know, they say the first, the best first job you should have vice be the you know, is to be the beat cop journalist, right to walk the streets in here. You've made it. You've made it a beat for quite some time. How'd you get there?
Well? Often when I started a workplace, I figure out, like, what is the niche that's missing. I'm generally I'm a generalist reporter, so I could really cover anything. I love learning about new things, all reporting and telling people what I've learned, And.
So I tell people about journalism. It's the you get to go to grad school every day exactly because you don't know that, right?
Yeah, yes, Like I'm always thrilled to be I know a lot of reporters are not like this, but I'm usually thrilled to be assigned a new topic because I get to learn about something new.
So I'm a big fan of the I think one of the things we have too much of a journalism is, you know, people atrophy and their beats because I've been there done. I call it been there, done that disease. I worry about it in politics. I think about it all the time. Oh that that kind of candidate can never win until that candidate wins. Right, that's been there, done that disease. And you can get it on any beat that you're on, which then actually can make you miss a story.
Right, And there's a little tangential to the point. But often going on other beats helps you and your original beat, right, like you figure out like if you're covering politics, I mean covering literally anything else at any point will give you new insight into politics and how they want it, right, like,
because it's the everything issue. So that's so Anyway, when I started at City Beat, a local alt weekly here in Cincinnati, I was always I was just interested in crime because I thought that, like at City Beat, it was underserved because I mean I was literally the only news reporter at city Beat, so like, I just wanted to cover they did gossip at city Hall.
Right, that was probably the you know, look, I love my alt weeklies around the country and a lot of times or you might get one investigative piece, right, Right, that's all they had the resources for.
Right. Yeah, it's just a limited resource problem. So I always thought like that was an important issue. Then at Vox, I saw the same thing where I was like, you know that they had one other criminal distance reporter. When Vox launched. I was there at the launch and I was like, Okay, I could probably contribute to this, especially when the Ferguson Missouri protests happened. It was an all hands on deck effort, and I was like, yes, this is what I'm interested in, the topping, and I should
cover it. I just kind of went from there. I mean, but it is striking to me. I have found this consistently that in national media they often you know, obviously, in local and state news like outlooks, you have to cover crime, like it's usually a bigger deal. But at the national level, I think it gets less attention. I think it's seen as US prestigious and for me it
¶ Journalism has too many reporters on the coasts
is I don't know, it's the issue that one of the issues that affects people on their day to day lives and most so I've always tried to just keep an eye and find interesting frames to get people's attention, including by writing headlines like nearly half of murderers get away with it. So look, I love the fact, by the way I think the most.
And this is this is why I feel like The Times is thriving in an era where a lot of news organizations are not.
I love that you're based in Cincinnati. You're not in New York.
Can I don't my My sort of my cheap talking point these days about about about journalism is we have too many reporters in Washington and not enough everywhere else, right, you know, and and and not enough in other topics. And you just sort of have given a pretty good insight of of you know, for various reasons. Right, the prestigious speed is the White House beat, you know. And I would always say, yeah, the best stories are on
Capitol Hill, you know. And that's just in the world of public policy and politics, right, you know that that and frankly, if you really want to understand healthcare policy. You're better off going to a rural clinic, uh in pick any state in the middle of the country than you are covering the Department of Health and Human Services, right, So it is sort of one of those you know, So it is I'm curious, is it a Was it important to The New York Times that you were based
not in New York or in the East Coast? Was that an asset or was that was that at times of liability? No?
Actually, the day the Katie Keeksburry, who who heads the opinion department at the time, she was excited about it. So I think it's great. I think they like that. I would say too. I always tell this story because when I when I actually lived in DC for a while, when I was working at Box, and I moved to Cincinnati where where my family is, and that's why I moved back, just where you grew up. You grew up
in sentience. Yeah, I moved here from Venezuela when I was six, and yeah, my family is based here and my husband's family is here as well, so so yeah, but I remember at the time I was I told my bosses at Box, like, look, we need geographical diversity and to be frank, I was kind of bsing. I didn't really know how much it mattered, but once I moved here it is. It is really crazy. I mean, just going from DC to here. In d C, people have an easy time imagining not talking talking to a
Trump voter right like they can. They can go through their day to day lives literally never conversing with anyone who supports Trump.
How about New York, you actually bore, Like I always say, DC are more likely to run into somebody, at least that's for Trump in New York. Good luck ever running into a Trump support right here. You can't live here and socialize here without knowing how to talk to Trump supporters. And like my in law is, some of my in laws are Trump supporters.
Like I'm not gonna if I don't want to ruin Thanksgiving every time because I might disagree with something Trump did, like I have to learn how to talk about it in like.
A nice you know, cordial man, well dispassionate is I always say, I've always thought that our problem in mainstream media and the national level was our tone sometimes was wrong, our facts were correct, right.
Yes, I think there's there's really this. There's a way you can tell someone that you think they are wrong without insulting them, and that, I think is what really you suffer. You lose that a bit when you live in a place where you are living in a bubble essentially. So yeah, I think when I moved here, it just, you know, it helped me see issues in a different light, like like anything from crime to immigration to whatever it's
¶ Bengals or Reds?
I'm a big fan of.
I've always said that the one piece of diversity newsrooms never focus on is geographic.
Yes, And I honestly think it's a big deal. Again, I was basic at first when I want to I wanted to move, but now I'm I totally believe it. It's it's definitely the case. All right, let me get you out in here. In this Bengals are reds.
Like what's the what's the what's the obsession in your household?
Definitely the Bengals, if not not. I mean we don't watch sports much, but I do not like baseball at all. I can I can watch.
Wow, you're Venezuelan and you don't like baseball, You're not going to be allowed back in.
I am I fem the Dodgers photo behind you and like I'm sorry to say this, Chuck, but I'm just not a fan of baseball but Bengals, and I will also add, you know, Cincinnati soccer team is great. It's actually one of the best in the country. And I love soccer so well.
I was just gonna say, Cincinnati is you know, I'm sorry that they lost the Cincinnati Royals, which goes way back when it comes to the NBA. One of the greatest players of all time played for Cincinnati, Oscar Robertson.
But it's interesting about soccer. I feel like the state.
Of Ohio and general between Columbus, Crew Beclean Cincinnati that there really is a uh it's it's it's a really fast growing fan base, isn't it.
Yeah. I don't think I'm allowed to say anything nice about Columbus and living in Cincinnati. It's a real rivalry. It's a real Actually, I think there was a game recently people were yelling at each other in the street.
I was eating outside, and yeah, it was great. Let me that's the other dumb Cincinnati question. How do you what's that chili you're supposed to like? Is it okay if I say I.
Don't love it? Yeah, it's book I think what everyone gets wrong about Skyline Chili, which is amazing, is that it's it's spaghetti sauce. It's not really chili.
Like, thank you, okay, and I'm good with spaghetti sauce.
Call it that, right, Yeah, you can also put it on on like Chief Coney's right, like that, that's fine. But like, it's just that I think that's a big thing people wrong. It's a sauce. It's not a true
¶ Moving to the opinion section of the NYT
chili in any sense.
Well, look enjoyed Joe Burrowy and not every fan base gets to have a quarterback like that. So even if you even if you guys don't get get another get a super Bowl with them.
It's a joy to watch him play football. Yeah, hopefully it delivers this year. We'll see.
Are you fired up about being opinion What does that mean? How does that change you change your beat?
Well? Before I had zero opinions, chuck, and now I do. But now I think I am fired up about it.
¶ What does an editorial board do?
I'm working. I'm actually a member of the editorial board, so we're like, I'm doing a lot of the editorial board work right now.
But yeah, by the way, not a lot of people know what that means.
Just very quickly. You remember the editorial board.
What does that? I know what it means, but I think people hear that. Do you write the op edge? Do you write the editorials? What does that mean? Specifically?
Basically? When when whenever you see the New York Times, is the editorial board is telling you something. There's like a group of five people. We talk together, and we we decide on like you know, what things we agree with and whatnot, including our publisher. He also chimes in, I shouldn't say times in he is more of a mister Salzburger gets to say what he wants to say. He got to say, what's his newspaper?
Right?
Yes? And it's so, And then usually one of us writes it, so you won't see our byline necessarily on there, but it was. It was written by one of the members of the board.
Who do you guys vote, Like, if you guys are divided on an issue, it's three to two, say, do you note that division in the editorial itself?
Or do you pick another topic?
No?
I think, uh, that's an interesting question. I think we would generally. This has not happened during my time at the editorial board yet, so I can't tell you that this from experience, But I think generally we would try to find some consensus. I mean, I think with basically any topic you can, you know, you can find some sort of agreement and make the editor about that while acknowledging that like people are divided on other aspects of the issue.
You are a New York Times reporter, and I'm sure many at times you would say, hey, the editorial page is the editorial page.
I'm I'm reporting. How mindful are you of that?
Now you're going to be on the other side, right, and you know your editorial could make the beat reporter's job a little bit harder.
I mean, it's definitely something that I think The Times
has publicly discussed over the past few years. I Mean you've seen a lot of journalists come out and be like, like, should we be endorsing presidential candidates for example, and like obviously with the Washington Posts that led to a lot of you know, backlash, But I think it's it's a general conversation because at the end of the day, like, if you endorse Kamala Harris, like all the people covering her campaign, they are going to look unfairly or not
like like they're biased, right, and because people just do not know. I mean, we try really hard to put a pain at theatah and all that, but like most people just are not aware of those divisions, and like it makes it much more difficult. So it is something that we we're definitely very very mondful. I lived it.
We used to say, the cable channel a second, let's tell our op ed page.
Yeah, it didn't always.
You know, if the logos in the same place, right, the same person signs our checks, right, the same person it is, I understand why somebody who's not in our industry goes I don't get the difference.
Well, especially a lot of people get their news through social media, TikTok whatever, they legitimately do not see like you know, if you go to the New York Times own page right now, it is very clearly divided between opinion and news. But you're not seeing that on social media. When you click a link, you just know, and it's so easy to just scroll pass like it's saying opening and whatever, and like look like at the end of the day, I think it is important for newspapers to
have both opinion and news sides. So like and we do our best to like present those differences. But but yeah, it is something that I think every news solid is grappling with harm on. This is great. I appreciate you coming on.
I just thought, you know, sometimes you see a piece and you're like, why isn't this this is the type a headline that some politicians should be exploiting for the right reasons, right right, And we did every single thing I write, of course, no no, no, no, I.
Feel that about every monologue I do. At the beginning.
This should really fire people up. Luck with that, but look, it's it's that's the job of a journalist. It's it's one story at a time, and if you get one person to think about something differently, you've done your job. So look, I thought it was a great piece so and well framed and well reported and sort of well explained, right, which is what made it so compelling.
And you were a terrific guest here, So I appreciate it. I love to hear that, and also like you just kind of suggest that one of the ways you actually make an impact is by doing follow ups. You don't just report a story once and leave. So you know, just being on here, it's it's great that you're getting the story out.
So I appreciate it, all right, her appreciate it, TUXI all right, So it was, you know, like everything these days,
¶ Chuck's thoughts on interview with German Lopez
everything feels heavier, right, everything feels so consequential, And I do wonder what kind of precedents are being set, and I think we're all concerned with that. But in many ways, you know, you look at the conversation I had with Herman, and you realize, my god, we have the tools and we have the playbooks on how to do this. We just have to have the political will.
Right.
We all want more security in our neighborhoods, and we want better training of our police officers.
Is that so hard?
Is that so hard to create a bipartisan agreement on something like that?
All right, let's take a few questions, ask Chuck.
This comes from Tim in Springfield, Illinois, and he says, Hey,
¶ Ask Chuck
I'm a longtime listener back to the Daily Rundown days. Hey, soup of the day. I'm loving the continuation of the podcast. I have a follow up question on your proposed constitutional amendment that could add two new states.
Yeah, you like that.
¶ Why haven't Democrats pushed for DC & Puerto Rico statehood?
Democrat's been more aggressive about pushing for statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico State could help to address some of the systemic policy issues both locations face. Politically, these two new states would likely make it easier for the Party to hold the Senate majority. Oh and fully enfranchising four million of our fellow Americans is morally the right thing to do. It seems like a much better
solution than embracing gerrymandering. Sincerely, Tim from Springfield. Look, you know, the Democrats have always been hot and cold on that, and I don't know why either. Every Democrat has the correct position on the District of Columbia, which is yes,
I'm for statehood is usually the answer you get. But how right there are some There's still always been some disagreements about whether you know, I think no, But I think there's general agreement that it is unfair that district residents have fewer rights than the resident than Americans everywhere else. The question is how do you resolve that?
Right?
There's some that argue, well, make d C part of Maryland, make DC part of Virginia, right, you know, one way or another, so that they can have proper representation. But the fact is it would be a bigger state than I think what six or seven other states on that front already. And you know, look, I ultimately, when your motivation is political power, you're going to have a harder time selling things. When your motivation is giving people rights,
you have an easier time selling it. And I think all you know, at the end of the day, you know, this is all a compromise, right, and that's why you know you're not going to get DC by itself. And you know, we have a whole group of people in the Caribbean, not just Puerto Rico, but the Virgin Islands as well. Who are you know, basically are American citizens with second class rights and like those in the district are American citizens with second class rights.
That's not fair.
And I think that if you're a political party, you know, it goes to you know, it's why I hate this whole jerremyanering thing. Go run a campaign, you know, I don't think any you know, most states eventually that start as one party states do eventually there is an opposition
that develops. I also think that Puerto Rico has elected quite a few Republican governors over the years, including I think most recently, so I think that's why if you do it as a pair so that it feels as if you're not you're not trying to do it as a power grab, but you're doing it more as a way to give every American citizen equal rights.
Right.
I think that it's pretty clear that if you don't, you know, if you don't have statehood, you have less rights than you're a fellow American citizen. So I think that's the best argument. But I think that that for I, you know, like I said, I don't know why it's
not been a bigger issue. Maybe this triggers it, right, the fact that there's this federal takeover, there was some thought about, hey, do you do it at least change some of the rules that give marye make the mayor sort of have the same powers as governors do when it comes to the National Guard, you know, do you do things like that? Do you carve out like I also think, you know, we could create a federal you know, there's been the other compromises. You create an actual federal district,
which would be essentially the government buildings. Think, you know, for those of you geographically, I think essentially you know, Pennsylvania Avenue to to through you know, through the southwest going that way right from Pennsylvania Avenue northwest, say between oh Foggy Bottom and the Arena, and that you know, you make that federal district all the way through the mall and the capital and then the actual the rest of the neighborhoods or are part of its own state rights.
There's all sorts of ways to I think, I think do this, but ultimately the reason should do it would be to make sure every American citizen is treated the same. And it's it's pretty clear if you're in the Caribbean, in an American territory, you're in the District of Columbia, you're an American citizen with second class rights, and that's that's that's wrong. Right doesn't matter if you're a dn R, you should view that as wrong. Our next question comes
¶ Is Bobby Kennedy the model for Democrats to emulate?
from Bill W. Hey, Chuck, just finished your podcast with Rocana. Oh wow, Well, I appreciate keep catching up. We'll take the downloads. Very insightful and refreshing. Your question about what type of presidential candidate Democrats should look for got me thinking about Bobby Kennedy. He wasn't shy about using political power, yet had a heart for the poor and working class and knew how to connect with people, like a speech in Indianapolis after Mlk's assassination. What are your thoughts? Is
this the kind of candidate voters are hungry for? Best regards Bill W Go Detroit Liones. Yeah, good luck to your lines. I hope they finished second place. And yes, my son and I are are are sort of very upset and nervous about this Jordan Love thumb surgery. Let's just say it was the news alert that truly upset my household earlier today. But I digress. Look, I go
back to something I said earlier in this podcast. I think the country needs a pastor for patriotism, and I think in many ways, the Bobby Kennedy campaign of sixty eight, you know, and we can have larger discussions about, you know, what he did in office, like you know, by sixty eight, I think, you know, Bobby Kennedy of sixty eight may have may have been uncomfortable with the Bobby Kennedy that worked for Joe McCarthy, right, So you know, it's it's
a reminder that everybody has their flaws or certainly learns along the way. But I think that that is you know, that's constant. It is always what democrats are looking for. They're looking for that sort of that larger than life figure that is a bit you know, is the Great Hope, right John Kennedy. And in some ways we do this when when leaders are slain, we almost see more in them than maybe they ever could be right if they
remained alive. Like I'm one of those who thinks that James Garfield might have been the president that had you know, given us a civil rights Act that might have made us a multiracial democracy in the eighteen eighties and might have finished reconstruction and been able to and instead of having to wait till nineteen sixty five to finally give equal rights to all Americans, equal voting rights to all Americans. And so but you know, we all have that luxury
because his life was taken too quickly as president. But ultimately, you know, I was a big advocate of Bill mcgrave, and I think some and this is why I think it may take somebody with military experience, who is you know, when you're overseas, it's just you know, it's Team America. And I think somebody needs to be able to realize that, hey, disagreement is part of being on Team America. You know, being in the loyal opposition is part.
Of being on Team America.
Speaking out against your president is is patriotic of a thing to do is speaking out in support of your president. And our president is our president, even when we disagree with that president vehemently, right. I just think we need
somebody that wants. Like I said, it's sort of I'm not a religious person, as many of you know, and yet I think about the tone and tenor of a pastor or a rabbi that just knows how to de escalate and sort of speak to a speak to our better angels, right, speak to but in many ways reteach about about the idea. You know, America is an idea. America is not a was not meant to be an ethnic based democracy, or a white Christian nationalist movement or a Judeo Christian country.
It is it is.
It is an idea, and it's unique of any other country around the world. Right, it is not supposed to be based in anything to be you know, when we're at our best right as a as a country and when when when do we really get to flex our muscles? That America is different than it's always at the Olympics, right, because we are a destination for those that want freedom. Right,
we accept it. You know, anybody can become an American. Right, it doesn't matter what race you are, what ethnicity, what religion you hold, and that diversity of where people have you know, come from all ends of the earth to be to choose to become Americans. Right, That's why we're a power in the Olympics.
Right.
We come now in all shapes and sizes, and so we can dominate any Olympic sport you name it, Right, We've got somebody, somebody who can do it.
And you know that that's it's.
Sort of it's embracing America as an idea rather than trying to remake America into something it never was that the founders never intended, even if they didn't quite get it right at the start, right, which is why I think the most important phrase that comes from the Founding documents is more perfect Union, because the implication is we're not perfect and we should always strive to get better.
So you know who is that?
You know, I thought a guy like Bill McRaven, who is you know, who was the head of the Joint Special Forces and sort of essentially led helped lead lead the mission. He wasn't physically on the mission, but sort of was the command and control of the mission that got in laden. You know, here's somebody that worked for Democratic president, worked for Republican president. You know, in his mind he just worked for a president and him without
political party rights as an independent. That sort of sobers up red and Blue. Right. I think we're probably destined to stay at two party system, whether we like it or not. But sometimes the parties might need a time out and we need somebody to sort of help teach us again of what patriotism really is and what America is supposed to be. So who best represents that? Right,
¶ AOC, Gavin or Beto for Dems in 2028?
let's just say that's a test I'm looking for going into twenty eight. All right, Next question, Joshua would be if you were a twenty eight DEM strategist and you had to pick one of the DEM fighters to represent the party, who would you pick between AOC, Gavin or Beto.
Oh.
I think it's you know, it's sort of like who. I think it's a AOC between the three of them. I think that.
I think she's the savviest of the three. I think she's the one.
I just think about it just tactically, I think she's would make the least amount of mistakes. Now, you know, perhaps, you know, I'm not sure any of them could get elected.
I think that I don't.
Know if we're going to want to replace Trump with you know, a more combative progressive right, you know, sort of the in what some might view as a mirror image in that sense, right sort of. So I don't I don't know if that's where the country is going to be looking for. Perhaps they will, maybe maybe that is where we end up if things if things deteriorate in different aspects, right, deteriorate and economy and things like that.
But if you're asking me just who those three do you think would would be the probably run the best campaign, make the least amount of mistakes, you know, between those three, right, I think, you know, I'd probably go with AOC because I think that she's the most genuine working class of the three.
Right.
Gavin, while he wasn't raised rich, sort of came you know, sort of there's always a product of the elites. I think Beto of course was was sort of had his you know, sort of came from some wealth. AOC really in that sense, I think she is the best chance of connecting with working class in America if you're gonna pick those three. But I'm I'm skeptical any of them could win a national race for president. I'll be I'll be honest, but but but I do respect the skills
of AOC, probably more so than than than any of us. Look, and I got to give to Avin new some this the I've written, you know, I think we've all written him off plenty of times when he briefly ran against Jerry Brown for governor and then lost and all this stuff. You know, So he is. He is certainly no shrinking Violet. I just don't know if America is going to elect
a former mayor of San Francisco president. I think that is that that the symbolism of San Francisco is just culturally too far out for swing voters in a Michigan right at the end of the day. And maybe you could make the same argument at AOC. But in some ways I think her working class roots might might be more of an asset, uh than if you're making me
¶ Would Dr. Oz be allowed to override RFK on any policies?
pick between those three. All right, last question, I'm going to take cares from Christina, so like I've contacted members of Congress requesting impeachment proceedings against RFK Junior. But I also have a question as head of CMS, would doctor memet Os be allowed to override some of OURFK Junior's policy changes to keep Medicare and medicate more in line with science. That's an interesting question, and I probably should have read it first and tried to do some I
think there's some things that he can do. He is in a Senate confirmed position, and so yes, I think that they're But the real issue is, you know, it is with some of the you know what what Kennedy did so by by pulling back a recommendation on a vaccine all of a sudden, insurance companies won't cover. The question is what if medical you know, does Medicaid and Medicare follow suit or does he make sure that Medicare and Medicaid will still cover preventative vaccines for COVID and
for pregnant women, et cetera. So I believe in that sense he still has that authority and that and that Kennedy wouldn't.
Be able to have that impact.
But look, I think it's pretty clear in this response, by the way, what I mean, I singled out the whole lack of federal response to the CDC attack, But my goodness, it's getting short shrift, right. I mean, you know, if you want to play partisan here, you know, here here President Trump seems to care about care about crime in d C, but he doesn't care about crime at
the CDC. That that federal government workers were targeted by a crazy man who was inspired with fringe conspiracy theories that were that that Robert F. Kennedy Junior consistently trafficked, then that's alarming, uh, And that that should be something that that should worry this White House. And again I go back I the silence of Republican elected officials about Kennedy in general and specifically the lack of you know this, I think the lack of attention that this CDC shooting
has gotten. Part of it is that it was in Atlanta, not d C. So maybe the the d C media, uh world didn't cover it is extensively. Perhaps you know, Trump is the shiny object right now, and he he decided to focus on d c's crime, and there was somehow, But I just I do think we've we've left that cd sort collectively traditional media left that CDC story way
too soon. This is a much bigger problem. This is a problem that is that the person who's who's largely responsible for the atmosphere that we have about vaccines and COVID in general is actually, you know, the call is coming from inside the house, right is sitting there at HHS. You know, it's it's a head scratcher to me. I think at some point Kennedy becomes a political liability for all Republicans. The question is when do Republicans realize he's going to become a political liability.
Anyway.
So with that, I appreciate the questions this week. Look tomorrow's episode. Normally I do my sort of political update on the midterms. I do that wednesdays. This is a special day. This is a two parter, So coming tomorrow, I will update you on some of the interesting developments and campaign twenty twenty six, including what the heck is going on in the California governor's race. Is there a front runner? Let me just tell you this, the potential
front runner has yet to announce. That's my teas for you, And when we come back tomorrow, I'll let you know who I think the new front runner for governor of California may very well be. And with that I'll see in twenty four hours until we upload again.