July 18, 2024 • 44 mins
Robert and Gare report from where Ohio police shot a houseless Black man, meanwhile Sophie attends a Moms for Liberty event starring Ron DeSantis.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to it could happen here a podcast recorded
at the Republican National Convention, which I do not very
much like. We're having a great time.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Though, well not really. This is the worst day we've
had so far.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is one of the worst days I've ever had. Yeah,
we did get to talk with Rudy Giuliani, which was
a highlight of the day. Hearing more about that later,
But first let's go around. Let you know who's going
to be talking on this episode. First off, we've got
Garrison Davis hello, finally identified as she her by the
Secret Service.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
There you go. Congrats, They're going woke.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
They're going woke.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
That's why it happened.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
That's what Rudy talked about, and I guess he was right.
And then speaking of woke, de.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Supervisor Sophie Lichterman, I've.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Had a day.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
I'll bet make fun of me.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
We are in the like the chunk of the there's
like the main stadium where all of the very red
and botox people give their speeches, and then there's this
part where all of the different media companies have booths
set up. Iheart's got a booth.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
There a very large booth very.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Large booth, and we are kind of above that right
now because it's a relatively quiet place to record for
some visuals.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Here we are sitting in this part of a arena.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
The Panther Arena, the Panther Arena.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
There's red carpet everywhere, and there are cubicle style booths
for various publications.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Let's see, I see O A n.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
We are sitting right above the iHeart to end the
Daily Wire booth. They have a whole wall of Matt Walsh,
a wall of walls wallsh if you will.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Bright Bart's got a tiny little cue, very small.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Frank'speach has a little booth. You know, a lot of
a lot of local radio, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
For there was that when we met Rudy earlier today,
he was that the wvo in booth, which is a
local radio station. They did not let him speak this
year at the r n C. Did not really seemed
to want him to be here.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
That's too bad.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
He claimed to be happy that that was the case. Well, yeah,
interesting guy.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Took a little tumble today.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Took a little tumble today, fell and then kept falling
on the floor of the event. Classic Rudy. And when
we went to lunch earlier and wound up in the
same room as Ted Cruz briefly, who was also at
that restaurant. A lady came up to us, a Republican
alternate delegate, and said, are you a band?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Are you musicians? You look like musicians?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Solely based off of Robert having tattoos.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I do think it was entirely based on the fact
that I have to.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Have We probably look cooler than anyone else here.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Thank you, thank you, I said, we that's the first
time you've said that to me, Garrison, and it really
you know what, I I.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Took a convention.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I took a convention publish older than my grandparents.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I will say that at this restaurant, the restaurant worker
did give us all free shots of vodka because she
said we had looked like we had had a week
and boy, how do you Is she right?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I'm sure she's been having one too.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, she was very nice. So Garon, Robert, you want
to take me we weren't together for most of today.
Do you want to take me through your day? And
then I can tell you about my really fun day?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Good?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, So we'll start by talking about our morning. So
yesterday was a pro Palestine march that that was Monday
from Monday ference kind of build us a march on
the RNC. It was a sizable demonstration, at least five hundred.
At least five hundred uncleared to me the exact numbers,
but not tiny march is a little bit of a misnumber.
It was located in the park that's kind of closest
(03:35):
to the RNC security area today. It was a very
different vibe. There were counter protesters, but there were also
like there was like a church group who was there
with signs.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
It's like a Westboro Baptist church styles street preacher group.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
They do not like Catholics.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
They don't like gay people or Catholics, or fornication or adultery,
that sort of thing. You know, if you can picture
the big signs that people carry around, it's.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
That sounds sounds fun. Guys.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
We saw an amazing T shirt today, Robert, do you
do you have a do you have a recollection of
the best T shirt that we saw today?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Oh God, is that the prolapsed rectum tissue is atal
sex equals prolapsed rectum? And then wow, god, it felt
like a John quote. There was a book of the
Bible that I know does not refer directly to prolapse.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Reptive romans romans Paul, so you know.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Paul was not talking about rectums.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Well, but Paul is the most homophobic out of all
the New Testament writers. But basically we talked to some
of these types of people gathered at this little this
little squares little park. There was maybe like one or
two people protesting the RNC itself, just holding signs, you know,
someone with a megaphone, But the rest of the people
gathered where these were these street preacher types. And then
we went over to this media section earlier this morning.
(04:47):
That's where we talked to our good are now good friend,
Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So again, if you're picturing this floor, it's like a
bunch of large cubicles. So have you've ever been to
a trade show. It looks like a trade show, right,
But the cubicles is a different radio station or internet
media company. And Rudy was just sort of chilling at
a local radio station booth with Laura Lumer. When we
(05:11):
first walked up, amazing vibes, she thanked God left and
I will say Laura Lumer famous on the Internet for
looking very peculiar, one of the more normal looking people
at the RNC.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Which I don't think is a testament to how normal
Laura Lumer looks. It's a testament to the types of
people that we are seeing every day at the RNC
that everyone kind of looks a little lumor esque. Yeah,
so she looks a little bit less bizarre in comparison
to just everyone else we're seeing, who all has, you know,
a curious amount of facial surgeries, Yeah going on that
makes them just look just look a little different, just.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
A little different. We saw the Fox News had anchored
today whose face was as smooth as a baby's ass.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It looked like carved marble.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
It looked like carved marble, and was clearly bloated with
Bachelin toxin.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Incredible.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, it was a beautiful man, Sophie. He was a beauty.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I think he uses retinal.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
He must use retinal. And he had a chin as
wide as like Glory days Bruce Campbell.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Very wide face.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I bet he never forgot to wear sunscreen, unlike you two.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So yeah, kind of the last thing we did at
the convention before coming back was we had a little
conversation with Rudy primarily about Ukraine. His basic stance is
that Ukraine is stealing all of the money that the
government gives it. When I pointed out that that money
was primarily coming in military subsidies and like military weapons,
he said they were stealing the weapons and selling them.
And I asked who, and he said he didn't know,
(06:32):
at which point his handler got him out of there,
and we wound up walking over to the iHeart booth
where one of our coworkers, Dan O'Donnell, who's a more
conservative guy in the network, but who through a law
enforcement contact, got the story that a man had just
been shot outside of the RNC security zone, but by
police who were in town for the RNC. It wound
(06:53):
up that they are Columbus, Ohio police. So we rushed
down there, split up with him pretty quickly because I
think he was mostly interested and talking to the police
on scene, and we wound up right in the middle
of you know, what is the poorest neighborhood in Milwaukee,
the poorest zip code in the state, one of the
highest rates of incarceration in the country. It is a
(07:14):
deeply deprived area. The first guy we talked to, he
was with Lighthouse Ministries I think was the name of
the organization, which is essentially he was running like a
Christian halfway house, and we saw another larger halfway house
even closer to the shooting, Like there were two half
way houses effectively right next to each other. That's the
kind of neighborhood this was. And when we got there,
(07:37):
police had just started setting up cordons. They had started
it with about a block or two fenced off with
police tapes, but were widening at every few minutes. They
were adding new blocks, quickly expanding, and a large number
of cops were on scene. There were horse cops on scene.
We could not get close to them, about a block
from the site of the shooting itself, but we were
able to get into a park where there were a
(07:57):
lot of local people who were very angry at what
had happened. And one of the first things I encountered
was a couple of guys, you know, one of whom
was filming on his phone yell and got the police,
a couple of whom were sitting in lawn chairs, and
one of whom was speaking about like you know, who
had clearly witnessed the shooting, saying like you know, they
were just having an argument. If you'd let us the
(08:19):
neighborhood handle it, we would have handled it. The most
there would have been was a black guy. What the
fuck is wrong with you guys. We talked to him.
His name is Emmanual, And I'm actually just gonna play
a clip from that interview with the Manual right now.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
Here's the on the bikes. I want to let you see.
Speaker 6 (08:36):
So they parked in the King Center alley and they
were just basically patrolling, watching us, right.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
So the two guys have a little about the ball.
That's about the f So they didn't really fight. Toby's
shopping Freeze shot him. They emptied the clip.
Speaker 6 (08:55):
Every twelve officers on the bike empty their clips because
you speak Coby.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Their clients.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
And then when they were done, they're turning guns on
us and then now their person that's further further away
issue because they don't want us to tell you guys
what really happened when they could have Tasted and the
rest of them city in the jail.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
They shot him, and they was going to shoot the
other guy and he ran, so they turn the guns.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
Are about sixteen of us Robert, Yeah, yeah, so yeah,
they were others.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Why didn't shoot? Because I realized their guns were empty,
so they caught the backups.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
And that's why they have more backups and more backups
and more backups, and that's why we are backing up.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, and is that the that's the plan now, is
my guest?
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Yeah? Yeah, I don't know if they're they were the
r n C.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
The yep, tear gas and masks. Well, thank you, Emmanuel,
nice to meet you. Yeah, yep, tear gas and masks.
Starting to feel like Portland again. And yeah, I would
(09:58):
say that what a manual said is can assistant. We
talked to two other people who had witnessed the shooting,
and then a couple other people who had been close by,
and they all agreed with the gist of what Emmanuel
had said.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
Well, and Manuel told you something before he started recording
there about how like they felt this was like a
very very solvable problem. Yeah, for like the community, like
this is just like an average fight that they could
they could have ended themselves. Yeah, and you know, in
the next hour these people would have been friends again.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
And instead police from out of state showed up and
just started shooting.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And that is what the initial thing we heard through
our you know, coworker who was talking to law enforcement
was a man had had a knife or knives, was
brandishing them. Police told him to drop, he didn't and
they had to shoot him. Locals on scenes said police
did not tell him to drop anything, ran up and
just started shooting. And as you heard from Manual, his
(10:54):
experience at the event was that police then turned their
guns on the crowd, and you know, he felt threatened
deeply by this for reasons that are obvious. And I
will say that everyone we talked to in the neighborhood
had broadly consistent stories. This was not a serious fight,
This was not a thing that would have escalated to
lethal violence in the normal course of human events. But
(11:15):
a huge number of out of state cops rolled up
to the altercation unnecessarily and drew their guns and started shooting.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
So there was a fairly nice homeless encampment. They had
a wonderful community garden, really nice garden, just like a
block away, and we figured, oh, this, this guy might
might have been houseless, And we started to talk to
more people who knew him, and yes, we found out
we actually walked right past his tent on the way
to the shooting. He had a tent by himself in
(11:45):
this little alleyway. I guess, Robert, you talked more to that,
to that guy that knew him.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I talked to a guy who knew him who he
said his nickname was Jehovah because he was at Jehovah's witness.
The guy who I was speaking to was a Muslim
and specifically stated to me, like, you know, I'm a Muslim,
he's a Jehovah's witness. But we always got along. He
was a really nice guy. He didn't deserve this like.
He wasn't a dude who generally caused problems. He was
not a dangerous person. He was maybe a guy who
was having a little bit of a heated moment with
(12:11):
another dude. And again there happened to be a bunch
of out of state cops who decided to make it
everyone's problem. That was his attitude. And a couple of
things were notewhere they I mean, we talked to a
woman who was kind of dropping her daughter off at
work who lived nearby. This is a lady who lived
in a little bit nicer of a neighborhood. She wasn't
quite there. An older black woman who was like, you know,
the cops show up to do this, but there's no cops,
(12:34):
Like if this had been any other time of the year,
there would have been no cops in this neighborhood ever
at all. Like they're never around when anybody wants them
to be, but they show up to kill a guy
because the RNC is in town. And that was very
much the consistent response we got from everyone in the neighborhood.
You know, we stayed there a while.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
One of the things that I couldn't not notice is
once we were down in the RNC, you know, earlier
in the day, very cool, a lot of shame tall buildings.
When we were in that neighborhood near a fourteenth and Boulette.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Right outside the Martin Luther King Junior Community Center.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, sun was beating down us. There was very little cover,
it was very hot. The streets were notably poor repair,
the buildings were in a lot poorer repair. But there
was actually also evidence of like street life like here,
the RNC is, all of downtown Milwaukee has been sanitized, right.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
They swept encampment's close to the R and Z perimeter
and stuff people have had to move around.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And no one you encounter lives here right not during
the event, that's just the way that it goes. A
lot of the local buildings are shut down. And one
of the things that was interesting about this was the
degree to which all of these people in the most
deprived neighborhood Milwaukee had a really clear understanding of what
had happened near and around them and knew each other.
And we're talking. There were a couple of people we
saw who were going around different chunks within a block
(13:55):
or two of each other and clearly knew all of
their neighbors, which was, you know, very different from kind
of the vibes that we've gotten Downtown Milwaukee is as
nice as it is, and I think we've all really
enjoyed this city, one of the most segregated cities in
the country. And that was very clear because I think
there was one white person who was a resident of
the neighborhood that we talked to, that woman who was
(14:15):
next to the guy who knew Jehovah, And I guess
that's most of what I have to say.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Yeah, I mean, more and more place kept showing up.
There was this basically like a riot squad with mace
and yah, gas masks showed up. You know, there was
biite cops, mounted patrol cops. They just they started to
flood this area. Eventually they slowly kind of you know,
dispersed out as this scene got more under control and
they realized there probably wasn't going to be a huge
protest at this location. I believe there's gonna be a
(14:43):
vigil tonight, Yeah, at eight pm near the side of
the shooting. So yeah, I mean it's just tough to
go from the RNC with you know, massive police presence
all of these extremely wealthy, rich white Republicans and then
be reminded the real people exist and yeah, put events
like this on people get killed by police to make
(15:03):
sure that that that people feel comfortable going to these
sorts of events and just completely unnecessarily.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, and that's.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
That's just a good a good uh, A good reminder
every time I walk through one of these police checkpoints.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, Donald Donald Trump, you know, survived his brush with
the shooting. This young man didn't, and he died because
this event was set up in his town. We know
that the Secret Service and the you know, the other agencies,
because it wasn't just the Secret Service that was responsible
for Trump getting shot. There were a lot of other
law enforcement agencies there failed at their job, you know,
(15:35):
last Saturday to stop the former president from getting shot.
Failed very badly at that. But still at the RNC,
the only thing that the security State knows how to
do is flood the zone with cops. And the only
thing those cops know how to do is when they
encounter anything a little bit hostile, draw their guns and
empty them. You know, that was my impression, And uh yeah,
(15:57):
I think that's probably all we need to say about
that right now.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Now Sophie will tell us about her experience. As me
and Robert were walking around this side of this police
murder after this short break.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
And we're back. Well, my colleagues were out on the ground.
I went to a super super fun event called Giving
Americans a Voice town hall hosted by the Moms for Liberty.
It was interesting, to say the least. It was a
(16:37):
three hour event with various long event very long, and
I recorded all of it so we can put that
out at a later date. Let me just give you
a quick rundown of what the event was.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And Moms for Liberty is as like a lobbying group
for parental Rights.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Very supportive of banning books.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Banning books, parental rights, a lot of stuff around education
in school. They they're very active in Washington. They're the
sponsor of a lot of these really really like horrible
bills about limiting information to children, limiting the rights of children,
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, And additional sponsors for this event where Conservative Partnership Institute, Heritage.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Character Foundation, authors of Project twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Five, Young America's. I can't even read this logo.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
It's like the Young Republicans Voting Association.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Young Americans Foundation.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
We did it, great job.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And Public Square, which is a very strange app and
there were three panels and some of the people that
were featured on the panel were Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Sara Huckabe Sanders made an appearance, Governor.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Sarah Huckabye Sanders, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
The governor of Wisconsin was there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
He opened The governor, the governor of Wisconsin was there.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
That's upsetting. He was like one of the first people
who spoke, not a senator, not the actual governor.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
The forty fifth Governor, Jesus Wisconsin, Scott Walker, yes, correct,
various groups of attorneys general and get the Senator Oswell
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and it was it was it
was a strange event.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
What sort of things do they talk about?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Well, they started off with them giving an excuse that
the reason why that there was an attempted assassination on
former President Trump was because of the media falseley compare
hip to Hitler, to which they said, there is only
one Hitler.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
There's actually been quite a few Hitlers, although there's less.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Now also I would I would like for them to
feel that question to jd Vance But anyway.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Fair enough. And then there was, you know, as there
are at most of these events, there was a prayer
and I just thought it was super interesting that the
person giving the prayer referred to the panelists and various
speakers as great actors, which was just like an interesting
word choice to me.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
This extensively like political actors, I would assume, but interesting associations.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
And like one of the one of the main things
that they talked about this was education, and they said
their biggest issue that they have in the United States
is the creation of the federal Department of Education, and
that they were going to change that, which got huge,
huge cheers from the crowd. They claim that one of
the reasons why the young man had attempted to assassinate
(19:17):
Donald Trump was because he had gone to a large school.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
They are very anti large school why.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Not, and that was one of the main reasons, as
well as the media referring to foreign President Trump as hitler.
They were adamant that teachers unions do not protect kids
and that they are only out for themselves, and that
all teachers' unions have been infiltrated by the left.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Well, that part is kind of drown yeah, but no,
I mean attacks on teachers unions are I've seen those
more in the past four years among a lot of
either like right wing influencers or actual politicians. The teachers'
unions is a very good boogeyman. Yeah, because some people,
you know, like their individual teachers. But no, no, no, the
real problem is the teachers union.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yes, that actual distinction was brought up multiple times. There
you go, there you go, And at one point somebody
in the back of the room dropped their phone, but
it was very loud and unsettling noise to the point
where everybody thought that it might have been a gun,
and everyone kind of understandably so jumped up and around.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Oh they're scared of guns.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The Republicans really fucking babies.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
And the overall energy is that they ate the federal government.
They want things to go back to a local level,
and that the Left is ruining and grooming children. Lots
of weird as you can imagine, stuff about gender, lots of.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Stuff about consistently got some of the biggest, biggest applause.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Oh something to note here. Anytime Elon Musk was brought up,
which was quite a bit, the crowd went bat shit. Yeah,
huge wild cheers for anything to do with Elon, which
I thought was, you know, not unexpected, but just that, like,
he got louder cheers than I think he got a
(21:08):
louder cheer than when they brought up Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
He's really one of their new great heroes. What did
the Attorney's General talk about?
Speaker 1 (21:16):
They were mostly talking about different winds they had had
in terms of like their states and things they were
bringing the table, and mostly like personal stories of like
things that they look for in their family. The Missouri
Attorney General Andrew Bailey, his biggest reaction from the crowd
was when he said in Missouri, we don't co parent
(21:38):
with the government, and sure the crowd loved that.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Yeah, I mean this is a big, big, big parental
rights group.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
And yeah, I'm intered in the attorney general because back
in twenty twenty three, the attorney's generals from a lot
of these red states drafted this this very angry, kind
of threatening letter to Target, kind of demanding that because
some of their states own like interest in Target, they
have to remove any kind of any products that cater
to trans people because this is betraying the investors by
(22:09):
making this poor economic decision. And really, the attorneys general
have been one of the strongest forces against trans rights
in a lot of these states. And I believe because
I showed up near the end of the attorney general's segment,
I believe they refer to themselves as like the last
line of defense. Even if you have like a democrat,
you know, like mayor, or you know you have more
democratic officials in like your city or state, the attorney's
(22:30):
generals are are like the ones that are going to
hold it down, even if the rest have kind.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Of sold out or are liberals Democrats.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, I would say the ags were the most transphobic
of the bunch. If I was doing ranking, which santas, Yeah,
one of them said, you know, in a laughing way,
which again got a great reaction from the crowd. Think
about a kindergartener saying what's your pronoun?
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Very very funny ha ha ha ha.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
They were laughing and hahaha about that. And just the
last thing I'll say about the ags was that that
same ag from Missouri said our rights come from God,
not man.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And famously in the Constitution.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yes, anyways, and then DeSantis and Sarah Huckeby Sanders closed
it out.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Which we arrived for.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
We arrived just in time to see DeSantis, Thank god,
Oh meatball Ron Dissentis and Huckeby Sanders got to be
the two most uncharismatic speakers I've seen at the convention
so far.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
I'm not surprised they were both shunted off to the
I would call it the shame callus. So.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
DeSantis was wearing jeans, which is just a fascinating move,
but these were very warm, very.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Warm, and essentially when he got up he basically did
like a brag list of all the things that he
has gotten done in.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Florida, talking about, you know, taking the fight to Disney,
enacting universal school choice, making sure that there's no sex
at in his schools. Very cool, and then, uh, you
talked oddly enough a lot about college.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
University is correct.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Yes, he was talking about how like, even if you
raise your kid, right, even if we fix you know, public.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Schools, you put in eighteen hard years.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
He spent eighteen years raising your kid, You do it right,
we fix all of the public schools, everything's good. As
soon as they turn eighteen, they're gonna go after one
of these liberal colleges and they're gonna undo all of
the good work that you've put in, and that needs
to be the next thing to stop. And he said
that Florida is the first state to take on higher education.
We've had a lot of focus on lower education. We
now we have to take on higher education, including doing
(24:28):
like performance reviews for ten good professors every five years,
in which case they can be fired for poor performance,
which is kind of a wild concept for a Tenian professor.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
He also had a one off wild line where he
was like, you did see Hamas over on our universities.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yes, he referred to palestinating human rights campus protesters as Hamas,
just saying that they are Hamas, Like he didn't like say,
these people are like Hamas. You just said when Hamas
was coming to the universities, they didn't show up in Florida.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Which is a very standard Republican line.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
It is.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Yeah, there's just no difference between someone showing up to
a protest in the United States because they don't like
that thousands and thousands of Palestinians are being murdered, and
that person is now indistinguishable from Hamas according to the
Republican Party, according to all of these speakers. Yeah, and
so Sarah Sanders just tried to kind of write on
(25:19):
the coattails of disantist being like, hey, we're also plighting
the transgenders.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
She did the same. She listed, you know, some of
her brags mentioned it always has to do she talks
about her dad. I wrote down something she said because
I was like, she said, the only war on women
is on conservative women from the far left. Where are
the feminists? They can't even tell you what a woman is.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Well, someone who's famously taken a woman's studies course where
they never define what a woman is totally because the
main upsetting thing for me because the police just killed
a black man a few hours ago. I was just reminded,
you know, there's so many real people in Milwaukee, right.
All the food service workers have been very nice. So
there's all these real people facing real issues in the
poorest part of Milwaukee. And we just saw someone whose
(26:06):
life was ended because police were here for the RNC
from a totally different state, and people with real economic concerns,
real concerns about, you know, their life from police brutality,
all this type of stuff. And as soon as you
walked into this Mom's for Liberty panel, the first thing
we heard them complaining about was that they were being
censored on Twitter, yep, and that that was their concern.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Joe Biden censored us.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Their hardest thing to them was that they find all
this gender stuff a little bit icky and that we're
being censored on Twitter. And that is the level of
problems that these people are dealing well.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And our kids didn't turn into the people we wanted
them to. Yeah, and that should be the entire country's problem.
They are not fundamentally, they don't have real problems. These people,
they don't have real problems, but they are unhappy that
everyone in the world does not inherently act to serve
and validate them, and they are going to make that
(26:58):
everyone's promise. You know. That is what the RNC is.
The people on the floor are what you would call
like successful used car dealers, like level of capitalist, right,
and they are worshiping an alliance of venture capitalists, guys
like the VEC, guys like JD. Vance, and of course
people who inherited a shitload of wealth and then eventually
(27:20):
succeeded in making money through a combination of vice casinos
and the entertainment industry. Trump, you know, like that's that's
who this is.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
And uh, speaking of a VIC. As we were getting
up to leave, they quickly announced that there was one
more person who was going to speak, and it was him.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Yeah, he sure did speak. He gave a speech that
I would say was indistinguishable from AI. Yes, just about
how how good America can be and even though we're
a to GPT could, even though we're in a tough spot
right now, I feel like America can do better. And
it was just it was like I could predict every
other word. Yeah, hey, this is gear recording. Just outside
of the main arena at the rn c where Governor
(27:58):
Greg Aba just gave a speed and now I'm giving
you a short speech to tell you to enjoy these
messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
We'll be right back. This is Robert M.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Garrison recording from our hotel room later in the night,
because we have learned some new information about the police
killing that happened earlier today, and also we listened to
a whole bunch of the RNC closing speeches tonight which
kind of relate to this question of police violence.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
I'll hand this off to Robert.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah. I mean, so since we were down there, the
police have released both their security camera footage body camera footage,
and we have the name of the decedent, who was
Samuel Sharp Junior. This is the guy everyone in the
neighborhood identified as Jehovah, and that was the nickname that
he went by. He looked younger. I've seen some reports
that he was like forty three, but he doesn't look
forty three from the footage, you know, and he had
(28:53):
just he had used a community shower earlier that day
that comes by the neighborhood for some of the homeless folks,
and you know everyone he loved them. Footage is I
understand like exactly how it's going to be used and
already as being used by the police, And I understand
what they're saying, which is that if you look at
the footage, is they rush on scene, I think about
(29:14):
fifteen of them. Five of them fired at once and
immediately open fire. You can see from a distance the
two guys are five to seven feet apart and are
kind of crossing the street together while it looks like
they are yelling as the police rush in, Samuel runs forward,
and if you clip frames out of the video, you
can make a case that he was charging the guy
(29:35):
with his knife or knives. Police are saying multiple It's
a little unclear to me in the footage if he
had two or just one. But I can see how
the police showing up un scene, being trained the way
that they are, why they opened fire. The problem is
that he ran forward in the first place, because they
rushed in, like these two guys were squared up on
(29:56):
the street and not in an encounter that any of
the locals considered to be particularly threatening. If you have
spent a lot of time around homeless encampments, if you
have spent a lot of time in neighborhoods that have
a lot of homeless residence, it is not wild or
uncommon to see people yelling and to see people with
knives on their person, you know, even in their hands. Obviously,
(30:18):
that can be upsetting to some people. But like the
folks who lived in the neighborhood did not consider this
an odd circumstance and with something that, in the normal
circumstance of events and the normal following of events, would
have been de escalated. And in this case it wasn't
the police open fire before there was any attempt at
de escalation.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Yeah, And like conservatives will always point out, you know,
why is he just following orders? Why isn't he just
just doing blah blah blah blah blah. They will they
will take they'll take low screenshots that make something look
a certain way. And the simple fact is that these
two men were not in any physical altercation before police arrived.
He started running away as police started charging towards him.
I think it would be very odd that he would
(30:56):
choose that moment to suddenly lunge forward and stab this
person he knew. And I think it's very clear that
he's actually just running away from police. As people often do,
and police have a long history of just shooting at
people and killing people who are running away. You can
look at what happened at the Wendy's in Atlanta in
twenty twenty. They shoot people when they don't follow what
they're saying. They shoot people when people try to run
(31:18):
away from them, and that's just how cops work. So
this video came out later in the evening, right as
me and Robert arrived at the RNC second session. And
the theme today for the RNC is make America Safe Again.
And some of the first few speeches I heard, one
was from the mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Democrats in power demonstrate they don't care about stopping the killers.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
Or the thieves who.
Speaker 7 (31:46):
Terrorize black and brown communities. They don't care about securing
our border, and they don't care about dangerous homeless encampments.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
And then there was also like a police chief who
spoke a former police chief who now runs a charity
I think for like wounded police officers. Yeah, but he's
like a cop who is also an activist.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
And so all this framing is around talking about how
the Democrats are the defund the police party, how Joe
Biden and Kamala Harris themselves advocate for defunding the police,
which is simply not true if you look at what
they say. Joe Biden will always reiterate that he always
has argued for more police funding, for more police training.
But they have framdous issue as there are not enough
police around. That's what is making cities dangerous. Talking about
(32:32):
you know, all the people dying of violent crime. Not
a single mention, of course, that the out of state
police just killed someone a mile away from the Republican
National Convention. The make America Safe Again rhetoric shifted towards
you know, border rhetoric. You know, people believing genuinely the
people that are speaking in the audience that we currently
(32:52):
live under an open border policy that people can just
walk in totally fine. Just a complete alterned reality view
about what's going on in America, about what Joe Biden
and Kamala Harris's border policies are. And there was a
number of speachurees that that tried to capitalize on this
on this almost like border framing up, like there's isis
terrorists pouring into the border only under Joe Biden, right,
(33:15):
as if no one ever crossed the border illegally under
Donald Trump. I know what, Robert you, You were talking
about some of the Ted Cruz speech tonight on his
comments around the border.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, and Cruz was interesting. I've never considered him a
particularly strong speaker, and coming out, he initially went into
kind of a conspiracy theory that you'll hear on the
right about people being trafficked, sex trafficked, kids being sex
traffic across the border. He made a comment about them
having colored wristbands, which is again not a thing that happens,
but a reference to a widely believed right wing conspiracy,
(33:47):
and that got kind of a scattered amount of applause.
Not not what I would call a reaction, given how
he saw the crowd react, Marjorie Taylor Green and how
we saw them react, you know, whenever Trump comes out
very muted. But as it went on, he started going
into this kind of fear mongering spiel about migrants. He
talked about the woman in San Francisco who was killed
(34:07):
by that guy who found a gun in a bag
and accidentally fired it. He talked about a number of
different other cases that were people not from the country,
undocumented immigrants, who killed generally white Americans. And every time
he would tell a story, he had like a refrain
line that was something and that's what happens every damn
time or something. And every time he gave the refrain,
(34:29):
more and more people started to cheer in the audience.
And by the end of it, with the last kind
of couple of cases of migrant on white people crime
he brought up, the crowd was like legitimately roaring like
as much as they did for Marjorie Taylor Green. Now
the cop that came up next got a much louder response,
and by far the biggest response of the night, even
(34:49):
maybe including Trump, was when the delegates on the floor
launched into a series of back the Blue chants. They
actually interrupted the cop with back the Blue chants. Were
roaring for that.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Yeah, there was a lot of a lot of these chants.
And the Dallas mayor told a really funny story how
in twenty twenty, some like anti police or defund the
police activists to shut up around his neighborhood to try to,
you know, get him to defund the police, and he
got so scared by this that he changed from being
a Democrat mayor to a Republican mayor and now he
(35:37):
runs the biggest Republican led city in the country. And
he had this comment talking about how he grew up
in you know, poor black neighborhoods and the thing that
they've always wanted, the thing that makes them safer, is
more cops, not less cops. Both.
Speaker 7 (35:52):
I grew up in high prime neighborhoods. What we wanted
was more.
Speaker 5 (35:59):
And better, not less.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
And just contrasting that with our experiences today in a
very poor black community that just suffered an incident of
police killing. That is that is just a lie, right, like,
and like everyone knows this. This is theater for the convention.
Everyone at the convention is really into this sort of thing.
They genuinely believe this sort of stuff, but it's just
an alternate reality. We spend time one of the poorest
zip codes in the country and the state today and no,
(36:27):
it's that's simply not true.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, these these people are angry about primarily theoretical problems.
You know, this kind of specter of migrant crime, which
is not really real in a demographic you can pick
out individual cases of that, but you can pick out
individual cases of doctors stabbing people to death, and that
doesn't mean we have a wave of doctor related crime, right.
The reality of the situation is that, like, these are
(36:51):
super fans of the Republican Party, and they are super
fans of the narrative, and they are cheering for some
of the moments, you know, they're not There's some stuff
that's gotten boring to them. I kind of think the
child traffick at conspiracy theories might be boring to them,
maybe because that guy from the child trafficking movie got
disgraced or whatever. There's not as interested. So you can
(37:11):
see every now and then as like their interest in
certain things fades. But they're reacting like an audience that
like a comic con would to see in like a
Star Wars trailer where some guy does a thing that's
evidence of having the comics or whatever. The people I'm
waiting to see, like when fucking DeSantis comes on and
starts talking about banning children from receiving gender affirming care,
(37:33):
that's like fucking Spider Man showing up, right, and they
react like the guy next to us when DeSantis started
doing this, started screaming and like sticking his fist out
towards DeSantis and like yelling at it a volume that
was honestly kind of surprising the man could project. I'll
give him that. So I think ultimately the way I
would sum this up is that these are not normal people.
(37:55):
These are people who love politics. And again, to be clear,
I'm not saying these are not normal people. Can They're conservative.
My entire family are conservative, a lot of them are
Trump voters, but they would find this audience deeply weird
because these people are politics fans, and even most of
the conservatives I know really dislike politics. Most normal people do.
And I guess that's kind of where I've concluded, is
(38:17):
the difference between like the crazies and the normies. Normal
people don't enjoy this stuff.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
The term I've used the past few years is politics
as fandom, and that's all this fucking is. This is
this is a convention, just like comic con, just like
an anime con. This is a convention, and that is
how they view politics. Anyway, back to the past versions
of us to discuss a funny closing story regarding presidential footwear.
(38:43):
So that has been our day so far. The last
thing I say we'll leave you with is on our
way to the convention site, this morning, we were walking
through this hotel to get through security and we found
this wonderful section. It was it it was called the
Sidential Experience. We walked in. There was a there was
a replica of the Oval Office. I was told Reagan
(39:06):
era Oval Office.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
It was.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
It was pretty good, and it was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
It was not good Netflix production, but like Netflix production
level quality.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Bad Netflix production quality. So we walked through and then
we found just a glorious site. And I will let
Past Robert and myself tell you what we found at
the Presidential Experience. We are hearing the Presidential shoe section.
We got Harry Truman, Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan, Warren G. Harding,
(39:38):
who has a quote charming spat requested by President Harding
and sympathized the elegance of the Victorian era. Dwight Eisenhower's
shoes are pretty good. JFKs are a little bit more
fancy but less polished.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Lyndon B.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Johnson's completely unsurprising, very very versatile, very efficient, can get
off easy, slip on and off, get those dogs out
when you need to. Abe Lincoln has some honestly very
stylish boots. Theodore Roosevelt's as well large foot on Theodore
and Woodrow Wilson's shoes, the only white shoe in the bunch.
(40:11):
Very small, tiny feet, very small feet. Kind of surprisingly
he's it says he chose fashion over tradition with these
white buckskins. Also, they have Ulysses s. Grant's little little
riding boots. The Victorian boots are are very very stylish.
But honestly, I think I would go with Dwight D. Eisenhower's.
(40:33):
They're just a beautiful, a beautiful shoe. Reagan's aren't bad,
but I don't know. The Eisenhower shoes just a little
bit more elegant.
Speaker 8 (40:40):
I'm going for LBJ slip on life.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
That makes sense for you.
Speaker 8 (40:44):
That shows you're a man who's got things to do.
You know, you don't have time to be tie in
your shoes.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
No, that that that makes sense, That makes sense. Nick
Nixons and Kennedy's are very similar.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Process or, I will tell.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
You the truth. Pretty good. It looks like this was
presented by c Span this presidential experience. We have a
Reagan era replica of the Oval Office, not a big room,
not a big room, but overall of decent, decent replica.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Nice JFK portrait Up there.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
There's a women's suffrage article, Wally.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Interesting women's suffrage little table. Very controversial topic among Republicans
these days.
Speaker 8 (41:28):
It has gotten to be increasingly so.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Some old Pennsylvania Packet and Daily.
Speaker 8 (41:33):
Advertiser newspapers from seventeen eighty seven. Oh yeah, so this
is I guess the original Pennsylvania newspaper coverage and printing
of the.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 8 (41:44):
Yeah, of the Constitution. Yeah, there's the preamble right there. Yeah,
and they spell established Justice as.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
A thab lith just fifth, because that's a yieldie days,
a lot a lot more f's back in the day.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
Yeah, But they have these little information placards about all
the presidents, the first ladies, that kind of stuff. We'll
try to talk to the to the organizer of this
little shindig in a sect. But honestly, the shoe, the
shoe section, it's the most interesting thing to me just
because of how tiny, just just how tiny those Woodrow
Wilson choos are.
Speaker 8 (42:16):
Hey, Jay, that's that's a that's a that's a long foot.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
It's not a wide foot.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Roosevelt's feet are pretty wide. U. S. Grant also very
small also very small feet. Hmmm, yeah, you know what
they say about him?
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Anyway, who's your favorite president?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Favorite?
Speaker 8 (42:38):
Honestly? You know, I I I think I gotta go
with US Grant. He's He's not my favorite president in
terms of what he did in office, but in terms
of like as a person, sure, he's the US president
that I think was probably the the best person like
he really did try.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Always been a Harrison fan myself.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Oh yeah, William Henry. He was my favorite ass president.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Right, also rhymes with my first name, So a little
bit of a bias there.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
He really I like a man who there. There's not
much like fat on that presidency.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
He really efficient, efficient, efficient time in office.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
You got in and out.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Wow, very exciting. All those little feet.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
I can't stop thinking about. You know what I think
about that's the weirdest is that they did not have
they didn't have any bush feet. Sadly, well, they didn't
have bush feet. And there was one guy who they
didn't have his shoes. They just had the US Grant.
They just had they had like the model that they
built the shoe around for him, Yes, which was weird.
I was like, where's your where's your US grant shoe.
(43:44):
You don't want to show us the hardest working man
whoever lived to be president.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
But yeah, no, I thought that was some important breaking
news for our listeners to hear who had the smallest foot. Yeah,
but as of right now, that is day two of
the Republican National Convention.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Until our next update, don't come here, it's unpleasant.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
All media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to it could happen here a podcast recorded
at the Republican National Convention, which I do not very
much like. We're having a great time.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Though, well not really. This is the worst day we've
had so far.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is one of the worst days I've ever had. Yeah,
we did get to talk with Rudy Giuliani, which was
a highlight of the day. Hearing more about that later,
But first let's go around. Let you know who's going
to be talking on this episode. First off, we've got
Garrison Davis hello, finally identified as she her by the
Secret Service.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
There you go. Congrats, They're going woke.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
They're going woke.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
That's why it happened.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
That's what Rudy talked about, and I guess he was right.
And then speaking of woke, de.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Supervisor Sophie Lichterman, I've.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Had a day.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
I'll bet make fun of me.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
We are in the like the chunk of the there's
like the main stadium where all of the very red
and botox people give their speeches, and then there's this
part where all of the different media companies have booths
set up. Iheart's got a booth.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
There a very large booth very.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Large booth, and we are kind of above that right
now because it's a relatively quiet place to record for
some visuals.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Here we are sitting in this part of a arena.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
The Panther Arena, the Panther Arena.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
There's red carpet everywhere, and there are cubicle style booths
for various publications.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Let's see, I see O A n.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
We are sitting right above the iHeart to end the
Daily Wire booth. They have a whole wall of Matt Walsh,
a wall of walls wallsh if you will.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Bright Bart's got a tiny little cue, very small.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Frank'speach has a little booth. You know, a lot of
a lot of local radio, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
For there was that when we met Rudy earlier today,
he was that the wvo in booth, which is a
local radio station. They did not let him speak this
year at the r n C. Did not really seemed
to want him to be here.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
That's too bad.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
He claimed to be happy that that was the case. Well, yeah,
interesting guy.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Took a little tumble today.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Took a little tumble today, fell and then kept falling
on the floor of the event. Classic Rudy. And when
we went to lunch earlier and wound up in the
same room as Ted Cruz briefly, who was also at
that restaurant. A lady came up to us, a Republican
alternate delegate, and said, are you a band?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Are you musicians? You look like musicians?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Solely based off of Robert having tattoos.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I do think it was entirely based on the fact
that I have to.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Have We probably look cooler than anyone else here.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Thank you, thank you, I said, we that's the first
time you've said that to me, Garrison, and it really
you know what, I I.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Took a convention.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
I took a convention publish older than my grandparents.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I will say that at this restaurant, the restaurant worker
did give us all free shots of vodka because she
said we had looked like we had had a week
and boy, how do you Is she right?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I'm sure she's been having one too.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, she was very nice. So Garon, Robert, you want
to take me we weren't together for most of today.
Do you want to take me through your day? And
then I can tell you about my really fun day?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Good?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, So we'll start by talking about our morning. So
yesterday was a pro Palestine march that that was Monday
from Monday ference kind of build us a march on
the RNC. It was a sizable demonstration, at least five hundred.
At least five hundred uncleared to me the exact numbers,
but not tiny march is a little bit of a misnumber.
It was located in the park that's kind of closest
(03:35):
to the RNC security area today. It was a very
different vibe. There were counter protesters, but there were also
like there was like a church group who was there
with signs.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
It's like a Westboro Baptist church styles street preacher group.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
They do not like Catholics.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
They don't like gay people or Catholics, or fornication or adultery,
that sort of thing. You know, if you can picture
the big signs that people carry around, it's.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
That sounds sounds fun. Guys.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
We saw an amazing T shirt today, Robert, do you
do you have a do you have a recollection of
the best T shirt that we saw today?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Oh God, is that the prolapsed rectum tissue is atal
sex equals prolapsed rectum? And then wow, god, it felt
like a John quote. There was a book of the
Bible that I know does not refer directly to prolapse.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Reptive romans romans Paul, so you know.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Paul was not talking about rectums.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Well, but Paul is the most homophobic out of all
the New Testament writers. But basically we talked to some
of these types of people gathered at this little this
little squares little park. There was maybe like one or
two people protesting the RNC itself, just holding signs, you know,
someone with a megaphone, But the rest of the people
gathered where these were these street preacher types. And then
we went over to this media section earlier this morning.
(04:47):
That's where we talked to our good are now good friend,
Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So again, if you're picturing this floor, it's like a
bunch of large cubicles. So have you've ever been to
a trade show. It looks like a trade show, right,
But the cubicles is a different radio station or internet
media company. And Rudy was just sort of chilling at
a local radio station booth with Laura Lumer. When we
(05:11):
first walked up, amazing vibes, she thanked God left and
I will say Laura Lumer famous on the Internet for
looking very peculiar, one of the more normal looking people
at the RNC.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Which I don't think is a testament to how normal
Laura Lumer looks. It's a testament to the types of
people that we are seeing every day at the RNC
that everyone kind of looks a little lumor esque. Yeah,
so she looks a little bit less bizarre in comparison
to just everyone else we're seeing, who all has, you know,
a curious amount of facial surgeries, Yeah going on that
makes them just look just look a little different, just.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
A little different. We saw the Fox News had anchored
today whose face was as smooth as a baby's ass.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It looked like carved marble.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
It looked like carved marble, and was clearly bloated with
Bachelin toxin.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Incredible.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, it was a beautiful man, Sophie. He was a beauty.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I think he uses retinal.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
He must use retinal. And he had a chin as
wide as like Glory days Bruce Campbell.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Very wide face.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I bet he never forgot to wear sunscreen, unlike you two.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So yeah, kind of the last thing we did at
the convention before coming back was we had a little
conversation with Rudy primarily about Ukraine. His basic stance is
that Ukraine is stealing all of the money that the
government gives it. When I pointed out that that money
was primarily coming in military subsidies and like military weapons,
he said they were stealing the weapons and selling them.
And I asked who, and he said he didn't know,
(06:32):
at which point his handler got him out of there,
and we wound up walking over to the iHeart booth
where one of our coworkers, Dan O'Donnell, who's a more
conservative guy in the network, but who through a law
enforcement contact, got the story that a man had just
been shot outside of the RNC security zone, but by
police who were in town for the RNC. It wound
(06:53):
up that they are Columbus, Ohio police. So we rushed
down there, split up with him pretty quickly because I
think he was mostly interested and talking to the police
on scene, and we wound up right in the middle
of you know, what is the poorest neighborhood in Milwaukee,
the poorest zip code in the state, one of the
highest rates of incarceration in the country. It is a
(07:14):
deeply deprived area. The first guy we talked to, he
was with Lighthouse Ministries I think was the name of
the organization, which is essentially he was running like a
Christian halfway house, and we saw another larger halfway house
even closer to the shooting, Like there were two half
way houses effectively right next to each other. That's the
kind of neighborhood this was. And when we got there,
(07:37):
police had just started setting up cordons. They had started
it with about a block or two fenced off with
police tapes, but were widening at every few minutes. They
were adding new blocks, quickly expanding, and a large number
of cops were on scene. There were horse cops on scene.
We could not get close to them, about a block
from the site of the shooting itself, but we were
able to get into a park where there were a
(07:57):
lot of local people who were very angry at what
had happened. And one of the first things I encountered
was a couple of guys, you know, one of whom
was filming on his phone yell and got the police,
a couple of whom were sitting in lawn chairs, and
one of whom was speaking about like you know, who
had clearly witnessed the shooting, saying like you know, they
were just having an argument. If you'd let us the
(08:19):
neighborhood handle it, we would have handled it. The most
there would have been was a black guy. What the
fuck is wrong with you guys. We talked to him.
His name is Emmanual, And I'm actually just gonna play
a clip from that interview with the Manual right now.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
Here's the on the bikes. I want to let you see.
Speaker 6 (08:36):
So they parked in the King Center alley and they
were just basically patrolling, watching us, right.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
So the two guys have a little about the ball.
That's about the f So they didn't really fight. Toby's
shopping Freeze shot him. They emptied the clip.
Speaker 6 (08:55):
Every twelve officers on the bike empty their clips because
you speak Coby.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Their clients.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
And then when they were done, they're turning guns on
us and then now their person that's further further away
issue because they don't want us to tell you guys
what really happened when they could have Tasted and the
rest of them city in the jail.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
They shot him, and they was going to shoot the
other guy and he ran, so they turn the guns.
Speaker 6 (09:16):
Are about sixteen of us Robert, Yeah, yeah, so yeah,
they were others.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Why didn't shoot? Because I realized their guns were empty,
so they caught the backups.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
And that's why they have more backups and more backups
and more backups, and that's why we are backing up.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, and is that the that's the plan now, is
my guest?
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Yeah? Yeah, I don't know if they're they were the
r n C.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
The yep, tear gas and masks. Well, thank you, Emmanuel,
nice to meet you. Yeah, yep, tear gas and masks.
Starting to feel like Portland again. And yeah, I would
(09:58):
say that what a manual said is can assistant. We
talked to two other people who had witnessed the shooting,
and then a couple other people who had been close by,
and they all agreed with the gist of what Emmanuel
had said.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
Well, and Manuel told you something before he started recording
there about how like they felt this was like a
very very solvable problem. Yeah, for like the community, like
this is just like an average fight that they could
they could have ended themselves. Yeah, and you know, in
the next hour these people would have been friends again.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
And instead police from out of state showed up and
just started shooting.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And that is what the initial thing we heard through
our you know, coworker who was talking to law enforcement
was a man had had a knife or knives, was
brandishing them. Police told him to drop, he didn't and
they had to shoot him. Locals on scenes said police
did not tell him to drop anything, ran up and
just started shooting. And as you heard from Manual, his
(10:54):
experience at the event was that police then turned their
guns on the crowd, and you know, he felt threatened
deeply by this for reasons that are obvious. And I
will say that everyone we talked to in the neighborhood
had broadly consistent stories. This was not a serious fight,
This was not a thing that would have escalated to
lethal violence in the normal course of human events. But
(11:15):
a huge number of out of state cops rolled up
to the altercation unnecessarily and drew their guns and started shooting.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
So there was a fairly nice homeless encampment. They had
a wonderful community garden, really nice garden, just like a
block away, and we figured, oh, this, this guy might
might have been houseless, And we started to talk to
more people who knew him, and yes, we found out
we actually walked right past his tent on the way
to the shooting. He had a tent by himself in
(11:45):
this little alleyway. I guess, Robert, you talked more to that,
to that guy that knew him.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I talked to a guy who knew him who he
said his nickname was Jehovah because he was at Jehovah's witness.
The guy who I was speaking to was a Muslim
and specifically stated to me, like, you know, I'm a Muslim,
he's a Jehovah's witness. But we always got along. He
was a really nice guy. He didn't deserve this like.
He wasn't a dude who generally caused problems. He was
not a dangerous person. He was maybe a guy who
was having a little bit of a heated moment with
(12:11):
another dude. And again there happened to be a bunch
of out of state cops who decided to make it
everyone's problem. That was his attitude. And a couple of
things were notewhere they I mean, we talked to a
woman who was kind of dropping her daughter off at
work who lived nearby. This is a lady who lived
in a little bit nicer of a neighborhood. She wasn't
quite there. An older black woman who was like, you know,
the cops show up to do this, but there's no cops,
(12:34):
Like if this had been any other time of the year,
there would have been no cops in this neighborhood ever
at all. Like they're never around when anybody wants them
to be, but they show up to kill a guy
because the RNC is in town. And that was very
much the consistent response we got from everyone in the neighborhood.
You know, we stayed there a while.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
One of the things that I couldn't not notice is
once we were down in the RNC, you know, earlier
in the day, very cool, a lot of shame tall buildings.
When we were in that neighborhood near a fourteenth and Boulette.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Right outside the Martin Luther King Junior Community Center.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, sun was beating down us. There was very little cover,
it was very hot. The streets were notably poor repair,
the buildings were in a lot poorer repair. But there
was actually also evidence of like street life like here,
the RNC is, all of downtown Milwaukee has been sanitized, right.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
They swept encampment's close to the R and Z perimeter
and stuff people have had to move around.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And no one you encounter lives here right not during
the event, that's just the way that it goes. A
lot of the local buildings are shut down. And one
of the things that was interesting about this was the
degree to which all of these people in the most
deprived neighborhood Milwaukee had a really clear understanding of what
had happened near and around them and knew each other.
And we're talking. There were a couple of people we
saw who were going around different chunks within a block
(13:55):
or two of each other and clearly knew all of
their neighbors, which was, you know, very different from kind
of the vibes that we've gotten Downtown Milwaukee is as
nice as it is, and I think we've all really
enjoyed this city, one of the most segregated cities in
the country. And that was very clear because I think
there was one white person who was a resident of
the neighborhood that we talked to, that woman who was
(14:15):
next to the guy who knew Jehovah, And I guess
that's most of what I have to say.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Yeah, I mean, more and more place kept showing up.
There was this basically like a riot squad with mace
and yah, gas masks showed up. You know, there was
biite cops, mounted patrol cops. They just they started to
flood this area. Eventually they slowly kind of you know,
dispersed out as this scene got more under control and
they realized there probably wasn't going to be a huge
protest at this location. I believe there's gonna be a
(14:43):
vigil tonight, Yeah, at eight pm near the side of
the shooting. So yeah, I mean it's just tough to
go from the RNC with you know, massive police presence
all of these extremely wealthy, rich white Republicans and then
be reminded the real people exist and yeah, put events
like this on people get killed by police to make
(15:03):
sure that that that people feel comfortable going to these
sorts of events and just completely unnecessarily.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, and that's.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
That's just a good a good uh, A good reminder
every time I walk through one of these police checkpoints.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, Donald Donald Trump, you know, survived his brush with
the shooting. This young man didn't, and he died because
this event was set up in his town. We know
that the Secret Service and the you know, the other agencies,
because it wasn't just the Secret Service that was responsible
for Trump getting shot. There were a lot of other
law enforcement agencies there failed at their job, you know,
(15:35):
last Saturday to stop the former president from getting shot.
Failed very badly at that. But still at the RNC,
the only thing that the security State knows how to
do is flood the zone with cops. And the only
thing those cops know how to do is when they
encounter anything a little bit hostile, draw their guns and
empty them. You know, that was my impression, And uh yeah,
(15:57):
I think that's probably all we need to say about
that right now.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Now Sophie will tell us about her experience. As me
and Robert were walking around this side of this police
murder after this short break.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
And we're back. Well, my colleagues were out on the ground.
I went to a super super fun event called Giving
Americans a Voice town hall hosted by the Moms for Liberty.
It was interesting, to say the least. It was a
(16:37):
three hour event with various long event very long, and
I recorded all of it so we can put that
out at a later date. Let me just give you
a quick rundown of what the event was.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And Moms for Liberty is as like a lobbying group
for parental Rights.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Very supportive of banning books.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Banning books, parental rights, a lot of stuff around education
in school. They they're very active in Washington. They're the
sponsor of a lot of these really really like horrible
bills about limiting information to children, limiting the rights of children,
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, And additional sponsors for this event where Conservative Partnership Institute, Heritage.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Character Foundation, authors of Project twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Five, Young America's. I can't even read this logo.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
It's like the Young Republicans Voting Association.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Young Americans Foundation.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
We did it, great job.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And Public Square, which is a very strange app and
there were three panels and some of the people that
were featured on the panel were Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Sara Huckabe Sanders made an appearance, Governor.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Sarah Huckabye Sanders, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
The governor of Wisconsin was there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
He opened The governor, the governor of Wisconsin was there.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
That's upsetting. He was like one of the first people
who spoke, not a senator, not the actual governor.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
The forty fifth Governor, Jesus Wisconsin, Scott Walker, yes, correct,
various groups of attorneys general and get the Senator Oswell
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and it was it was it
was a strange event.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
What sort of things do they talk about?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Well, they started off with them giving an excuse that
the reason why that there was an attempted assassination on
former President Trump was because of the media falseley compare
hip to Hitler, to which they said, there is only
one Hitler.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
There's actually been quite a few Hitlers, although there's less.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Now also I would I would like for them to
feel that question to jd Vance But anyway.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Fair enough. And then there was, you know, as there
are at most of these events, there was a prayer
and I just thought it was super interesting that the
person giving the prayer referred to the panelists and various
speakers as great actors, which was just like an interesting
word choice to me.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
This extensively like political actors, I would assume, but interesting associations.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
And like one of the one of the main things
that they talked about this was education, and they said
their biggest issue that they have in the United States
is the creation of the federal Department of Education, and
that they were going to change that, which got huge,
huge cheers from the crowd. They claim that one of
the reasons why the young man had attempted to assassinate
(19:17):
Donald Trump was because he had gone to a large school.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
They are very anti large school why.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Not, and that was one of the main reasons, as
well as the media referring to foreign President Trump as hitler.
They were adamant that teachers unions do not protect kids
and that they are only out for themselves, and that
all teachers' unions have been infiltrated by the left.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Well, that part is kind of drown yeah, but no,
I mean attacks on teachers unions are I've seen those
more in the past four years among a lot of
either like right wing influencers or actual politicians. The teachers'
unions is a very good boogeyman. Yeah, because some people,
you know, like their individual teachers. But no, no, no, the
real problem is the teachers union.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yes, that actual distinction was brought up multiple times. There
you go, there you go, And at one point somebody
in the back of the room dropped their phone, but
it was very loud and unsettling noise to the point
where everybody thought that it might have been a gun,
and everyone kind of understandably so jumped up and around.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Oh they're scared of guns.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The Republicans really fucking babies.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
And the overall energy is that they ate the federal government.
They want things to go back to a local level,
and that the Left is ruining and grooming children. Lots
of weird as you can imagine, stuff about gender, lots of.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Stuff about consistently got some of the biggest, biggest applause.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Oh something to note here. Anytime Elon Musk was brought up,
which was quite a bit, the crowd went bat shit. Yeah,
huge wild cheers for anything to do with Elon, which
I thought was, you know, not unexpected, but just that, like,
he got louder cheers than I think he got a
(21:08):
louder cheer than when they brought up Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
He's really one of their new great heroes. What did
the Attorney's General talk about?
Speaker 1 (21:16):
They were mostly talking about different winds they had had
in terms of like their states and things they were
bringing the table, and mostly like personal stories of like
things that they look for in their family. The Missouri
Attorney General Andrew Bailey, his biggest reaction from the crowd
was when he said in Missouri, we don't co parent
(21:38):
with the government, and sure the crowd loved that.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Yeah, I mean this is a big, big, big parental
rights group.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
And yeah, I'm intered in the attorney general because back
in twenty twenty three, the attorney's generals from a lot
of these red states drafted this this very angry, kind
of threatening letter to Target, kind of demanding that because
some of their states own like interest in Target, they
have to remove any kind of any products that cater
to trans people because this is betraying the investors by
(22:09):
making this poor economic decision. And really, the attorneys general
have been one of the strongest forces against trans rights
in a lot of these states. And I believe because
I showed up near the end of the attorney general's segment,
I believe they refer to themselves as like the last
line of defense. Even if you have like a democrat,
you know, like mayor, or you know you have more
democratic officials in like your city or state, the attorney's
(22:30):
generals are are like the ones that are going to
hold it down, even if the rest have kind.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Of sold out or are liberals Democrats.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, I would say the ags were the most transphobic
of the bunch. If I was doing ranking, which santas, Yeah,
one of them said, you know, in a laughing way,
which again got a great reaction from the crowd. Think
about a kindergartener saying what's your pronoun?
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Very very funny ha ha ha ha.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
They were laughing and hahaha about that. And just the
last thing I'll say about the ags was that that
same ag from Missouri said our rights come from God,
not man.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And famously in the Constitution.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yes, anyways, and then DeSantis and Sarah Huckeby Sanders closed
it out.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Which we arrived for.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
We arrived just in time to see DeSantis, Thank god,
Oh meatball Ron Dissentis and Huckeby Sanders got to be
the two most uncharismatic speakers I've seen at the convention
so far.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
I'm not surprised they were both shunted off to the
I would call it the shame callus. So.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
DeSantis was wearing jeans, which is just a fascinating move,
but these were very warm, very.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Warm, and essentially when he got up he basically did
like a brag list of all the things that he
has gotten done in.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Florida, talking about, you know, taking the fight to Disney,
enacting universal school choice, making sure that there's no sex
at in his schools. Very cool, and then, uh, you
talked oddly enough a lot about college.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
University is correct.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Yes, he was talking about how like, even if you
raise your kid, right, even if we fix you know, public.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Schools, you put in eighteen hard years.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
He spent eighteen years raising your kid, You do it right,
we fix all of the public schools, everything's good. As
soon as they turn eighteen, they're gonna go after one
of these liberal colleges and they're gonna undo all of
the good work that you've put in, and that needs
to be the next thing to stop. And he said
that Florida is the first state to take on higher education.
We've had a lot of focus on lower education. We
now we have to take on higher education, including doing
(24:28):
like performance reviews for ten good professors every five years,
in which case they can be fired for poor performance,
which is kind of a wild concept for a Tenian professor.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
He also had a one off wild line where he
was like, you did see Hamas over on our universities.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yes, he referred to palestinating human rights campus protesters as Hamas,
just saying that they are Hamas, Like he didn't like say,
these people are like Hamas. You just said when Hamas
was coming to the universities, they didn't show up in Florida.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Which is a very standard Republican line.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
It is.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Yeah, there's just no difference between someone showing up to
a protest in the United States because they don't like
that thousands and thousands of Palestinians are being murdered, and
that person is now indistinguishable from Hamas according to the
Republican Party, according to all of these speakers. Yeah, and
so Sarah Sanders just tried to kind of write on
(25:19):
the coattails of disantist being like, hey, we're also plighting
the transgenders.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
She did the same. She listed, you know, some of
her brags mentioned it always has to do she talks
about her dad. I wrote down something she said because
I was like, she said, the only war on women
is on conservative women from the far left. Where are
the feminists? They can't even tell you what a woman is.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Well, someone who's famously taken a woman's studies course where
they never define what a woman is totally because the
main upsetting thing for me because the police just killed
a black man a few hours ago. I was just reminded,
you know, there's so many real people in Milwaukee, right.
All the food service workers have been very nice. So
there's all these real people facing real issues in the
poorest part of Milwaukee. And we just saw someone whose
(26:06):
life was ended because police were here for the RNC
from a totally different state, and people with real economic concerns,
real concerns about, you know, their life from police brutality,
all this type of stuff. And as soon as you
walked into this Mom's for Liberty panel, the first thing
we heard them complaining about was that they were being
censored on Twitter, yep, and that that was their concern.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Joe Biden censored us.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Their hardest thing to them was that they find all
this gender stuff a little bit icky and that we're
being censored on Twitter. And that is the level of
problems that these people are dealing well.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And our kids didn't turn into the people we wanted
them to. Yeah, and that should be the entire country's problem.
They are not fundamentally, they don't have real problems. These people,
they don't have real problems, but they are unhappy that
everyone in the world does not inherently act to serve
and validate them, and they are going to make that
(26:58):
everyone's promise. You know. That is what the RNC is.
The people on the floor are what you would call
like successful used car dealers, like level of capitalist, right,
and they are worshiping an alliance of venture capitalists, guys
like the VEC, guys like JD. Vance, and of course
people who inherited a shitload of wealth and then eventually
(27:20):
succeeded in making money through a combination of vice casinos
and the entertainment industry. Trump, you know, like that's that's
who this is.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
And uh, speaking of a VIC. As we were getting
up to leave, they quickly announced that there was one
more person who was going to speak, and it was him.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Yeah, he sure did speak. He gave a speech that
I would say was indistinguishable from AI. Yes, just about
how how good America can be and even though we're
a to GPT could, even though we're in a tough spot
right now, I feel like America can do better. And
it was just it was like I could predict every
other word. Yeah, hey, this is gear recording. Just outside
of the main arena at the rn c where Governor
(27:58):
Greg Aba just gave a speed and now I'm giving
you a short speech to tell you to enjoy these
messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
We'll be right back. This is Robert M.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Garrison recording from our hotel room later in the night,
because we have learned some new information about the police
killing that happened earlier today, and also we listened to
a whole bunch of the RNC closing speeches tonight which
kind of relate to this question of police violence.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
I'll hand this off to Robert.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah. I mean, so since we were down there, the
police have released both their security camera footage body camera footage,
and we have the name of the decedent, who was
Samuel Sharp Junior. This is the guy everyone in the
neighborhood identified as Jehovah, and that was the nickname that
he went by. He looked younger. I've seen some reports
that he was like forty three, but he doesn't look
forty three from the footage, you know, and he had
(28:53):
just he had used a community shower earlier that day
that comes by the neighborhood for some of the homeless folks,
and you know everyone he loved them. Footage is I
understand like exactly how it's going to be used and
already as being used by the police, And I understand
what they're saying, which is that if you look at
the footage, is they rush on scene, I think about
(29:14):
fifteen of them. Five of them fired at once and
immediately open fire. You can see from a distance the
two guys are five to seven feet apart and are
kind of crossing the street together while it looks like
they are yelling as the police rush in, Samuel runs forward,
and if you clip frames out of the video, you
can make a case that he was charging the guy
(29:35):
with his knife or knives. Police are saying multiple It's
a little unclear to me in the footage if he
had two or just one. But I can see how
the police showing up un scene, being trained the way
that they are, why they opened fire. The problem is
that he ran forward in the first place, because they
rushed in, like these two guys were squared up on
(29:56):
the street and not in an encounter that any of
the locals considered to be particularly threatening. If you have
spent a lot of time around homeless encampments, if you
have spent a lot of time in neighborhoods that have
a lot of homeless residence, it is not wild or
uncommon to see people yelling and to see people with
knives on their person, you know, even in their hands. Obviously,
(30:18):
that can be upsetting to some people. But like the
folks who lived in the neighborhood did not consider this
an odd circumstance and with something that, in the normal
circumstance of events and the normal following of events, would
have been de escalated. And in this case it wasn't
the police open fire before there was any attempt at
de escalation.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Yeah, And like conservatives will always point out, you know,
why is he just following orders? Why isn't he just
just doing blah blah blah blah blah. They will they
will take they'll take low screenshots that make something look
a certain way. And the simple fact is that these
two men were not in any physical altercation before police arrived.
He started running away as police started charging towards him.
I think it would be very odd that he would
(30:56):
choose that moment to suddenly lunge forward and stab this
person he knew. And I think it's very clear that
he's actually just running away from police. As people often do,
and police have a long history of just shooting at
people and killing people who are running away. You can
look at what happened at the Wendy's in Atlanta in
twenty twenty. They shoot people when they don't follow what
they're saying. They shoot people when people try to run
(31:18):
away from them, and that's just how cops work. So
this video came out later in the evening, right as
me and Robert arrived at the RNC second session. And
the theme today for the RNC is make America Safe Again.
And some of the first few speeches I heard, one
was from the mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Democrats in power demonstrate they don't care about stopping the killers.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
Or the thieves who.
Speaker 7 (31:46):
Terrorize black and brown communities. They don't care about securing
our border, and they don't care about dangerous homeless encampments.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
And then there was also like a police chief who
spoke a former police chief who now runs a charity
I think for like wounded police officers. Yeah, but he's
like a cop who is also an activist.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
And so all this framing is around talking about how
the Democrats are the defund the police party, how Joe
Biden and Kamala Harris themselves advocate for defunding the police,
which is simply not true if you look at what
they say. Joe Biden will always reiterate that he always
has argued for more police funding, for more police training.
But they have framdous issue as there are not enough
police around. That's what is making cities dangerous. Talking about
(32:32):
you know, all the people dying of violent crime. Not
a single mention, of course, that the out of state
police just killed someone a mile away from the Republican
National Convention. The make America Safe Again rhetoric shifted towards
you know, border rhetoric. You know, people believing genuinely the
people that are speaking in the audience that we currently
(32:52):
live under an open border policy that people can just
walk in totally fine. Just a complete alterned reality view
about what's going on in America, about what Joe Biden
and Kamala Harris's border policies are. And there was a
number of speachurees that that tried to capitalize on this
on this almost like border framing up, like there's isis
terrorists pouring into the border only under Joe Biden, right,
(33:15):
as if no one ever crossed the border illegally under
Donald Trump. I know what, Robert you, You were talking
about some of the Ted Cruz speech tonight on his
comments around the border.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, and Cruz was interesting. I've never considered him a
particularly strong speaker, and coming out, he initially went into
kind of a conspiracy theory that you'll hear on the
right about people being trafficked, sex trafficked, kids being sex
traffic across the border. He made a comment about them
having colored wristbands, which is again not a thing that happens,
but a reference to a widely believed right wing conspiracy,
(33:47):
and that got kind of a scattered amount of applause.
Not not what I would call a reaction, given how
he saw the crowd react, Marjorie Taylor Green and how
we saw them react, you know, whenever Trump comes out
very muted. But as it went on, he started going
into this kind of fear mongering spiel about migrants. He
talked about the woman in San Francisco who was killed
(34:07):
by that guy who found a gun in a bag
and accidentally fired it. He talked about a number of
different other cases that were people not from the country,
undocumented immigrants, who killed generally white Americans. And every time
he would tell a story, he had like a refrain
line that was something and that's what happens every damn
time or something. And every time he gave the refrain,
(34:29):
more and more people started to cheer in the audience.
And by the end of it, with the last kind
of couple of cases of migrant on white people crime
he brought up, the crowd was like legitimately roaring like
as much as they did for Marjorie Taylor Green. Now
the cop that came up next got a much louder response,
and by far the biggest response of the night, even
(34:49):
maybe including Trump, was when the delegates on the floor
launched into a series of back the Blue chants. They
actually interrupted the cop with back the Blue chants. Were
roaring for that.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Yeah, there was a lot of a lot of these chants.
And the Dallas mayor told a really funny story how
in twenty twenty, some like anti police or defund the
police activists to shut up around his neighborhood to try to,
you know, get him to defund the police, and he
got so scared by this that he changed from being
a Democrat mayor to a Republican mayor and now he
(35:37):
runs the biggest Republican led city in the country. And
he had this comment talking about how he grew up
in you know, poor black neighborhoods and the thing that
they've always wanted, the thing that makes them safer, is
more cops, not less cops. Both.
Speaker 7 (35:52):
I grew up in high prime neighborhoods. What we wanted
was more.
Speaker 5 (35:59):
And better, not less.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
And just contrasting that with our experiences today in a
very poor black community that just suffered an incident of
police killing. That is that is just a lie, right, like,
and like everyone knows this. This is theater for the convention.
Everyone at the convention is really into this sort of thing.
They genuinely believe this sort of stuff, but it's just
an alternate reality. We spend time one of the poorest
zip codes in the country and the state today and no,
(36:27):
it's that's simply not true.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, these these people are angry about primarily theoretical problems.
You know, this kind of specter of migrant crime, which
is not really real in a demographic you can pick
out individual cases of that, but you can pick out
individual cases of doctors stabbing people to death, and that
doesn't mean we have a wave of doctor related crime, right.
The reality of the situation is that, like, these are
(36:51):
super fans of the Republican Party, and they are super
fans of the narrative, and they are cheering for some
of the moments, you know, they're not There's some stuff
that's gotten boring to them. I kind of think the
child traffick at conspiracy theories might be boring to them,
maybe because that guy from the child trafficking movie got
disgraced or whatever. There's not as interested. So you can
(37:11):
see every now and then as like their interest in
certain things fades. But they're reacting like an audience that
like a comic con would to see in like a
Star Wars trailer where some guy does a thing that's
evidence of having the comics or whatever. The people I'm
waiting to see, like when fucking DeSantis comes on and
starts talking about banning children from receiving gender affirming care,
(37:33):
that's like fucking Spider Man showing up, right, and they
react like the guy next to us when DeSantis started
doing this, started screaming and like sticking his fist out
towards DeSantis and like yelling at it a volume that
was honestly kind of surprising the man could project. I'll
give him that. So I think ultimately the way I
would sum this up is that these are not normal people.
(37:55):
These are people who love politics. And again, to be clear,
I'm not saying these are not normal people. Can They're conservative.
My entire family are conservative, a lot of them are
Trump voters, but they would find this audience deeply weird
because these people are politics fans, and even most of
the conservatives I know really dislike politics. Most normal people do.
And I guess that's kind of where I've concluded, is
(38:17):
the difference between like the crazies and the normies. Normal
people don't enjoy this stuff.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
The term I've used the past few years is politics
as fandom, and that's all this fucking is. This is
this is a convention, just like comic con, just like
an anime con. This is a convention, and that is
how they view politics. Anyway, back to the past versions
of us to discuss a funny closing story regarding presidential footwear.
(38:43):
So that has been our day so far. The last
thing I say we'll leave you with is on our
way to the convention site, this morning, we were walking
through this hotel to get through security and we found
this wonderful section. It was it it was called the
Sidential Experience. We walked in. There was a there was
a replica of the Oval Office. I was told Reagan
(39:06):
era Oval Office.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
It was.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
It was pretty good, and it was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
It was not good Netflix production, but like Netflix production
level quality.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Bad Netflix production quality. So we walked through and then
we found just a glorious site. And I will let
Past Robert and myself tell you what we found at
the Presidential Experience. We are hearing the Presidential shoe section.
We got Harry Truman, Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan, Warren G. Harding,
(39:38):
who has a quote charming spat requested by President Harding
and sympathized the elegance of the Victorian era. Dwight Eisenhower's
shoes are pretty good. JFKs are a little bit more
fancy but less polished.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
Lyndon B.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Johnson's completely unsurprising, very very versatile, very efficient, can get
off easy, slip on and off, get those dogs out
when you need to. Abe Lincoln has some honestly very
stylish boots. Theodore Roosevelt's as well large foot on Theodore
and Woodrow Wilson's shoes, the only white shoe in the bunch.
(40:11):
Very small, tiny feet, very small feet. Kind of surprisingly
he's it says he chose fashion over tradition with these
white buckskins. Also, they have Ulysses s. Grant's little little
riding boots. The Victorian boots are are very very stylish.
But honestly, I think I would go with Dwight D. Eisenhower's.
(40:33):
They're just a beautiful, a beautiful shoe. Reagan's aren't bad,
but I don't know. The Eisenhower shoes just a little
bit more elegant.
Speaker 8 (40:40):
I'm going for LBJ slip on life.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
That makes sense for you.
Speaker 8 (40:44):
That shows you're a man who's got things to do.
You know, you don't have time to be tie in
your shoes.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
No, that that that makes sense, That makes sense. Nick
Nixons and Kennedy's are very similar.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Process or, I will tell.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
You the truth. Pretty good. It looks like this was
presented by c Span this presidential experience. We have a
Reagan era replica of the Oval Office, not a big room,
not a big room, but overall of decent, decent replica.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Nice JFK portrait Up there.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
There's a women's suffrage article, Wally.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Interesting women's suffrage little table. Very controversial topic among Republicans
these days.
Speaker 8 (41:28):
It has gotten to be increasingly so.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Some old Pennsylvania Packet and Daily.
Speaker 8 (41:33):
Advertiser newspapers from seventeen eighty seven. Oh yeah, so this
is I guess the original Pennsylvania newspaper coverage and printing
of the.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 8 (41:44):
Yeah, of the Constitution. Yeah, there's the preamble right there. Yeah,
and they spell established Justice as.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
A thab lith just fifth, because that's a yieldie days,
a lot a lot more f's back in the day.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
Yeah, But they have these little information placards about all
the presidents, the first ladies, that kind of stuff. We'll
try to talk to the to the organizer of this
little shindig in a sect. But honestly, the shoe, the
shoe section, it's the most interesting thing to me just
because of how tiny, just just how tiny those Woodrow
Wilson choos are.
Speaker 8 (42:16):
Hey, Jay, that's that's a that's a that's a long foot.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
It's not a wide foot.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Roosevelt's feet are pretty wide. U. S. Grant also very
small also very small feet. Hmmm, yeah, you know what
they say about him?
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Anyway, who's your favorite president?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Favorite?
Speaker 8 (42:38):
Honestly? You know, I I I think I gotta go
with US Grant. He's He's not my favorite president in
terms of what he did in office, but in terms
of like as a person, sure, he's the US president
that I think was probably the the best person like
he really did try.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Always been a Harrison fan myself.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Oh yeah, William Henry. He was my favorite ass president.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Right, also rhymes with my first name, So a little
bit of a bias there.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
He really I like a man who there. There's not
much like fat on that presidency.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
He really efficient, efficient, efficient time in office.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
You got in and out.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Wow, very exciting. All those little feet.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
I can't stop thinking about. You know what I think
about that's the weirdest is that they did not have
they didn't have any bush feet. Sadly, well, they didn't
have bush feet. And there was one guy who they
didn't have his shoes. They just had the US Grant.
They just had they had like the model that they
built the shoe around for him, Yes, which was weird.
I was like, where's your where's your US grant shoe.
(43:44):
You don't want to show us the hardest working man
whoever lived to be president.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
But yeah, no, I thought that was some important breaking
news for our listeners to hear who had the smallest foot. Yeah,
but as of right now, that is day two of
the Republican National Convention.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Until our next update, don't come here, it's unpleasant.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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