Nick Craig In For Pete Kaliner (08-25-2025--Hour2)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, I Daily Show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. President Donald Trump's about a marathon this morning and into the early parts of this afternoon with the media. He was holding a press conference earlier. Heard a little bit of that on Vince's show. He is now meeting with the President of South Korea, continuing to take questions from media. Has been speaking to them for almost three hours at this point, combined with the two different press events taking place. And one of the things that was discussed earlier with the President being in the Oval office was crime. And this has been an interesting discussion in a kind of an interesting political debate to watch played out play out on the national stage. And really, to me, this comes down to a simple question of do you want the place that you live, that you work that you shop, or whatever the circumstances might be, do you want that place to be safe or dangerous? Now, of course it's a rhetorical question. I mean, you don't need to have a PhD in econo or in any sort of field to understand the concept that an unsafe community leads to it falling into some level of disrepair, falling into some level of decline because it is unsafe. Right, you go back a couple of years and you look at what was going on in the city of San Francisco where you had complete and total, open rampant, open air drug use, where you had people swarming subway and tramcar stations all throughout San Francisco, walking around like zombies with heroin needles in their arms. What was the result of that and what did that lead to? Well, it led to people no longer wanting to work or travel to the downtown city center in San Francisco. And for businesses, particularly those in the retail sector, without employees, you can't keep your doors open without individuals to come into your establishment and work it, or patrons to come in and buy products that you're selling. It's really not a sustainable business model. And so over the last couple of years, you have seen a mass exodus from the downtown hub in San Francisco. I remember back this is probably about two or so, two years or so ago, maybe a little bit longer. The availability of commercial property in San Francisco was the highest percentage anywhere in the nation. This is a city that has been a major economic hub for decades now, and it had one of the highest availability rates of commercial real estate anywhere in the country. And for a variety of reasons, nobody wants to travel to a place where you've got individuals openly using drugs roaming around the streets, harassing you. People don't want to shop there, and people don't want to work there, so they have decided to go elsewhere. They've decided to leave the city center. And you've seen a variety of stores, all of your major drug stores, grocery stores, all of those places have closed up, shop boarded up their windows, and they've moved out of downtown San Francisco. It's beginning to come back as city leaders have finally come to the realization that that is completely unsustainable long term. But it is an unfortunate trend that we are seeing in many cities across the country, and it's a variety of factors that lead to what eventually becomes out of control crime to a level in which a city starts to in population, in visitors, and in growth. And one of the greatest examples of this is the District of Columbia, where over the last couple of years you have seen a rampant amount of increase in crime, a lot of it of course, spawning around the BLM and Antifa protests of twenty twenty and into twenty twenty one, a lot of that causing crime rates to skyrocket in many of these cities, DC being one of them. And President Donald Trump eleven days ago, decided that he was ready to take action, using federal authority vested in him under United States law. He sent the National Guard and directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to take over control of the DC Police and under his authority as the Chief Executive, to deploy the National Guard. And I caught this amazing stat this morning. In the eleven days that the National Guard has been roaming the streets of DC, would you believe that there has not been a single murder? Wow? Look at that. So you're telling me that as soon as that there are consequences to your actions, crime stops. As soon as individuals start to realize that they're not going to be able to carjack some poor twenty year old girl who's just getting in her car after her shift at a restaurant, that you're going to be held accountable for that, that you might actually be arrested for that, and you might actually be prosecuted from the crime that you've conducted, that you stop doing it. I mean, imagine my shock when I hear that. But that's exactly what's happening in Washington, DC. Now, it's only been eleven days, but in the last week and a half or so since this has been in place, it would be hard pressed for me to argue that has not been successful. Over the weekend, we. Learned that President Donald Trump was looking at the possibility of expanding some of what has gone on in DC the DC cleanup efforts to other cities across the United States, cities with incredibly high crime rates. Which is even shocking to learn that Saint Louis is the top city per capita for crime. It is the most dangerous city from a crime statistic perspective anywhere across the US, and so President Donald Trump is starting to now float around and throw around the idea that he wants to bring similar action that he that has conducted himself with in Washington, d C. Bring that to other cities, and one of them is Chicago. And so over the weekend, I was digging into some of the crime statistics out of Chicago, and I assumed they were bad, but I will admit I hadn't looked at them in a couple of years. And so there's a great website that lays out I said, great website, but from a visual standpoint, lays out these statistics and they're heart wrenching. Year to date, there have been two hundred and seventy eight homicides in Chicago, more than one thousand people shot and wounded, and more than twelve hundred, almost thirteen hundred people shot thus far in Chicago. It's August twenty fifth. I mean, we're just a little over halfway through the year, a little more than halfway through the through the year, and you've already got two hundred and seventy eight people killed in Chicago. One of the more shocking things on here is, again based on these statistics, every four hours and twenty three minutes, somebody is shot in the city of Chicago, and every twenty hours and twenty two minutes, so in less than a day, a person is being murdered. Now, I will contend to you that that is not something that is good. I don't believe in death and destruction and bloodshed and violence. It's not something I subscribe to. I don't think it's good for anything. And so when I look at these numbers, when I see that in the month of August there's been twenty nine homicides in Chicago, I say that's probably not a good situation. When I see that there's been twelve hundred and ninety six people shot in the city this year, I say that's not a good thing. These are not good metrics. And so, as Trump is now talking about sending in the National Guard or other federal authorities to a place like Chicago, the reaction to it has been astonishing. We're being told that it's not actually a problem. The Chicago mayor in Brandon Johnson, is telling Trump, don't send federal troops here. We don't have an issue unfolding. All right, So you've heard me talk about creative video for almost a year. But did you know they also offer a game changing app for businesses that reward their teams with incentive trips. Well they do. It's called Incentive trip Kit. If you own a business or work at one that offers these incentive trips, this is a must have. It maximizes the impact and value of these motivational trips. It's a super easy to use app built just for your group, with private messaging, shared photos, important trip documents, even a find the group locator just in case somebody gets separated. And when I say it's private, I mean it. 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Before the break, we were going over some of the crime statistics out of Chicago and and it's sad. It's so sad. August the month's not even over yet. Twenty seven people shot and killed, one hundred and sixty four wounded, more than one hundred and ninety people shot, twenty nine total homicides. Those are the crime statistics for the month of August two date it's the twenty fifth, So I guess we'll get a couple more homicides and a couple more murders before the month is said and done. And we're led to believe that that is something that is sustainable. We're led to believe that that is something that is good for a city to have in terms of its crime statistics. Apparently so because Chicago mayor in Brandon Jones told the Associated Press over the weekend, then called that Trump's approach quote uncalled for and unsound, arguing that it quote has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement. And so if I was talking to the Chicago mayor, I'd say, Okay, well, then how many murders need to take place within your city for it to justify the National Guard potentially stepping in and trying to clean up the streets? Because as it stands right now, we're at two hundred and seventy eight for the year. Does it need to be three hundred and seventy eight, four hundred and seventy eight, seven hundred and I mean, what point is enough enough? This goes back to something interesting. If you followed Rudy Giuliani's rise to power in New York State back in the nineties, he was unsuccessful in multiple elections beforehand, and while crime was yes, very bad in New York City throughout the seventies and eighties, one of the things he talks about in a book he wrote, I think it came out in the early two thousands, was that while New York City and the streets of the city were bad and unsafe. They weren't bad enough yet, and he talked about this concept of yes, things are bad in the case of New York City crime at the time, but they had yet to hit a tipping point, and until they hit that tipping point, he couldn't win. Now they eventually did. Voters in New York City realized that the lawlessness, the crime, the out of control violence that was taking place in the Big Apple was not sustainable, and they decided to elect Rudy Giuliani. And you know how the rest of the story unfolds. He brings back prosperity to New York City, which of course is on the brink of collapse again with Zoorn Mamdani and his great ideas for that for that city moving forward. And I think that's an important concept to understand when you look at in this case, Chicago's crime statistics and some of these other major cities Saint Louis has been discussed, Baltimore, Philadelphia, some of these other major unfortunately Democrat run cities where the police chief, the mayor, the city council, the prosecutors, the ada's I mean, everybody involved is week on crime. And it's no surprise that when you are in fact week on crime, you embolden criminals. You embolden individuals to commit heinous acts. And Donald Trump was talking about this today. This is from the White House about an hour and a half or so ago, talking about cashless bail, which is one of these major policies that those on the left think is sustainable. This is what the President had to say in the Oval Office a little while ago. So I'll start signing the executive voters. To me, there's a very very big idea. One of the executive voters has to do with cash liss mail. That was when the big crime in this country started. And I can tell you who did it win, but I don't want to do that because others followed pretty quickly. But that was when it happened. Somebody kills somebody, They go in, don't worry about it, no cash, come back in a couple of months, We'll give you a trial. You never see the person again. And I mean, they kill people and they get out cashless bail. They thought it was discriminatory to make people put up money because they just killed three people lying on the street, any street all over the country. Cashless mail. We're ending it, but we're starting by ending it in DC, and that we have the right to do through federalization. Okay, let's go, could I let's keep just saying exactly what this is. Of course, so as you've consistently identified certain cashless bail policies are a key driver of the disorder we see on city streets all over America. Cash and release. System allows criminals to keep going back out onto the street and reoffending. What this executive order does it charges your Attorney General with identifying jurisdictions all over the country that have cash less bail policies, and then it withholds or revokes federal funds and grants that are flowing those jurisdictions to ensure that we're only supporting the people who have reasonable, common sense policies around crime. To what area does it cover? Potentially anywhere that has a cashless bail policy, So some of the largest cities, some of the most left wing states and are knowedge down the Illinois would be a great example of the answer. Almost all of them, says the President behind the resolute desk talking about cashless bail, talking about these ridiculous policies out of some of these major Democrats cities. Folks, it just doesn't work. I mean, how many crime statistics do you need to look at? How many reports from cities do you need to look at before you snap into some semblance of reality and wrap your head around this concept. It's a disaster and it's not overly complicated to figure out when violent offenders. When criminals don't feel like there's going to be any repercussions for the things that they do, they do them. And that's exactly what these cashless bail policies have allowed. It's the exact same situation with shoplifting out in California. They've risen the level now I think it's like eleven hundred bucks or something that you can legally steal from a store before the police can be called. So what has happened? People are walking into stores and stealing under eleven hundred dollars worth of goods and nothing could be done. The police aren't going to respond to the store clerks obviously aren't going to stop these individuals. So what have the stores done. They've put everything behind lock and key, or in many cases, they've just gone out of business. That's the result when you can't prosecute somebody for theft when you can't prosecute somebody for stealing. These are the policies that are rolling out in these major blue Democrat strongholds all across the United States. And so you have President Trump in the Oval Office this afternoon signing an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondy to begin the process of cleaning this up. Figure out where these cities are, figure out where these policies are, and start holding these cities accountable. Accountability has pretty much been the key word of the day. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. 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And again, I find it interesting because I don't know anybody literally that is on the face of the planet that would want their city, the town that they live, wherever it is, would want their place that they live or they work, or they shop or they play to be unsafe. You've heard this concept of an eighty twenty political stance before, where eighty percent of people agree with something and the twenty percent do not eighty twenty issues. They're very common in political spheres. This is like a ninety nine to one issue. I don't know of a single person that wants their city, their state, wherever to be unsafe. But unfortunately, that's exactly what you're seeing in many Democrats strongholds across the US. You are seeing rampant lawlessness, you are seeing local officials, and there's always this discussion on why local elections do not get more turnout. Right, You've got elections coming up here in the City of Charlotte later this year, and across a plethora of municipalities in North Carolina, pretty much all across the board. You'll have city and town elections taking place this year, and the voter turnout is typically pitiful. In some cases, it's like twelve to fifteen percent turnout. And when you look at an issue like crime, which the President has been beating the drum on nationally over the last couple of days, that is a direct response to local elections. Right, your police chiefs, your city councils, your district attorneys, those are local elections. And it's it's always so frustrating when I look at election returns and watch a local municipal elections play out. That more people are not involved because these policies spiral out of control. And I'll contend to you that they happen pretty rapidly. It seems like, oh, maybe there's a little bit of a slow burn. But the next thing you know, you blink your eyes and you've got dozens of major cities across the country that are these freakish landscapes where there's no law and order. I mean, just whatever you want to do goes. Yeah, you want to shoot up in the middle of the street, you want to steal from the local CBS, you want you want to just commit complete and total lawlessness. Nothing is happening in these places. The President, as you can probably tell listening to his commentary over the last couple of weeks, is frustrated by that. Rightfully, so I can assume Boom that individuals that live in these cities are also frustrated by it. However they won't admit it. They admit that they are, but it's it's completely an unsustainable strategy for any place for any significant period of time. I mean, you can absolutely draw the correlation between the safety and security of a place and its growth. It's prosperity, whether you're talking about you know, physical growth from a population standpoint, whether you're talking about things like like economic growth and economic prosperity. If a place is unsafe to be people do not want to be there. You will take a city that is potentially on the incline in terms of all of those metrics, and it will then become on the decline. It will start going down, and it happens kind of almost with the like the snap of a finger. It happens very quickly. Once these soft on crime politicians get into office, and once they're really able to get their claws around this whole thing, they allow it to just completely run amock, completely run out of control. And that's what you've seen in places like the District of Columbia, in places like New York City or Saint Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia. The list goes on and on and on, and it's the same strategy every single time. It's the same policies that are put forth every time, and the result is exactly the same, which is, by the way, the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Soft on crime policies lead to places becoming dangerous and unsafe. When places are dangerous and unsafe, people in business leave. It's really that simple of a correlation. And so again, who are the groups of people that are cheering on the street corner for crime. Who are the individuals that are applauding these kinds of policies that allow this to take place? Now, those on the extreme political left, those that are defund the police, no cash bail, all of the wonderful Democrat policies that you know and love. Those folks might say that they're in favor of it, but I would contend to you that even Democrats understand how disastrous these policies are. I caught an interesting article over at the Washington Post last week. It was asking residents in the District of Columbia what they thought about Trump's national deploying of the National Guard and taking over some portions of the DC Police. And while the response to the poll wasn't all that high, was something like twenty five percent supported it. It's important to note that in the District of Columbia only six percent of voters supported Donald Trump. Ninety percent supported Kamala Harris. And so when twenty five percent of respondence to this Washington Post poll said that they were in favor of what the president's doing, that's not just his six percent voting block. That is a large number of those that would be on the left, the Democrat side of the political aisle also supporting these policies coming out of the Oval Office, also supporting these policies from President Donald Trump. And so while that was of course not mentioned in the Wall Street or the Washington Post story at all, as you dig into the voting dad and as you actually look at the numbers and correlate them with what reality is. When one in four people in DC are saying, yeah, I support what the President's doing and he can only get six percent of the vote in the district of Columbia, that is a major win. That is going to show you that even Democrats understand that lawlessness is not sustainable long term. Even Democrats understand that the cities in which they live and work and play will fall into freakish hellscapes if this stuff is not dealt with. We've got examples of it, we've got the data and the statistics that back that up, and for whatever reason, You've got this boneheaded mayor in Chicago saying that what the president is threatening is uncalled for, an unsound. Meanwhile, his city has seen two hundred and seventy eight homicides since the beginning of twenty twenty five. I just don't get it. I'm just failing to understand how that is a number that is applauded by those on the left. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check Dot Ground, dot News slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. We're talking about some escalated threats from President Donald Trump. This all unfolding late in the day on Friday and throughout the weekend, that he is eyeing and toying with the idea of sending a national Guard into some Democrat cities across the United State. It's not because they are controlled by Democrats, but because the crime is out of control. Before the break, we were going over some of the crime statistics out of Chicago, and it's sad. It's so sad. August the month's not even over yet. Twenty seven people shot and killed, one hundred and sixty four wounded, more than one hundred and ninety people shot, twenty nine total homicides. Those are the crime statistics for the month of August two date it's the twenty five, So I guess we'll get a couple more homicides and a couple more murders before the month is said and done, and we're led to believe that that is something that is sustainable. We're led to believe that that is something that is good for a city to have in terms of its crime statistics. Apparently so, because Chicago Mayor in Brandon Jones told the Associated Press over the weekend then called that Trump's approach quote uncalled for and unsound, arguing that it quote has the potential to flame tensions between residents and law enforcement. And so if I was talking to the Chicago mayor, I'd say, Okay, well, then how many murders need to take place within your city for it to justify the National Guard potentially stepping in and trying to clean up the streets? Because as it stands right now, we're at two hundred and seventy eight for the year. Does it need to be three hundred and seventy eight, four hundred and seventy eight, seven hundred, I mean, what point is enough enough? And this goes back to something interesting. If you followed Rudy Giuliani's rise to power in New York State back in the nineties, he was unsuccessful in multiple elections beforehand. And while crime was, yes, very bad in New York City throughout the seventies and eighties, one of the things he talks about in a book he wrote, I think it came out in the early two thousands, was that while New York City and the streets of the city were bad and unsafe, they weren't bad enough yet. And he talked about this concert Yes, things are bad in the case of New York City crime at the time, but they had yet to hit a tipping point, and until they hit that tipping point, he couldn't win. Now they eventually did. Voters in New York City realized that the lawlessness, the crime, the out of control violence that was taking place in the Big Apple was not sustainable, and they decided to elect Rudy Giuliani. And you know how, the rest of the story unfaults. He brings back prosperity to New York City, which of course is on the brink of collapse again with Zoorn Mamdani and his great ideas for that for that city moving forward. And I think that's an important concept to understand when you look at in this case, Chicago's crime statistics and some of these other major cities, Saint Louis has been discussed, Baltimore, Philadelphia, some of these other major unfortunately Democrat runs cities where the police chief, the mayor, the city council, the prosecutors, the ada's. I mean, everybody involved is week on crime. And it's no surprise that when you are, in fact, week on crime, you embolden criminals. You embolden individuals to commit heinous acts. And Donald Trump was talking about this today. This is from the White House about an hour and a half or so ago, talking about cashless bail, which is one of these major policies that those on the left think is sustainable. This is what the President had to say in the Oval Office a little while ago. So I'll start signing the executive voters. To me, there's a very, very big idea. One of the executive voters has to do with cash list mail. That was when the big crime in this country started. And I can tell you who did it when, but I don't want to do that because others followed pretty quickly. But that was when it happened. Somebody kills somebody that go in don't worry about it. No cash come back in a couple of months, we'll give you a trial. You never see the person again. I mean, they kill people and they get out cashless bail. They thought it was discriminatory to make people put up money because they just killed three people lying on a street, any street all over the country. Cashless mail. We're ending it, but we're starting by ending it in DC, and that we have the right to do through federalization. Okay, let's go. Could I just keep this saying exactly what this is. Of course, so as you've consistently identified sort of cashless bail policies are a key driver of the disorder we see on city streets all over America. Catch and release system allows criminals to keep going back out onto the street and reoffending. What this executive order does It charges your Attorney General with identifying jurisdictions all over the country that have cashless bail policies, and then it withholds or revokes federal funds and grants that are flowing those jurisdictions to ensure that we're only supporting the people who have reasonable, common sense policies around crime. So what area does it cover? Potential anywhere that has a cashless bail policy. So some of the largest cities, some of the most left wing states. And are launch Donald and them right. Illinois would be a great example. Of the answer, Almost all of them, says the president behind the resolute desk talking about cashless bail, talking about these ridiculous policies out of some of these major Democrat cities. Folks, it just doesn't work. How many crime statistics do you need to look at? How many reports from cities do you need to look at before you snap into some semblance of reality and wrap your head around this concept. It's a disaster and it's not overly complicated to figure out when violent offenders, When criminals don't feel like there's going to be any repercussions for the things that they do, they do them. And that's exactly what these cashless bail policies have allowed. It's the exact same suit situation with shoplifting out in California. They've risen the level. Now I think it's like eleven hundred bucks or something that you can legally steal from a store before the police can be called. So what has happened? People are walking into stores and stealing under eleven hundred dollars worth of goods and nothing could be done. The police aren't going to respond to the store clerks obviously aren't going to stop these individuals. So what have the stores done. They put everything behind lock and key, or in many cases, they've just gone out of business. That's the result when you can't prosecute somebody for theft, when you can't prosecute somebody for stealing. These are the policies that are rolling out in these major blue Democrat strongholds all across the United States. And so you have President Trump in the Oval Office this afternoon signing an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to begin the process of cleaning this up, figure out where these cities are, figure out where these policies are, and start holding these cities accountable. Accountabilities pretty much been the keyword of the day. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.