NY madness: Penny's trial & a CEO's murder (12-05-2024--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content, like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.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.

[00:00:28] If I sound a little weird, it's because I'm really tired. We had our WBT holiday gathering last night with all of our sister stations here at Radio 1. And I stayed a little too late. I know I didn't have anything to drink. I wasn't drinking. I just stayed up too late. So that's totally on me. That's my fault. I guess I could have slept later, but I don't know. Like I can't sleep. I can't sleep later. I just I don't.

[00:00:57] I always wake up then feeling like I'm, you know, behind on everything. It's like you ever have you ever been in a school play? And like the play is at seven o'clock at night and you're the whole day. You're just thinking about the play. You're thinking about am I going to remember my lines? Am I going to be prepared? I hope I do well. A little bit of stage fright going on all of that stuff. That's me every day.

[00:01:23] So when I wake up, I just I kind of get out of bed. It's like got to do the show prep, make sure I'm prepared.

[00:01:32] So I am today because I got up early, but I stayed up late. Hence my my mood right now. So I might be a little punchy today.

[00:01:40] OK, so. Jurors up in New York City in Manhattan, they broke without reaching a verdict in the Daniel Penny manslaughter trial.

[00:01:52] So they broke yesterday. I believe they're back today. Now, yesterday, they broke after asking to revisit key testimony from the city doctor who performed the autopsy on the man that Daniel Penny is accused of manslaughtering.

[00:02:13] Jordan Neely, who, as I understand it now, his parents have emerged, not pennies, but Neely's.

[00:02:20] The dead man's parents have come forward demanding money. They want to pay out for their.

[00:02:28] Drug addicted. You know, malignancy on a society of a son that was terrorizing people on the subway.

[00:02:38] Anyway. Anyway, the video. Went viral because Penny put Neely in some sort of a restraint.

[00:02:49] And any time I say what kind of a restraint it is, is it a headlock or, you know, is it something else?

[00:02:56] I get people calling in that are experts and all sorts of holds.

[00:03:00] And they say, that's not a chokehold. It's not a headlock. It's a this. It's a that or whatever.

[00:03:05] And it's sort of also like we're going to get into a little bit here in a minute on the the murder of the United Health CEO.

[00:03:15] What kind of gun was it? And is this kind of gun? No, it's that kind of gun.

[00:03:18] It's a suppressor. No, it's a silencer. Don't call it a magazine. Don't call it a clip or whatever.

[00:03:23] It's like all of like the the the speech policing over the technical terms and stuff.

[00:03:30] I understand, you know, there are people who have expertise in the kind of holds that are available in.

[00:03:41] In, you know, fighting.

[00:03:44] I'm not going to get hung up on that.

[00:03:47] I'm just I'm not because it's a distraction from the larger point that Daniel Penny, whilst riding a subway car in New York,

[00:03:59] while the subway system has been experiencing an increase in the antisocial behavior of citizens inside the subways,

[00:04:12] you know, people getting shoved in front of in front of subway cars,

[00:04:18] homeless people, drug addicts shooting up in the subways, just violence and robberies and such.

[00:04:28] And Jordan Neely reminds me of Bernie Getz.

[00:04:34] People may not remember Bernie Getz.

[00:04:36] Maybe you've heard the song by Billy Joel.

[00:04:39] We didn't start the fire.

[00:04:43] There's a reference to this guy who was a who went on to the subway.

[00:04:49] Back in the 80s, I want to say.

[00:04:52] And the the subways were overrun by criminals.

[00:04:56] It was not a safe place to be.

[00:04:59] And this was when I grew up in New York.

[00:05:02] I grew up on Long Island and people would take the subway in.

[00:05:06] And I remember this was the prevailing sentiment about not just the subways, but New York Times Square.

[00:05:15] I should say New York City in general.

[00:05:17] And this had been happening over the course of a couple of decades from the 60s into the 70s.

[00:05:25] You will go back and watch the movies and TV shows.

[00:05:29] And it looks like, you know, bombed out Baghdad in some of these areas of New York City.

[00:05:36] And then Rudy Giuliani gets in broken window policing policies and stuff saying no more.

[00:05:42] We're not going to put up with any of this stuff.

[00:05:44] Crack down on it.

[00:05:45] And then, oh, look at that.

[00:05:46] Investment returns.

[00:05:48] Visitors return.

[00:05:49] Tourists.

[00:05:50] People want to live there again.

[00:05:51] They want to work there.

[00:05:52] You get more development, more growth.

[00:05:54] And then, of course, all of that leads to this sort of this luxury belief, these privileged, pampered kind of attitude that, oh, well, you know, we should be kind to the mentally disturbed.

[00:06:08] And we should not, you know, enforce any laws against them and defund the police because they're all racist, systemically racist and all of this.

[00:06:16] And now you're seeing the fruits of this neo-Marxist labor.

[00:06:21] Which is interesting because the neo-Marxists, they're all about not laboring.

[00:06:28] It's a religion and a philosophy of envy.

[00:06:32] They want other people to do work for them.

[00:06:35] Anyway, I mean, that's what Marx was all about.

[00:06:38] Guy was a freeloader.

[00:06:39] Anyway, as deliberations enter a second day, the Manhattan jury asked to rewatch a six-minute clip shot by a Mexican journalist that showed the 26-year-old Marine veteran, Daniel Penny, restraining Jordan Neely, a troubled homeless man, on the crowded F-train subway.

[00:07:03] Jurors also sought a second look at the body cam footage of NYPD officers who arrived at the scene as EMS tried to revive the 30-year-old Jordan Neely, as well as video of Penny's precinct interrogation interview with detectives in the wake of the fatal May 2023 encounter.

[00:07:21] Where Penny said, quote,

[00:07:22] I wasn't trying to injure him.

[00:07:25] I wasn't trying to injure him.

[00:07:25] I'm trying to keep him from hurting anybody else.

[00:07:28] That's what we were taught in the Marine Corps.

[00:07:32] He said he knew about applying pressure.

[00:07:36] And if you put somebody into this sleeper hold, choke hold, headlock, whatever you want to call it, if he had applied pressure, he would have knocked out Neely within seconds.

[00:07:50] And he did not.

[00:07:52] But Neely did die.

[00:07:55] And according to Dr. Cynthia Harris, the medical examiner who testified, she said no toxicology result could have changed my opinion that he died likely due to the choke hold.

[00:08:11] That's what she testified to.

[00:08:13] That's what she wrote up in her report.

[00:08:15] That's her belief.

[00:08:16] And she said that was that would still be her belief, even if Neely had enough fentanyl in his system to put down an elephant.

[00:08:24] And that's just stupid.

[00:08:26] That's just stupid.

[00:08:29] You're telling me.

[00:08:31] That you would still say the cause of death.

[00:08:34] Would be a choke hold.

[00:08:37] Even if he had enough fentanyl in his system to kill an elephant, he'd be dead from it.

[00:08:41] What?

[00:08:42] That doesn't make any sense.

[00:08:43] You're a medical examiner.

[00:08:46] Don't they?

[00:08:46] Like, isn't science reliant on some level of logic and rationality here?

[00:08:51] This is just a ridiculous thing to say.

[00:08:54] Defense attorneys say that Neely died from a mix of schizophrenia, which I'm not sure that's how you can that kill you.

[00:09:01] But it was obvious that he was mentally disturbed.

[00:09:04] When you see the video of the way he was behaving and what he was screaming, saying, you know, I don't care if I'm going back to jail.

[00:09:11] I don't care if I die.

[00:09:12] He's looking to he's looking to kill somebody, looking to hurt people on the train.

[00:09:17] And Penny gets up, comes up behind him and takes him to the ground in a hold.

[00:09:24] And holds him there until the next stop.

[00:09:27] And Penny describes all of this to the detectives.

[00:09:33] And in that interview, and I watched it a couple of weeks ago.

[00:09:36] In that interview, you can tell about three quarters of the way through, I want to say, maybe halfway.

[00:09:43] Penny starts to realize that these guys aren't trying to find out what happened.

[00:09:47] These guys are trying to charge him.

[00:09:52] And, you know, at first, one of the detectives is like, oh, I was a Marine, too.

[00:09:56] And they start, you know, bonding over this.

[00:09:58] Good cop, bad cop.

[00:10:01] So that that detective should have known.

[00:10:04] And Penny knew he said because he said, like, no, you don't apply this kind of this kind of pressure because, you know, that'll you know, that that that could hurt him.

[00:10:12] And so I wasn't trying to hurt him.

[00:10:13] I wasn't trying to kill him.

[00:10:14] I was just trying to take him down.

[00:10:15] And then he died.

[00:10:17] He has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and not guilty to criminally negligent homicide.

[00:10:25] He died from a mix of, according to the defense attorney, schizophrenia, drug use and a genetic condition.

[00:10:33] Along with the struggle with Penny.

[00:10:37] Oh, also, Penny is white and Neely was black.

[00:10:41] And so check the boxes.

[00:10:45] Right.

[00:10:46] We are now going to have this racial reckoning because a white guy subdued a mentally deranged and threatening black man.

[00:10:56] And so, therefore, racism.

[00:11:00] Penny is facing up to 15 years behind bars if convicted of the top count.

[00:11:05] And the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has not said whether his office would seek jail time if he is found guilty.

[00:11:15] Which is odd to me.

[00:11:16] Why wouldn't you say that, like, we are going to seek jail time or not?

[00:11:21] Like, that seems bizarre.

[00:11:22] So what?

[00:11:23] We're going to go through this trial.

[00:11:24] He's going to get convicted.

[00:11:24] And then you're going to be like, no, you know what?

[00:11:26] No jail time.

[00:11:29] Because if there's no jail time on the line, then wouldn't there be, like, an opportunity here to do a plea agreement of some kind?

[00:11:39] But what this has also done is this is sort of the Ferguson effect where now people are not interested in stepping forward to intervene to help protect innocent people from mentally deranged people on the subways.

[00:11:52] Oh, my gosh.

[00:11:54] I can't believe nobody stepped forward to save that woman from being assaulted right on the subway platform.

[00:12:00] I can.

[00:12:01] Right?

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[00:13:10] All right, so more madness up in New York City where you've got a good Samaritan charged with manslaughter and a CEO of the nation's biggest health insurance company, UnitedHealthcare,

[00:13:28] gunned down in what appears to be a targeted assassination right there on the street.

[00:13:35] And if you don't know where this occurred, it's a pretty popular area.

[00:13:42] All right.

[00:13:43] Hey, real quick.

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[00:14:09] Again, that's peteatthepetecalendarshow.com.

[00:14:13] Up in New York City, shell casings have been recovered at the scene where the UnitedHealthcare CEO was shot and killed by a masked gunman in front of a busy New York hotel.

[00:14:27] And the casings reportedly had the words deny, defend, and depose written on them.

[00:14:37] This is according to a senior New York City law enforcement official briefed on the investigation who confirmed it to NBC News on Thursday.

[00:14:46] It was originally reported by ABC News.

[00:14:50] Brian Thompson, 50 years old, was killed in a, quote, premeditated, preplanned, targeted attack outside the New York Hilton Midtown on 6th Avenue in the heart of Manhattan.

[00:15:05] Let me jump over.

[00:15:06] That was, by the way, NBC News.

[00:15:09] Over at National Review, Jim Garrity gives a good description of where this Hilton Hotel is located.

[00:15:17] It's on, it's at 1335 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan.

[00:15:22] That's where UnitedHealth was having its shareholders annual conference.

[00:15:30] And so while the CEO was walking to the hotel, he had walked from his hotel to this hotel where the conference was going to be held.

[00:15:37] And right outside the door, he was murdered.

[00:15:40] Shot in the back.

[00:15:43] And that location is about one block from the Museum of Modern Art.

[00:15:49] So if you have ever been to New York City and you have done the tourist thing and you went to the MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art,

[00:15:56] or maybe you went to Radio City Music Hall, three blocks away, two blocks around the corner from Carnegie Hall,

[00:16:03] and just down the street from Rockefeller Center.

[00:16:06] You've been to any of those places.

[00:16:08] You've been to the area where this man was murdered.

[00:16:12] Back to NBC.

[00:16:16] Brian Thompson, the victim, was on his way to speak at UnitedHealth Group's investor conference when the gunman,

[00:16:24] who had been lying in wait for several minutes, approached from behind and fired at least once into Thompson's back

[00:16:32] and at least once into the right calf.

[00:16:36] What it appears to me is that Thompson was hit in the leg first.

[00:16:42] The gun jams.

[00:16:44] The shooter then clears the jam and shoots Thompson again.

[00:16:50] There is a woman right next to the shooter who was just walking down the street.

[00:16:58] And she turns and looks and then she scurries away.

[00:17:03] So the assassin did not care about being identified.

[00:17:08] He was, I mean, he had a mask and a hoodie up and he had a backpack on.

[00:17:12] But didn't, didn't make any effort to shoot anybody else.

[00:17:16] Right.

[00:17:18] Waited for this one guy.

[00:17:20] Shot him in the back.

[00:17:21] Didn't take anything.

[00:17:22] Didn't try to rob him.

[00:17:23] Just shot him.

[00:17:24] And then crossed the street.

[00:17:27] He apparently got onto one of those rental bikes.

[00:17:31] Rode the bike.

[00:17:33] And I don't know.

[00:17:35] I mean, I'm sure they're tracking down whatever payments.

[00:17:38] I've seen some people speculating that, you know, you find somebody who is, if you're trying to do an assassination,

[00:17:46] you can run an op, you know, get some drug addict to murder the guy.

[00:17:51] And then you give them drugs in payment.

[00:17:53] And then you spike the drugs and he ODs.

[00:17:57] And then you never connect the two crimes.

[00:18:01] Right.

[00:18:01] You never connect the assassin with the murder because it's just an OD.

[00:18:06] That's one way.

[00:18:07] Although I saw another report that he had apparently stopped at a Starbucks afterwards.

[00:18:12] I don't know if what he was doing there or what.

[00:18:15] They're obviously still investigating.

[00:18:17] They're still looking for for this murderer.

[00:18:23] Police say they do not know the motive of the gunman.

[00:18:26] He is still at large.

[00:18:29] Brian Thompson did not travel with any personal security detail despite known threats against him.

[00:18:37] Thompson's wife, Paulette, told NBC News that there had been some threats.

[00:18:41] She said, quote, basically, I don't know a lack of coverage, insurance coverage.

[00:18:46] I don't know the details.

[00:18:48] I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.

[00:18:54] Chief of detectives Joseph Kenny said, quote, the motive for the murder is currently unknown.

[00:19:00] But based on the evidence we have so far, it does appear the victim was specifically targeted.

[00:19:04] But at this point, we do not know why.

[00:19:08] Former FBI supervisor Rob DiAmico said Thompson's slaying has all the makings of a personal vendetta tied to the victim's company.

[00:19:20] There is a theory.

[00:19:24] That Kat Rosenfield calls the John Wick meets Aaron Brockovich theory that somebody who was denied coverage or maybe had a loved one who had denied coverage sought revenge against the CEO.

[00:19:41] Right.

[00:19:42] That's one theory.

[00:19:44] There is something else Jim Garrity mentioned.

[00:19:47] He pulled this from the Minnesota Star Tribune that had reviewed police records for the headquarters of the United Health Care headquarters up in Minnesota in Minnetonka.

[00:20:02] Police records show there have been many calls from company headquarters going back three years or so.

[00:20:09] A substantial number of those were 911 hangups, though.

[00:20:13] On July 15th this year, 11 people were arrested when the People's Action Institute staged a protest over the company's allegedly improper refusals to authorize or pay for care.

[00:20:30] The People's Action Institute specifically denounced UnitedHealthcare for dominating the privatized Medicare market, making most of its profits off of public dollars and yet engaging in systemic delays and denials of care.

[00:20:48] And then they called out UnitedHealth CEO Sir Andrew Witte, who is the CEO of UnitedHealth Group.

[00:20:55] Brian Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealth Care.

[00:21:03] By the way, People's Action Institute.

[00:21:06] Care to guess what their politics are?

[00:21:10] They're not conservatives.

[00:21:12] They're not MAGA.

[00:21:15] And in case this needs to be said for anybody, in case you were unclear, yeah, murdering CEOs is evil.

[00:21:23] That's Dominic Pino.

[00:21:24] He says there appears to be some confusion about this online.

[00:21:26] So here it is, plain and simple.

[00:21:29] It's evil.

[00:21:30] OK, it's evil.

[00:21:31] You would not know that, though, if you spent some time over at the Twitter competitor Blue Sky, where all of the lefties and media, but I repeat myself, have fled from Twitter.

[00:21:42] Like, I need to go someplace where I don't have to be challenged on any of my opinions and thoughts.

[00:21:47] And so they're all over on Blue Sky now.

[00:21:49] And over there, they are celebrating the assassination of this man.

[00:21:54] There is a fellow by the name of T. Beckett Adams.

[00:21:58] He's a columnist for The Hill, National Review, Washington Examiner.

[00:22:05] And he posted up on Twitter about 20 minutes ago.

[00:22:10] He says it's confusing, I must confess, to understand that a great number of social media posts basking in the assassination of a CEO originate from the same corner of the Internet where it's a tragedy that the state executed a man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered a nine-year-old girl.

[00:22:32] Now, rape and murder are not great, sure.

[00:22:34] But have you considered what it's like to get health insurance in the United States of America?

[00:22:42] This is what the Kamala canvasser must have meant when she said voters were not operating on a plane of shared facts.

[00:22:50] See, one side believes child murder should merit the death penalty.

[00:22:56] And the side that disagrees includes people who support extrajudicial assassinations.

[00:23:07] There is a professor at Columbia, because, of course, Columbia, Professor Anthony Zinkas.

[00:23:15] He is a trauma expert, self-described trauma expert professor.

[00:23:23] He is anti-violence.

[00:23:25] This is his own bio.

[00:23:28] He wrote this.

[00:23:29] He then says,

[00:23:32] Commie, I voted against genocide.

[00:23:35] And then he's got, of course, a watermelon emoji.

[00:23:40] Well, what does the watermelon emoji mean, Pete?

[00:23:43] Ah, glad you asked.

[00:23:46] It's pro-Palestine.

[00:23:48] They're using that emoji because they think that they're getting throttled on social media if they put the Palestinian flag in their bios.

[00:23:59] So now they're putting the watermelon in there because the watermelon has the same three colors, red, black and green, as the Palestine flag.

[00:24:09] Which isn't the place.

[00:24:10] But anyway, today, he said on Twitter,

[00:24:15] Today, we mourn the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

[00:24:19] Gunned down.

[00:24:20] Wait, I'm sorry.

[00:24:22] Today, we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company executives like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.

[00:24:33] Over on the blue sky, you got, if you want to understand the difference between liberals and the left, today is a great example.

[00:24:39] Liberals are very upset because one of their biggest donors, the CEO of a health insurance company, was murdered.

[00:24:45] And the left is ecstatic that karma was visited upon the devil.

[00:24:50] Another guy named Cretan Hopps, self-described leftist, and has the ACAB in his profile.

[00:24:59] All cops are bastards.

[00:25:02] That's ACAB.

[00:25:03] It's Antifa.

[00:25:05] Said, imagine unironically thinking that the murder of a health care CEO is bad.

[00:25:12] And then Mike Figueroa, who is the host of the Humanist Report.

[00:25:19] Humanists are the worst.

[00:25:21] Co-host of the Leftist Mafia.

[00:25:24] Author of Catalyze.

[00:25:27] Dogfather and he him.

[00:25:32] Quote, bleep his family too.

[00:25:35] Screw his family too.

[00:25:36] Because somebody had posted just a reminder that this guy was a human being with a family.

[00:25:42] And his response is, yeah, screw his family too.

[00:25:46] And so I pointed out that Marxists want you dead.

[00:25:50] Because it's kind of their jam.

[00:25:52] In case you're not aware of the history of Marxism, it's been going on about 100 years now.

[00:25:58] There is a through line.

[00:26:01] There's a theme, if you will.

[00:26:03] Lots and lots of death.

[00:26:05] People who don't agree with Marxists when Marxists get power tend to end up dead.

[00:26:12] Okay?

[00:26:12] And so I pointed this out just in case people weren't aware that Marxists want you dead.

[00:26:18] And I just got a response from a Marxist who said, oh, are we all insurance CEOs?

[00:26:25] We don't want anyone dead.

[00:26:27] Let's not pretend though that this guy wasn't getting rich by denying people care and sentencing them to death.

[00:26:34] Right?

[00:26:35] So all of this excuse making from the people who are, quote, anti-violence, the people who say speech is violence, seem to have no problem with violence against their political opponents.

[00:26:48] All right.

[00:26:48] That'll do it for this episode.

[00:26:50] Thank you so much for listening.

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[00:27:05] Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.