The company we keep... (11-07-2025--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, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpetecleanershow 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. Mecklinburg County Sheriff Gary not my fault. McFadden says he is going to run for a third term next year. He had to make that decision, by the way, before December nineteenth, I believe was the cutoff. So we will now have the opportunity to oust him in a Democrat primary. I will once again probably try to vote in that Democrat. Well, let's see twenty six. I don't know. I've got to see who's running. Because I'm unaffiliated, I can go between either Democrat or Republican primaries. And if you're unaffiliated, you might consider doing the same to vote against McFadden to get him out of there. Or we can go through another four years much like the last eight with all of the controversies that just seem to follow Gary McFadden around. None of it's his fault. That's why I call him not my fault McFadden. Nothing is ever his fault. It's always other people, disloyal staffers betraying him left and right. Charlotte Observers story by Ryan Orley documents some of the controversies. He has decried jail inspectors who found that's the state jail inspectors who found supervision failures at his facility, criticized the news media, and gotten to public arguments with ICE. Just recently, the sheriff said his relationship with ICE thawed. I said, okay, that's me. Ryan Orley did not write that, but this has become more productive after he met with local supervisors of ICE. But attention from within the Sheriff's office boiled over and reached the public in November twenty twenty four, when then Chief Deputy Kevin Canty resigned, sent McFadden a harsh resignation letter and copied the entire Sheriff's office to the email. Also, you may recall there was an audio recording that the Charlotte Observer and other news outlets published soon afterwards, with McFadden berating his staff and calling them untrustworthy. He also called a White captain a cracker. His former business director alleged the sheriff fired her as retaliation after she refused to alter records detailing his travel expenses. She had gotten a Freedom of Information Act request from the Charlotte Observer, and I think it was the Observer, may have been WBTV, I forget, but local media said we want to see the travel expenses, and he asked her to doctor the reports. She said she wouldn't do it, and so she got fired. In January, the Observer detailed in a special report how seven former employees accused the sheriff of abusing his power. In another audio recording obtained by the Observer, McFadden lamented that his staff did not inform him about problems inside the county jail. His former chief of detention to Lisa White, seconded that he was not a good leader in an interview with the Observer last month. So this is not Gary McFadden's fault. None of these things are his fault. It's everybody else, and it's the media. Uh, it's the media, and it's his critics, to which I put myself in that camp. Well, media and critic. I'm in both. Uh. It's like a It's like a Kamala Harris esque ven diagram, you know. I mean, I'm both media and and critic. Yes, and so let's talk about the uh, the Ice cooperation? Do here? It is? Uh cut seven. I'm trying to find it. Here, there's eight, here's seven. He appeared on Just a Reset. He appeared for in studio. He was right here in this very room two days ago, appearing on Brett Jensen's show from six to seven Weekdays, Breaking with Brett Jensen. You can go back and listen to the entire conversation on WBT dot com. On the podcast, he gave a a meandering explanation of his new ICE cooperation and how he doesn't listen to his critics, which might actually be why it took two terms and multiple pieces of legislation to make him cooperate with ICE in the first place. When I got tired of everybody talking about ice and here in art of the red drink, and I heard my fellow sheriff in Texas, Florida, California, Nebraska, everybody sitting at a convention. I mean sitting at a convention and they were complaining about what they were not doing. I decided to come back and have a conversation with ICE. That conversation now is the best conversation I've had and continuously to have with ICE. So then when you put everything to a side and just do what you need to do, stay focused on what you're doing, you're successful. Yeah, we told you that. We have told you that from the beginning. But you ran on a campaign promise to stop cooperating with ICE that then prompted multiple pieces of legislation to force you to cooperate with ICE. It took him eight years, seven years, i should say, and multiple pieces of legislation to get him to now allow ICE to take custody of offenders that are in the jail and to do it in a controlled environment and to let ICE know that these people who are in the jail, that are in the country illegally are about to be released seven years because he scrapped the two eighty seven g program and refused to cooperate. Now he wants all of the kudos for cooperating with ICE. And it's amazing what you can do when you sit down and have a conversation with them. Uh huh, Yeah, maybe you should listen to your critics every now and again instead of just discounting everybody as just a critic and that they don't like me, and there's some reason why they don't like me, the first black sheriff. No, it's got to do with the way you are performing. So people can't say, well, he didn't do anything. You're just listening to what people tell you. And here's what I asked, is that your experience with me, you just reading me, you just looking at it on the media, or you know, as we call the word salad, But what. Do you that you speaking word salad? What are you talking about? Don't gaslight us like we go through. I've spent years going through the ICE rules on detainers and custody transfers. I've taken your policies and your statement and i have examined them. I've taken this stuff from ICE and compared and contrasted. This isn't word salad over here. I don't know what he's talking about. I don't even know if he knows what the term means. Word salad is what he speaks in this constant bouncing around of you know, from one topic to the next and incomplete thought, thoughts and sentences. Oh my gosh, gaslighting. But have you personally come and talk to me and had a conversation. That conversation with Ice at that time made me understand that we cannot just listen to the Rederick. We cannot listen to the gossip gossip. We just have to listen to each other, have a conversation, put everything to a side, and let's go forward. When we did that with Ice, it was successful. To the day it is successful. We got a call. I have heard from Ice probably five times since that conversation. So that made me understand critics going to be critics. Yes, critics and crickets about the same thing. Both used for bait, both for fishing, and critics are used as bait and critics are used for fishing. I don't I don't know if I even understand that critics are you do you mean criticism is used as bait. See here's the thing. I actually when people criticize me, and this may come as a surprise, but people feel very comfortable criticizing me. There are all sorts of ways that people can criticize me. I get all sorts of criticisms non stop, pretty much on all different platforms, emails, phone calls. All that stuff. But sometimes critics actually help you improve. And I would submit that. If I had a leadership team that kept quitting and telling me that I was a terrible leader, I think at some point I would have to do some self examination on that. You know, when all these different people are saying the same thing about me. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experience van stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. 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Now he heard the dog whistle from the election results. That's a good theory, sure that, Yeah, Because he said he was going to wait till some time in the autumn, which I guess, yes, this is autumn, although it still feels like summer, well spring maybe, but we're in the fall. So but he said he was going to go back to his childhood home. I think it's fro It was in mac b South Carolina, I want to say, but I don't know if he went back to his childhood home and reflected and prayed and then came to the decision before he showed up on Wednesday to tell Brett that he was running for reelection. I know he did have time to make a coffee mug and print up some cards. So maybe there's a like a mug shop or printing Companie and macbe that he visited. I don't know. Then there's this clip number eight. Here we go, yeah, and listen to him. Here he gets so close to recognizing that he is the problem. He gets so close. Listen to this. People don't understand what it is to involve your family, what it is involve your friends. What does it involve your coworkers. When you talk against the detention center, you're not only talking against Sheriff macfadden. You're talking against my staff who work Dylan Jilly every day. And so they get tired of going to the grocery store and hearing, well, how'd your sheriff? How do you like working for him? They don't want to hear that. I know. Yeah, imagine if they had a sheriff that wasn't like this swirl of controversy all the time and who treated his staff like crap. Maybe that would, I don't know, alleviate some of these concerns that your staff has when they go to the grocery store. You know, they don't want to wear their uniform home. They won't work. I have an amazing staff, We have a world class staff. Yeah, they don't want to wear their uniform home. They're embarrassed by you. That's the problem. You're the problem. He's so close. He's so close. But notice what he says. If you criticize the detention center, then you're not just criticizing the sheriff, you're criticizing all the staff. Yet. No, Actually, I think people are tracing the responsibility for managing the entire office, including the detention center. That traces back to you because you set the tone, you're developing the culture. You have been in charge now for two terms. This is all on you, now. Man. At the beginning, at the very beginning, when he first won, he made all of these accusations that there was a good old boy system and there were all these betrayers around him because they were from the old the good old boy club and all of this right, all the previous sheriffs and all the previous personnel like that's those weren't his hires. They were all out to get him, and all of this. It's been seven years Okay, this is all you now. You fired a bunch of those people from the old system, A bunch of the others have quit. Your hires have quit you like you hired them on. And they were like, hmm, yeah, I know. This guy's are raging. Narcissists were out. Then there was an interesting part of this discussion where Brett Jensen started asking him why he thought because McFadden is the first black sheriff elected to Mecklamur County that was back, you know, seven years ago. And Brett pointed out that, you know, thirty percent of the local population is black, but the mayor, the city manager, the city attorney, the city council, county commission, chair of the county commission, county manager, county attorney, like all of these positions of the school board chair, like a superintendent, like all black. And there are no white males left in any of the Charlotte Mecklenberg leadership. And he was asking him, like, why do you think that is? Because McFadden talks a lot about race. And here is what let me say here, here is what McFadden said about every position of leadership being occupied by African Americans in Charlotte Mecklenberg. Why are we still talking about the first black Why are we talking about the first black female chief of police? Why are we still talking about the first black sheriff? By the way, this is one of his rhetorical crutches. He just rows out question after question after question after question after question after question after question, and he never answers them. It's this this argument style of sort of accusation by juxtaposition, where you just lay out a bunch of questions and what do you think it means? Kind of an approach and it doesn't actually make any assertions. But then there's this. That's difficult because that burden is on us as black leaders to produce and produce and produce. And then we are human. And that's what I think we don't really realize we are human. We have problems to be in our family, We have sickness in our family, we have issues in our family. But then what happens is and me and my good friend Christy Puckett was talking. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa You and your good friend Christy, we're talking. Your good friend Christy Puckett. Do y'all remember about two years ago, Christy Puckett Williams, the former lobbyist for the North Carolina ACLU. Yeah, I had a bit of the run in with his good friend, Christy Puckett, who whipped up a mob to threaten violence against me. That's his good friend. I did not realize that until this interview. I have even more questions now about who you are associating with your good friend, Christy Puckett. Let me finish out this clip. Here because she had me to talk about community in this community conversation. You hold us to a higher expectation, but you do nothing to support that expectation or make sure that we are what you believe that we should be. See. So it's our fault. Hell, once again, not his fault. It's our fault because he said he could do the job, he's the most qualified to do the job, and then when it turns out he's not actually doing the job, it's our fault for not giving him. What he needs. 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. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi, grills, outdoor tables and your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabinsofashville. Dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. So almost three years ago. It doesn't feel like it's been almost three years, but it was February of twenty twenty three. The North Carolina Legislature was working on the Parents' Bill of Rights and they scheduled a public hearing take public comment at seven o'clock at night. I think it was around seven o'clock at night, and so I'm monitoring it on Twitter, you know, watching the debate between the various you know, political activists and partisans on Twitter, and the ACLU of North Carolina's lobbyist at the time, Christy Puckett Williams, said that she was bemoaning. This is according to The Carolina Journal, she bemoaned the fact that the Parents' Bill of Rights was being voted on at seven pm because it was quote, the cloak of night, the cloak of night, and so I pointed out I thought helpfully that it's actually pretty common that all sorts of legislative business, from city council meetings, town councils, state law, state legislatures, the federal government, like lots of bodies, hold meetings in the evening five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock. That's not the cloak of night. Seven o'clock is not the cloak of night. Okay, this isn't some shady effort to ram this thing through in the dead of night, which is the actual phrase. But in the dead of night, like when no one's paying attention because it's two in the morning or something. It's not like we're trying to ram through the state lottery like Jim Black did when Democrats ran the show, right, not like that. This was seven o'clock in the evening. Is dinner time, Okay, that's not the cloak of night. Nobody eats dinner in the cloak of night or wearing a cloak of night or whatever. And so I then also suggested that she just, you know, stop being stupid about this, like this is you're trying, like you're making this this is a stupid point. You shouldn't be saying this thing because it's not the cloak of night. You just it's stupid. She then snapped, she called me all sorts of things everything that ended with an ist that she could think of, very like unhinged of a reaction, and then she began to go into graphic detail about all of the different sexual things that that I could perform on body parts of hers that she doesn't have because she's a woman. Which was a very weird thing that she had said. Anyway, one of her supporters then started threatening me. Yes, they doxed me. They published my home address with a photo of my house, and they said it's on site, nothing more to be said. That's what one of her followers said. And that slang for if I see you, I'm attacking you. That's what that means. It's on site and not on site site, because that would be like then you're on the premises, you know, like you're on the work site or something. No, No, this is on site as in vision. As soon as I see you, I'm going to attack you. She responds, Oh my damn. I'm sure he don't know what that mean, but I'm sure he done bleeped around and will most likely find out. Lol. And then they respond, he will for sure find out. So this was an example, but one example of the kind of violent threats that she whipped up against me at the time. And this is apparently a good friend of our sheriff. I had no idea. Now I did know she appeared in some photos with one of the judges running for election standing for election, Elizabeth Trosh, I believe, and I think she had to take those down because it showed her with Christy Puckett Williams, and so in making her announcement the other day, somebody brought out those photos of her off of her Facebook page and then she scrubbed that. By the way, Williams is part of an organization called Emancipate NC, which supports dismantling structural racism and mass incarceration, and they count organizations like the z Smith Reynolds Foundation, the Tides Foundation, Duke Energy Foundation, the National Bail Fund Foundation as their primary funders. You may remember the National Bail Fund Foundation. That was the one that I think it was Kamala Harris told everybody to donate money to to bail out the mostly peaceful but sometimes fiery rioters up in Minneapolis, right the Bail Fund up there. David Larson at The Carolina Journal pointed out that this is like the things that she is describing with the sex acts like it's impossible because of like you know, biology and anatomy and that sort of thing. And she said a said it doesn't matter if she has that equipment or not the hypothetical male lobbyist. So because I at one point said, like, imagine if this was a guy saying this stuff in public tweets, a male lobbyist saying this to a female, right, and the hypothetical male lobbyist could make creepy sexual comments and it would still be sexual harassment whether he has the equipment or not. It has nothing to do with her race. He says, it's just unprofessional in general, and she responds, professional is a dog whistle for white supremacy culture. Your anti blackness is showing. So being a professional acting professional is a dog whistle for white supremacy culture. When another one of her followers said that I was going to have to step outside at some point, and so in doing so, that's when the on site would you know, take place. As soon as I leave my house, somebody will attack me somehow, Larson points out, this seems like a decent window into what life would be like if all of their lobbying to abolish police and prisons is successful. Correct. Now, Look, I understand that somebody running for office is going to meet with a lot of people. It doesn't necessarily mean that they agree with them on all things, although it does seem like the guy running the jail working with and being good friends quote unquote with the emancipated NC woman here former because the ACLU did fire her as their lobbyist, which is smart because you're not going to get any meetings with Republican lawmakers to get anything done if you're the face of the ACLU in the legislative halls. Right. But when he said that in that interview, I was like, well, that explains a lot, right, Birds of the feather kind of a thing. 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 could 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. The email is Pete at the petecalarshow dot com, an email from John who says, sheriff not my fault. McFadden is very beatable. One on one he loses. Unfortunately, there are three candidates running against him, so if two or more run against him, he will win with about thirty percent of the vote. The three people that have said they are going to run need to sit down together and figure out which one should be the candidate and the other two should just go to work for the other. The one who would beat McFadden as chief Deputies or something. I hope they're goes. Do not get in the way of this opportunity. Yeah, I don't know, like this is it's it's gonna real. It's the same thing that happened up in the election in New York City, right, same sort of dynamic. You get a crowded enough field and then McFadden can can slip through. Even though seventy percent of the people vote against him, he still is the votainer at thirty percent, if those are the numbers, right, So that's a problem. And so yeah, the three people running should probably get together and work out some sort of a deal. Throw your support behind one candidate, let them be the nominee, or let them run for the nomination, and then you would go to work for the for the winner. I do have hang on a second, I'm looking at the text line Cloak of night. Yes, this is from Ian. I can hear your flustration, well played, sir, flustration with McFadden, because it drives your voice up into your head. He is a malignant narcissist and therefore irredeemably obtuse. Having been raised by one, shall be in recovery the rest of my life. And then there's this from a seven oh four number. I think sheriff gets full retirement at ten years as sheriff. It's a different retirement from other law enforcement. So that's interesting. Yeah, there's yeah, there's probably some state benefit that kicks in. So okay, so I have another I got another sound, but I want to play this one before because we're going to move on after this this last segment here to some different stuff in the next hour. He has said stuff like this before, and when Brett Jensen was talking with Not My Fault McFadden Wednesday night about the racial demographics of the city and the county and you know what might explain why there's just a complete sort of monopoly of all city positions and county positions of leadership and elected representation. It's all black. There are no white men on these bodies or that have been hired, right, they're gone. And so he's curious as to why because McFadden talks a lot about race, and he's the first black sheriff and all that, but he has also talked about how his command staff who have quit on him they're black too, and he talked about why his black staffers may resist him. Okay, so he has a theory as to why, as to why people under his leadership under his supervision might quit. Spoiler, it's not his fault. When people came against me that look like me, it was disheartening. I felt betrayed, But now I clearly understand why because it's deeply rooted into their history because people who were telling them what to do how to do it didn't look like me. And then when a person looked like them is telling them what to do and how to do it. They made questions a little bit. Me and my staff talk about it all the time, think about the same things happening to other sheriffs in America and some of the other sheriff privileged to me, but you never hear about it, only because I am the lightning rod that takes all of the heat. And then very few times that I'm defended. Maybe no one wants to defend you because the things you say and do are indefensible. Just going to toss that out there. But essentially, he's saying that black people don't know how to take his orders and commands because it's ingrained in them to only do what a white boss would tell them to do, and that he says, they talk about this all the time, Like, dude, it's not racism. It's you. It's just you, 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 dpetekallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone. Mhm.