Can Guardian Angel Save NYC; Perfect Storm at Border; GA Tackles Election Reform | The Nation Speaks

[Music] today on the nation speaks a guardian angel seeks to save new york and a perfect storm at the southern border georgia tackles election reform and a special two-part america q a hello and welcome to the nation speaks i'm your host cindy drew care he's been protecting new yorkers since the 1980s and now the larger-than-life founder of the guardian angels curtis sliwa wants to be mayor and revive the big apple that's been rotting away after a year of lockdowns riots and failing businesses violent crime is growing and people are leaving the city that never sleeps needs a wake-up call and curtis thinks he can deliver it curtis welcome oh my pleasure to put my hands across america and be with you today so clearly you're the ultimate law and order candidate for new york city here you've been volunteering to protect our street since 1979 i mentioned in the intro a lot of the problems the city is facing i know the guardian angels also focuses on prevention not just protection so you've been thinking a lot about that so what do you think it's going to take to fix the city well we got to get uh the police department back on track remember their morale is at an all-time low the forces the democratic forces have pushed to defund the police they want to defund prisons and they really want to make the police department impotent i mean think about it we had the finest most advanced police department in the world bar none and now we have a police department that hesitates to respond to the simplest of calls in addition we have a no bail law that was imposed on all of us statewide by andrew cuomo the governor who obviously has his own set of problems right now but they're not going to rescind that nobel law so you know as a criminal whether you reside in the five boroughs or you're coming in from out of town that you can be a predicate felon you can continue to commit crimes over and over and every time you get arrested all you're going to do is get a ticket like a parking ticket or a moving violation and be told oh come to court in six months or eight months and so we're going to have a repetitive series of violent felons going back out into the streets encouraging others to do more so unless we empower the police once again to take control of the streets how can you have any kind of economic recovery or recovery for a city when people were afraid to take the subways and buses afraid to come in to a bar or a restaurant for a meal or when the entertainment centers broadway and other venues opened up the cultural and entertainment centers if they're afraid to come in like we saw in the 70s then the city is in deep peril and having survived the 70s and that was my motivation for starting the guardian angels i know exactly what has to be done in order to get the city back on track so how do things compare right now to the 70s when the 1970s we were on the brink of fiscal dissolution almost declaring bankruptcy as a result an incoming mayor then ed koch had to cut the budget drastically lay off police firefighters social workers educators and so we were operating almost in a skeletal structure so one million new york city residents and the five boroughs left in the 1970s alone now so far uh this particular cycle since the lockdown we've had 300 000 new york city residents leave mostly from manhattan and that number continues and that's why we're beginning to move in that direction now the one thing you didn't have uh now that you had in the 70s were the abandoned buildings gangs dominating whole sections of the city but that's coming because if you look at alexandria ocasio-cortez aoc the leader of the democratic socialists of america they have publicly said to any candidates they endorse any democrats this should be no rent paid no rent paid to private landlords whether it's commercial property or it's residential uh rental property or leasing property and we want to drive the landlords out and then they hope the city and the state will take over the properties and create affordable housing that didn't happen in the 70s that led to massive abandonment especially in the bronx in brooklyn and property values dropped like iraq which hastened the departure of so many other new york city residents so we already seen that it doesn't work but obviously the democrat socialists of america are intending on taking over the city council and intent on electing the next mayor of the city of new york if we go in their direction this city will continue to uh fall into the abyss so you're running as a republican i understand you've never been registered as a republican before is that right my first registration in 1972 was a democrat i voted for george mcgovern against richard nixon that was a tsunami victory for richard nixon later on i got disappointed in the democrats because uh they didn't seem at all to be supporting law and order uh the preservation of a quality of life not only in new york city but other cities where we had guardian angels because we're now in 13 countries and 130 cities and most importantly i felt a degree of wanting an independent strain so i became an independent and then eventually uh for three years the new york state reform party chairman and this past february uh february of a year ago before the lockdown i registered as a republican uh trying to help them fend off the democrat socialists of america who are intent on taking over the city of new york okay so we know you're tough on uh crime crime and we know what you want to do there uh the city does have a lot of financial problems um and presumably a lot of solutions will require investment in the city so what do you see as the priorities how would you manage that well number one you have to be a cheerleader of the city you have to raise everyone's expectations you got to be out there in the retail establishments because wherever the mayor goes the cameras and the press will follow so whether it's bars or restaurants or small mom-and-pop shops or mid-level sized businesses you've got to go to wall street you can't vilify them you can't tell them to take a hike pal you can't raise everyone's taxes because you give them another reason to leave the city you can't impose congestion uh pricing which is just another fee another tax and then make it so that people driving cars or vehicles will not want to come into manhattan in order to transact business or to enjoy a nice night out you basically got to flatten everything out you have to have a hiring freeze within government because government is so wasteful in terms of the tax dollars we already have and most importantly you got to get on the phone to all those businesses that are being winded and dying to come down to austin texas miami beach where obviously there are less taxes right now a better quality of life those areas have opened up after the pandemic where we here in new york city are stifled as a result of the iron fist that both cuomo and de blasio have been put into any kind of opening up of the city of new york or the state of new york so it's really going to require me being a salesperson of people to let them know not only is it do we want you to come back to new york to spend your dollars which can be taxed but we also want you to consider not only moving here and living here but even if you're not going to have your primary corporate office here anymore maybe having an adjunct office so it's we're going to have to learn to do more with less many of the other candidates are talking about giving away money a thousand dollars to those that are in need five thousand dollars we don't have the money we're on the verge of fiscal dissolution of bankruptcy and most of the democrats are just talking about as if they were the federal government where they could print money raise the debt ceiling raise the deficit ceiling like republicans and democrats are urging even though that is going to be a burden to our children and children's children generation they're the ones who are going to have to pay the price uh for this and i'm not going to be one who tries to uh borrow my way out of this no way and i'm not going to be one who hypes up the fact that joe biden is the president a democratic president and he's already issued stimulus which we're going to see flow into the coffers of cities and states no no we're going to have to pull ourselves up and figure out a way out of this malays and it's not going to come from washington and it's not going to come from albany and so you mentioned the next generation and children we have about a minute or so to go but i know education is also one of the things you care about what are your plans there well we have to expand charter schools we have to in fact there's plenty of space now for existing charter schools to expand how many children they can take care of because there's a lottery system right now that can only satisfy one out of every eight requests and we have to impose more vocational training in the public school system because these young men and women will have negotiable skills it can get right out into the job market where right now we're issuing visas for foreign workers because we don't have enough carpenters electricians uh electricians plumbers in fact in google one third of the program developers are high school graduates they've never gone on in college because they learned those skills after high school in professional schools that we pay for with pell grants that are given at the federal level why wouldn't we be giving this training in the public schools when we have a captive audience as we do now excellent well all right thank you so much for joining us and uh well we'll all be watching how new york develops that's for sure thank you curtis well i'm intent on saving new york city if anybody wants to help all they have to do to go is to our website curtisslywiffamayer.com curtissliwer for mayor.com all right coming up next there's a perfect storm brewing at the southwest border and it involves executive orders covid drug cartels and china but first here's part one of america q a where we ask our elders how they see young people today our times was going by the rules today we emphasize too much for their well-being too tight indoors and you know the situation with the pandemics only made that worse two thoughts really i see see the ones that that go in the military and study hard work hard and try to get ahead and then there's the other group that would rather stay home and and uh stay on instagram and facebook and and i'm also worried about some of the colleges the way they're teaching uh courses now that are anti-american i feel like they're kind of being shortchanged in some ways i don't believe that uh you know if we we can't allow religion to be taught i don't think we should be um uh exposing our young people to what is the opposite they're being being influenced by kind of a negative force rather than the positive force that i got hope and promise and passion and a lot of looking down at their cell phone they're so creative responsible i see hope for the future i see them with their nose and computers and missing all the wonderful experiences i had as a child when we went to college we were almost guaranteed a job or a decent paying job and now they get through college and there's nothing for them or they end up coming home living with parents i see kids that are struggling very much i've got a grandson that's 18 and he's having a hard time honey kids with a lot of energy things are changing technology is changing all the time they seem to be up with that one thing is they're really interested in what's going on in the world with younger children i see innocence and openness to learning they want to know they want to learn and as they get older that's where you pick up the bullying they're better than somebody else you know the but that's the anger that they've been and they've been taught to be racist they're a lot better off we return to the old ways and in god and what's him what's really important instead of all the games and all the modern things and all the people live on their phone constantly and [Music] last week i was at cpac the conservative political action conference where i got a chance to speak with texas attorney general ken paxton texas is of course one of the u.s for u.s states that borders mexico so people there feel the impact of border policies very directly we know that president trump took an extremely hard line on illegal immigration while president biden has vowed to treat the threat of the border as more of a humanitarian project and to that end he's already reversed a number of trump-era rules one of which was recently challenged in court successfully by kim paxton here's what he had to say about it you're a big man in the news these days after suing the biden administration to stop the deportation order he got an injunction and now that's permanently stopped what happens next so it's a big victory because when you get an injunction you have to show the court the judge that you're likely to win at trial on the merits which means he thinks you're going to win later and second that your state would suffer irreparable harm if the injunction wasn't granted in this case it was granted which means that the federal government the president still has to enforce the law that congress passed which is he has to still deport illegals under the law he was trying to just eliminate the law for a hundred days he can't do that under the constitution so there's a couple of different possibilities it'll either that injunction will either get appealed to the fifth circuit or the department of justice will wait and we'll just go to trial on the merits at some point you know in the next who knows months so what's your argument about irreparable harm so because if you open the border one there's tremendous risk to my citizens that covet more covet comes in because these we don't know the health status of these people second we have amazing costs very significant costs as it relates to human trafficking drug trafficking and other crimes so we have law enforcement costs we also will have to educate people we'll have to pay for their health care we'll have to pay for some people's food it's a significant cost to my state both on the idea of just economic costs but also personal cost and are you talking to other border attorney generals about doing similar actions or what you can do in general to fight open border type policies yeah so arizona for example mark brnovich filed a similar lawsuit he's doing a great job in arizona so we are also having meetings coming up to discuss some of these issues among the republican attorney generals and so what are you are you watching these caravans and what do you think oh absolutely i mean it reminds me of the obama years in the beginning of the trump years before trump made the case for border security and gave border patrol and customs and immigration the authority to do their jobs which they didn't have under obama and started building the wall and started sending the message that if you come and use asylum which has been used as a loophole you don't get to stay here and disappear into the you know in the united states and never to be heard from again so those policies are being undone which is going to create great damage to the country are you already seeing the impact of that it's just beginning the weather kind of probably you know slowed it down because we have some very cold weather but i think as the weather gets warmer i think you're going to start seeing some of those impacts and they're not good excellent well thank you so much for joining us i really appreciate it thanks indeed it's great being on my next two guests come with valuable insights into what's happening at the border and to them there's no looming crisis the crisis is already here in recent months there's been a huge surge in people and drugs crossing illegally into the united states and what we need to realize regardless of personal politics is that all of that traffic is controlled by the drug cartels so we're joined by sheriff mark daniels of cochise county arizona sheriff welcome thank you thanks for having me so we've been hearing a lot about spikes in unaccompanied minors crossing the border and i know in your county you have about 83 miles of mexican border so that's a big issue for you what do things look like right now in cochise county well going back to about august we've seen an uptick and smuggling and mainly on the human side of it and also an uptick with the drugs we had about 1200 off our our camera system we run our own virtual system here at the sheriff's office we had about 1200 off our camera system in december we had over 2500 and over 500 pounds of illicit drugs that we seized in in off our system since that time over the last couple months that uptake piece continues to rise we're we're looking at numbers back in 2019 where the caravans and surge numbers were impacting the southwest border and we're seeing the same thing going on again what accounts for it well i i think the biggest thing on the southwest border and starts in washington dc with our congressional people with our president united states is is the message that's being sent and right now the message of obviously the re rescinding of declaring the southwest border a non-emergency which took away resources funding the physical barrier the mpp program the migrant uh protection protocol uh being re rescinding that and bringing them into the united states and overall just the overall message that it's okay to come in the united states right now and the concern on that is and i look at it beyond um the humanitarian side of this because which is very important to me but is the public safety side of this the element that we're going to see that we did in 2019 the crim element that was exploiting the cartels our southwest border the other aspect of is is that worries me is we're in a pandemic we're in a health pandemic we've got 26 countries that have been banned from coming to the united states because of the coven but we're open up the southwest border so do i think it's hypocritical i really do i mean our southwest border is part of the united states all borders should be treated equally our public transportation should be treated equally when it comes to whether you're a citizen or not but we're not seeing that down here what we're seeing is these people being released in communities relying on ngos the non-government organizations to take care of them if not the communities absorb them and right now that that's a scary thought we don't have the resources in rural counties so to me as a sheriff along with my fellow sheriffs on the southwest border that are standing up against this will continue to do that because my job is to protect all my citizens in my county and my oath is to keep them safe so that's what i'm speaking to you about today can you just give us a sense of what your border looks like what's the terrain are there walls well we have a very rugged mountainous desert terrain here in cochise county uh they the border fencing the physical bearer was being built the extension of that the upgrade of our fencing to going into mexico all the way going west out of our county uh when that executive order was signed by president biden it halted everything within hours people were laid off the equipment's still sitting down there the trucks are sitting down there abandoned the steel sitting abandoned there's six foot trenches on my southwest border it's a mess i'll be totally honest with you that was a very hasty decision i don't think it was collective in nature where this administration had worked with our governor our attorney general our state health our local health and i'm sure he didn't work with our sheriffs now you're as i understand or maybe you are aren't still on the homeland security advisory council are you on that council still i'm in i'm on that council i'm also the chairman of the national sheriff association for border security throughout the united states and i was not but let me rephrase that for a minute um when it comes to the plan uh what's going on what we're seeing today i was not addressed i was not asked about sheriff how should we roll this out no i was not asking about that i was part of the biden transition team when it comes to i was there's four sheriffs five sheriffs selected by the national sheriff association to speak to the transition team for president biden kind of address issues and i spoke about our southwest border the things that are working we've done a lot of good work on the southwest border and that's probably why i'm standing up a little tall on this and the fact that i believe we've gone so far in a good way so many successful programs under public safety national security and um humanitarian side of this and to include the health pandemic we're dealing with in this country and to not consult us or get us at the table we have all the stakeholders there local state and federal working together i think that was a misstep huge misstep so what policies exactly were working and are they rescinded or still in placed or just not enforced what's the situation well as a member of the advisory council just what it is uh an advisory to our secretary of homeland security in a room uh i bring a community voice to that nobody brought me to the table and said sheriff or as a member of the national sheriff association when it comes to here's the plan we want to roll out i was told in a meeting several weeks ago with sheriffs after all these policies were being implemented we asked for a meeting with dhs leadership we sat down with them the statement was made to us that they've been looking at this plan the reversal of these plans since and before the election so this has been going on for some time nobody has sat down with me and said sheriff what do you think what's what's what do you think we should do how should we roll this out what stakeholders should be at the table in fact when i suggested that we should have sheriffs uh health officials governors or border governors on this committee they said they hadn't thought of that and that was just a couple weeks ago so obviously communities which is the direct impact of everything going on on these decisions should have been at the table from the onsen so what exact impacts are you seeing in your community over the last few months over the last few months we've had um uh our pursuits just our pursuits when it comes to smuggling where they're smuggling and and i call it modern day slavery when you take humans and you put them in servant roles you try to smug them into the country only to be servant to the cartels within these communities whether it be under gangs drugs sex trafficking whatever it may be it's not a way of life most americans enjoy our freedoms and our liberties so what we're seeing a lot of is is the human smuggling the more messages that we put that the open the border is open that it's okay to come in illegally and then the consequences are are nil to none uh we're going to get more and more people coming in this country and that should scare every american but we're seeing a lot of pursuits on the way over to this meeting today there was a pursuit in my county again my uh my supervisor just spoke to me a few minutes ago talking about this like five different pursuits over the last 24 hours very short time in our county over the last few months we've had 12 people go to the hospital we've had two killed as a result of smuggling and we've had a shootout with a smuggler so when i say the uptick's up it's there i mean we've enjoyed the benefit of collaborative efforts collective efforts local prosecutions working with our federal partners all the way through to make cochise county and our southwest border so much safer and so this is this is a little disheartening to see where we're going now again and are you talking to other sheriffs that are experiencing similar things along the border we speak every day and throughout the day we speak i get updates from them all the way through and our national sheriff association so yeah we're we're very inclusive in what we're talking about making sure those facts are shared back with our our communities what we know what we can share with them when you don't share information or you don't roll out a plan that includes your local and state stakeholders confusion and frustration gets very high so my job is to bring those facts back into them and also tell them that we're going to do everything we can to keep our community safe so we have to wrap up shortly but what would be the one or two top priorities that you would like to see addressed well the first thing starts with public safety how do we ensure that the people coming across our southwest border are those are not going to violate our our rules our norms that go within our communities i'll make sure that the proper people are being vetted with our country the other that goes for national security too and then the other one would be humanitarian i mean leaving these han these people in the hands of the cartel they paid us six to nine thousand dollars ahead for the cartel to bring him in here and then get him in into the interior united states again not good that's a criminal enterprise that i truly believe is going to exploit what's going on on the southwest border and last but not least is is the health pandemic that we're all enduring in this country we have for the last year we need to make sure that these people are being tested now i'm being told the leadership down here that that's not happening if you look at the press releases which i think they use very choice of very kind words and saying oh yeah we're testing them the only time they're being tested is that they go into an ice detention facility but they get caught and released within hours they're not being tested so we need to come together and last but not least to sum it all up is we need to be working together local state and federal because we all serve the same old and that is to protect americans well thank you very much sir for sharing that with us today thank you thanks for having me certainly sobering to hear from someone like sheriff daniels who's on the front lines dealing with this every day um but the situation is even more complex than we heard from him as we're about to learn from our next guest and we're joined now by derek muls he's a former head of the dea special operations division welcome thank you very much cindy appreciate it um so we were just speaking to a sheriff we're hearing how there's upticks in people minors crossing the southern border as well as drugs you know human trafficking of all sorts and we hear a lot about the mexican cartels um can you give us some insight into that i know it's not just mexican cartels there's a china connection here too can you explain to us how all this works together okay so first of all uh it's very got to be very clear that we're facing a public safety national security and humanitarian crisis all at the same time at the border we have these violent very very violent mexican cartels that are flooding the streets of america with poisonous drugs that are killing our citizens at record levels cd cdc statistics have shown approximately 82 000 americans died in a 12-month period that's the latest statistics and the rates just keep going up they anticipate over 84 000 in the year 2020. so we have a crisis like you've never seen but behind that crisis we have china that's sending these unbelievable precursor chemicals and pure fentanyl to mexico they're also working very closely with the cartels on the money laundering services business so a lot of americans don't understand the role of china and how they've increased their emphasis in the drug crisis they recognize how american families are being uh you know as suffering kids are dying at record levels and they're making billions of dollars working with the cartels so we have a very dangerous perfect storm on the border and unfortunately we don't have a lot of engagement with the politicians they're actually in denial the dhs secretary this week has said that we don't have a crisis on the border but if you speak to the cbp and the border patrol and the professionals sheriffs and the police agencies that are dealing with this chaos you'll recognize that once again washington is is misleading the public okay i have a lot of questions based on that but let me just ask you if china wasn't involved how different would the situation look how big a part are they playing well in regards to the chemicals the cartels have been acquiring precursor chemicals for many countries for many years but if you've noticed you're seeing an uptick in the amount of methamphetamine that is being seized all over america that's because china is playing a much more prominent role in the chemicals and they have a direct pipeline i'm going to share something with you that opened my eyes so in 2007 we had a chinese national that was arrested in mexico city with 207 million dollars in 100 denominations that was like the largest cash seizure in the history of the world on a drug case that i'm aware of and it was from a chinese national that was bringing in precursor chemicals and working with the sinaloa cartel and other cartels as they were sending these chemicals to precursor these precursor chemicals into the lab operations they were industrial science style labs they were not mom-and-pop production laboratories producing ton quantities every single week so we're facing this new very pure methamphetamine but the china is playing an intricate role in the chemicals with the fentanyl of course we all know how the fentanyl is now killing folks the the counterfeit pills that they're putting out the mexi oxy that's all over america the little blue pills but the chinese are also providing the pill presses to the cartels they're providing the expertise the chemical expertise the chemistry expertise and so they're playing a very prominent role but remember this the drug organizations in mexico are looking to make as much money as they can and without the chemicals and without the money they're out of business and china is playing that prominent role right now especially on the money services in america that's something that's relatively new and it's starting to boom uh how new is it well it's been around for a few years i mean but law enforcement is finally really infiltrating it they're making arrests they have plenty of money couriers that they're stopping they're starting to put the pieces together but it's very elaborate money laundering so i'll give you an example they have the chinese working in mexico with the cartels they're giving the the cartels need let's say a million dollars picked up in las vegas as an example they send the chinese national young kids they meet with the drug traffickers they pick up the cash they turn the cash over to these legitimate in many cases business guys in america that are having a problem getting their cash out of china there's there's restrictions on the amount of cash you can export out of china on an annual basis so they're taking the dirty cash in america and what they do cindy is they transfer the million dollars over their banking apps from one chinese bank account to another and then they have the money already moved overseas without putting the cash inside a u.s bank where it's easy for government officials to track it then they'll a lot of times they'll buy consumer goods in china like sneakers computers toys clothing and they'll ship that million dollars worth of goods to mexico panama columbia south america wherever and then they'll sell the goods for two or three million dollars so everybody's making money but unfortunately u.s law enforcement is having a difficult time infiltrating in the undercover manners that historically they've been very successful with the with the hispanic money launderers right we had plenty of informants plenty of expertise we understood the culture now we have a situation where we don't have a lot of undercovers that speak chinese we don't have a lot of informants they're starting to develop because law enforcement is very talented they're going to continue to infiltrate them but it's overwhelming and it's very creative and now with cryptocurrency and bitcoin it's becoming more and you know difficult to track so law enforcement has their hands full but they're very relentless they'll continue but americans are dying at you know record levels so we have to get more of a sense of urgency and we have to stop misleading the public and thank you for bringing up these important issues wow what a uh a complex situation it is so from what i know about china the communist regime would almost have to be behind this if it's operating at this large of a scale do you know anything about that so that's a great question so obviously i'll just give you some background when we were targeting the afghan kingpins for many years when we arrested a couple of them one guy in particular made a comment that's selling heroin to the west is a jihad against america so it's the same concept communist china is trying to undermine and destabilize america we're the biggest adversary for the economic power that they want so they know that these drugs are destroying our communities so although i don't personally have concrete evidence that communist china is behind all this synthetic drug manufacturing and all this drug business from every expert that i've spoken to you can't really run these illegal chemical businesses in china sending chemicals around the world without them controlling it right you can't communicate freely in this communist country so in my opinion we have a chemical war with this with you know as their unrestricted warfare to destroy america without actually sending any missiles or any weapons in our country they're very sophisticated very smart and right now they're they're beating us at this game and by the way just so you know back in around 2010 we had another crisis from chinese labs out of wuhan and other areas with the synthetic drugs the cannabinoids the catheters bath salts k2 spice we had a situation in 2018 where in new haven connecticut washington dc new york city chicago people dropping all over the place respiratory failure cardiac arrest death in some cases because of these synthetic drugs that people were smoking in the synthetic marijuana they were buying from these gas stations around america they were putting rat poison in it so we have some enemies around the world that love undermining our system by hurting our citizens and that's what we have going on wow so you say um law enforcement is you know smart and you know getting on the case what who's working together on this specifically on the china angle so another great question i appreciate you uh you know with the insight that you have unfortunately right now the morale and law enforcement out there is not too good because our politicians and leaders are talking about defunding the police we have police that are afraid to take law enforcement action because they don't want to destroy their families and their lies with social media and this canceled culture that we have all over america but law enforcement is very resilient they'll continue to work we have percentages of 15 to 20 percent of the workforce is going to carry the load so we have the federal agencies we have department of justice we have different strategies that were implemented under the last administration where they have task forces to go after these violent transnational criminals and they've had some successes but it's becoming very overwhelming and the biggest issue sydney from my perspective is the total lack of respect and support for the men and women on the front lines doing the real difficult job sacrificing their family life sacrificing their family time with their kids so we have a very very serious um situation and law enforcement like i said that right now you got to remember these global transnational crime organizations they don't have a bureaucracy they don't have any rules they don't have any budget constraints they don't have the politicians in the way of them doing business they have an agenda and they're going to carry out their agenda law enforcement has to follow all these rules many of these rules are archaic the laws some of these congressmen and women they have cobwebs in their ears and their eyes they don't even know how to use the internet they don't even understand social media but now we have these encrypted apps in the hands of these chinese international criminals that are all encrypted so we don't even have a way to infiltrate their encrypted apps so this very very difficult complex issues but the scary part from my perspective as a parent okay and as somebody that has a lot of passion for america is the lack of discussion about this this is not a political topic by the way the death of americans is a red white and blue issue it's not a red issue or a blue issue republicans and democrats it's about america so i'm surprised the democrats haven't recognized that their constituents are dying all over the place as well so it's a very complex matter and i'm going to continue to engage at i might testify next week at the judiciary committee uh based on the whole crisis and those that are out there trying to legalize drugs and don't even understand the type of drugs we're dealing with today so it's it's really really difficult but we'll continue to fight we have no option all right we're out of time thank you so much for coming today derek and sharing that with us it's i really appreciate it thank you anytime you need anything please let me know here's part two of our special america q a what do our older wiser neighbors miss about being a kid i guess responsibility you don't have the responsibilities that you have now you know it says in the bible when i became a man i gave up childish things what i miss is the the good times i mean we were very poor the opportunities as a kid to grow in a more less normal way fields i could play in trees i could climb the lack of responsibility and being able to kind of do what i wanted to you know and and not be worried about the whole world i was only worried about my neighborhood having my mother do my laundry [Laughter] playing with all the other kids and spending more time about being a kid i miss my dad taking me on camping trips in the mountains and riding our horses and taking care of our goats and chickens and stuff the freedom to do what you want very definitely to simplicity and i think we push too hard on our young people being innocent and carefree and climbing and running and really enjoying life more without knowing how serious and intense it can be playing being innocent being safe of not worrying about where i went what i did riding down the street nobody was going to bother me just being safe more free than kids are today running the neighborhood riding your bicycle knowing when to be home when you heard that whistle from your dad in the driveway oh that's been so long for it's been a long time ago but yeah it was just that the things were so much different so much simpler when you were a kid you didn't have near the worries you do as an adult [Music] georgia was under the microscope after the november election where joe biden ended up beating president trump by less than one quarter of a percentage point there were multiple rounds of recounts and poll workers testified about a long list of irregularities afterwards lawmakers promised to pass reforms to restore public trust in the process well that's happened with georgia's house and senate both recently passing election reform bills we talked to two of the people who are demanding change and to see if they think those bills go far enough we're joined now by marcy mccarthy she's a dekalb county voter review panelist in the last elections and she's also running for chair of the dekalb county gop and jason m shepherd he's currently the chair of the cobb county gop and running for chair of the georgia gop welcome to you both welcome back to the show thank you cindy thanks for having us so georgia there was a lot of talk about you know vote um vote integrity during the last elections in georgia and both the house and the senate in georgia have passed bills to address a lot of these issues so i want to get your reaction on how happy you are with these bills so jason why don't you start us off well i think this is a step in the right direction to restoring people's faith in the integrity of elections here in georgia i think a lot of georgia voters were concerned in both the november election and the runoff on january 5th about whether their vote counted or not and i think we saw the results of that a lot of people chose not to vote because they were concerned about the integrity of the system so i'm very excited that the both the georgia house and georgia senate have passed election reform bills that are designed to help really restore election integrity in georgia and people's confidence in the system so we'll see what the final outcome of both the bills are obviously the house and senate will need to get together and decide what provisions will stay and which will go before it finally gets passed and goes on to the governor's desk for his signature okay good i'd like to hear which provisions you think are especially good but mercy want to give us your reaction first are you happy with what they put forward yeah i echo what jason said it's really about restoring fitness faith integrity and trust in our elections and we've got to do so by trust but verifying our votes we certainly trust the voter out there but we need to verify that it is the actual voter that is voting so i'm really elated to see this advancement of both bills coming through and i'm hopeful that our governor will be signing those so it looks like speaking to what you just said that id for absentee voting would now be required that wasn't required before do you think that's one of the key things we have to have the same processes in place whether you are voting in person as well as if you're voting via absentee ballot trust but verify your vote is not voter suppression it is about ensuring that the legal vote that is cast is counted and it is you as the elector that is voting i think the having voter id for absentee voting as well as one of the most important provisions in fact a few years ago a group of election observers from the united nations came to georgia and they were shocked that we didn't have a uniform system when it came to checking for voter id uh that's what happens in almost every country in the world that's a democratic nation that allows people to vote that everyone must have an id and this was a huge gap in the system that allowed people to really vote without proving who they were of course any illegal vote that happens takes away a vote from a legitimate voter in addition to that we saw lots of issues dealing with food trucks and various other you know handouts happening while people were waiting in line was it's called warming the line and those existed in sort of a gray area obviously you can't fry people to vote but what they were saying was and we really don't know who was paying for these food trucks these pizza trucks these taco trucks that would send the parking lot and hand out free breakfast burritos or slices of pizza to people waiting in line the law basically says anyone should be able to come and get the food or the giveaway that's being given whether they're voting or not but a lot of these uh food trucks whoever was paying for them were only giving them to voters in line and we were having to spend a lot of time a lot of resources to basically have them chased off in this illegal activity now the loss will say if it gets through to the governor that that type of action is completely illegal and that will allow our election monitors or poll watchers to concentrate on what's happening at the polling place rather than dealing with free giveaways in the parking lot additionally no excuse absentee voting was passed when absentee voting and election day voting were the only two options now we have weeks of early voting where people can go even on weekends early vote and that really causes the question whether no excuse absentee voting is still needed uh even when there was an excuse required i voted absentee because all you have to do is say you're out of town well if you're in a metro atlanta and you you live in marietta like i do but work in atlanta well you may be out of town on election day so you can still request it on the other hand no excuse absolutely voting opens up a huge gap where potential fraud can happen where battles can be requested by people who really are not even eligible voters at addresses where they've moved from and still cast valid in georgia we saw issues of that in november and in the runoff in january so i think what's critical is getting no excused absentee voting uh taking off in georgia um oh 20 states require excuses to vote absentee including new york which obviously new york is not exactly a bastion of republicanism and even the president's own home state delaware if joe biden wants to vote absentee in his home delaware he has to have an excuse so we're just saying with all these weeks of early voting let's go back to having an excuse like maybe you're a nursing home you know you're going to be in hospital you know you're going to be out of town on election day otherwise there's plenty of opportunity for you to early vote in the weeks before the election so what i understand is that's in the senate bill but not the house bill and both have been passed by their respective houses so we're not sure if that will end up finally law or not is that right that's correct all right and marcy what about you what do you think are the where does this where did this fall short well actually um well i was going to actually talk about some of the other things that are in the bills that are really exciting because that's okay um one of the things that i was really pleased to see was no third party funding can be allocated from any type of organization to a county elections office in the metro area we saw not a non-profit organization affiliated with facebook funding the drop boxes and the motor buses that are the motor vote voting units uh overall and that's election interference at the end of the day so i don't understand how that was even allowed to have happened to take a third party funding for an elections office to supplement the resources in in name of kovit so that actually addresses that as well in the house bill one of the things that was really exciting to me to have there as a voter review panelist and what we didn't have happen in the general and in the special election was the fact of the matter was we had election office workers duplicating ballots in an unsupervised manner when the scanning systems could not read the actual absentee ballot so they were acting as a de facto review panel in the new legislation the bipartisan review panel will do the duplication of the ballots when the scanning cannot read when the scanning system i should say cannot read the ballots and that offers the faith integrity and trust in elections that we really need if you are voting by absentee ballot so i was very pleased to see that type of legislation in there a lot of the legislation in general addresses of many things that went wrong in our election process but really never were exposed because some of this stuff was quite obscure the absentee ballot voting in georgia was really comprised of about a quarter of a million ballots as compared to in the general election on 1.2 million ballots overall so we really overwhelmed a system that was not set up to have the kind of volume of absentee ballots and many things went awry so this legislation really is an opportunity for us to restore fitness in georgia's elections and just had one other point um those boxes that you talked about now they will have to be um you know if all this legislation becomes law they will have to be in the early voting centers um not that's also a blessing because we had a lot of issues as associated with whether there's actual filming taking place uh of the person coming to the drop box and the drop boxes were supplemental basically mailboxes uh overall and they weren't really being 24x7 monitored as suggested just having a video camera is not monitoring it someone actually has to be watching the video feed going on so having them in places where there are other security measures in place also preserves a chain of custody of the ballot and a lot of that went awry in our last election so jason are there places where you feel this legislation falls short well i think one of the places that fall short and actually it's a place that's not really addressed by the legislation at all and that is in prosecuting actual voter fraud that happened in the 2020 election and in the subsequent runoff right now the secretary of state's office saying that they have over 60 investigations going on but they also had investigations going on during the primary where over 1400 voters voted twice once by mail and absentee voting but also in person that's a felony in the state of georgia we also have felons who have not received their right to vote back who voted in the election those felons are not being prosecuted for violating the election law at least not yet i think what will also be critical to restoring confidence is that the secretary of state and the attorney general really work together to make sure that those who have broken the election laws are already on the books are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and show are shown as an example that if you try to cheat in georgia's elections we will come after you and we will prosecute you because one of the most sacred rights that we have is the right to vote and when someone tries to steal our right to vote by fraudulent means i mean that's really taking away one of our fundamental rights that we enjoy as americans and as we enjoy as georgians so i think that needs to happen even before we pass any new laws to kind of close those loopholes that we have seen in the 2020 election and really to help restore true voter integrity in the state of georgia now both these bills were passed by republican house republican senate um i don't think there was a single democrat that voted for them certainly not in the house so do you think uh this will restore overall confidence or create a better system or is it just you know republicans are happy about what's going on and i know the democrats at least they think the voter id and a lot of the provisions about you know the weekend voting is voter suppression um so what is the the mood in georgia right now mercy go ahead this is about trust but verify your vote so again this is not about voter suppression making it harder for you to vote this is ensuring that your legal vote is actually counted by the person who cast the actual vote so we have to do a better job of messaging that mess getting that message out there to our community but at the end of the day it is truly about trust but verify your vote in that we need we do trust the person that is voting uh through the identification process voter id but we're verifying that it is you the person that is voting we want to ensure that somebody else is not voting on your behalf or using your name in vain to cast a vote we had several folks in the that utilize the absentee ballot process system who had a vote cast in their name early but when they came to vote in person only to find that somebody had voted in their name so again this isn't really about trust but verify your vote it is not about making it harder to vote and it's not anything close to voter suppression to assume that somebody that doesn't have an id or know how to use their i mean the state will give you an id if you can't afford an id even if you don't drive a car or anything like that we need voter id we just need id in general to cash a check buy cigarettes alcohol sometimes use a credit card get on an airplane check into a hotel well true voter suppression is stealing someone's vote i mean that's what voter suppression is it's not having a having to wait more than half an hour to vote that's not voter suppression i can remember in 1984 with my mother standing in that long line at the high school gymnasium in champaign illinois where it seemed like everyone was there to vote for ronald reagan i remember 1992 we have five hour long waits in cherokee county one of the most republican counties in georgia in order to vote because they didn't have enough voting machines if it's important to do if it's important to the person then we'll wait as long as we can to vote people camp out overnight for the newest iphone that's not iphone suppression what it is is vote suppression of illegal votes not legal votes but illegal votes and the democrats don't want illegal votes to press and that seems to be very clear in fact we're now seeing a lot of information coming out in the media that stacey abrams group was actually sending message out trying to suppress the vote in the runoff by really ginning up the idea that people's votes didn't matter and that they would be stolen because of election integrity that's voter suppression and once again it's the democrats engaged in it this will tighten up the election and it doesn't matter if you're a republican or democrat or independent or libertarian you will know in georgia that your vote will count if you legally vote if you illegally vote you will know that your vote won't count and hopefully you'll go to jail to contemplate on what you did all right well thank you both so much for joining us thank you cindy thanks for having us and that's all for today's show thank you so much for watching the nation speaks join us every saturday 11 a.m to noon eastern and from all of us here have a great week don't let youtube decide what information you get that's your choice youtube is deleting our videos and cuts you off from a source of honest reporting make sure you don't lose access to ntd's news content and take a quick moment to subscribe to our newsletter so no matter what happens here you'll keep your access to a trustworthy news 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