From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Celebrating World Down Syndrome Day ft. Our Daughter Valentina

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

In honor of World Down Syndrome Day, Rachel and Sean are joined by the youngest of their 9 kids, Valentina, to celebrate her talents and traits that brighten the day of everyone she encounters. They explain why they don't agree with the recent '#AssumeICan' Down syndrome ad taking the internet by storm and how big of an issue it is that countless babies with Down syndrome are being aborted before being given a chance at life. They also discuss the Kennedy family's public support of President Biden despite RFK Jr. running and Rachel's experience taking a trip to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's congressional district. Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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So you can look and feel good about gifting and wearing them. Shop your wishlist 25% off at Mijeri.com today. Hey, everyone. Welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Hey Sean, well we're not at our kitchen table because we're in the studio. And we're in the studio because this morning was World Down Syndrome Day. And if you're hearing some background noise, that's because Valentina is with us. And we're trying to keep her away from some of the tech in here.

She might be pushing some buttons. She was drawing on Fox and Friends this morning and so she was here all day. And so she's with us for this podcast and she's clapping. Keep your person with me. She's clapping as we- For herself. For herself. That's right.

So yeah, we brought her on Fox and Friends and Ainsley's so sweet. We had her on the couch and then she showed everyone because she knows how to do like these ab exercises from her physical therapy, which we call it Pilates. So if we tell her to do Pilates, she just sits on the ground and- She leans back and puts her arms straight out and her feet- And her legs up. And her heels off the ground and she does a little ab workout. Pretty strong core work, if you ask me.

It is a core workout. So that was really fun and and you know this is world down syndrome week and the national down syndrome association put out an ad and it was really interesting because usually when these things come out things like this i somebody informs me because they know i have someone with the town i saw the video i was hoping i was gonna love it and i started to love it for the first few seconds. And then I did not. Well, you watched it.

And then you said, just watch this and tell me what you think. So you didn't give me any of the exact same reaction, did we? So why don't we play a little bit of it? And then we'll come out on the other end and tell you why we are not such big fans of the Down Syndrome, World Down Syndrome Day ad. Take a listen. Hey, bartender. You assume that I cannot drink a margarita. So you don't serve me a margarita. So I don't drink a margarita. Your assumption becomes reality. And parents, you assume that I cannot live on my own. So you don't encourage me to live on my own. So I don't live on my own. Coach, you assume that I cannot hit harder.

So you don't train me to hit harder. So I don't hit harder. And teacher, you assume that I cannot learn Shakespeare. So you don't teach me Shakespeare. Old MacDonald had a farm. So I don't learn Shakespeare. E-I-E-I-O. But hey, if all your assumptions become reality then so the national down syndrome um

so uh society says negative assumptions this is what they say about their ad um they say negative assumptions about people with down syndrome can become self-fulfilling prophecies try positive assumptions and maybe we can create more opportunities at school, in the workforce, in sports, and in social life. Hashtag assume I can, hashtag end the stereotypes. And that's sort of their message, right? I listen to- Which, hold on, by the way, I love that message. It's a great message. What you just read is the right message, kids and people with Downs. So there was a, so let's put aside the fact that if you continue to listen, the, the, the, the girl who, you know, is in the ad uses the F F word. Listen, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a Puritan here. I'm not gonna, you know, that wasn't

what I hated about it. Let me break it down for you where I thought. So the first thing is I thought they're putting the cart before the horse, right? In that if you want to end stereotypes about Down syndrome, what we need first is to see more people with Down syndrome. And so right now there is eugenics. So if a woman has, and there's a lot of prenatal diagnoses. And so when a woman gets a diagnosis of, you know, that she may have a baby with Down syndrome, which you can find out fairly easy. I think I found out in my fourth month, maybe a pregnancy. Most women will get is a doctor who says, listen, you have options. And they'll bring in the genetic counselors. And they'll say that because this child has an extra chromosome, maybe this person shouldn't exist. And that's the reality.

So the option is abortion. The option is abortion. And 80 to 90 percent, we suspect, of women who get this diagnosis end up aborting their child. And so you wonder why the Down Syndrome Association is sort of falling into, you know, these, I think, a culturally easy way of sort of using shock and victimhood in their ad, instead of really attacking the real core problem that people with Down syndrome have, which is that they get exterminated in the womb. Which is life, right? Do they have access to life, let alone a margarita? Yes. So you listen, so I, I, um, I agree. By the way, Sean, you were on the board of this organization. So, so, so I've, I've, I've served on a, on a Down syndrome board and listen, they

do a lot of good work. And I think the message that you read is the right message. You want to make sure that kids with Downs, adults with Downs have access to opportunities. They're not put in the corner, that they're able to maximize their potential. That's incredibly important. And a lot of these organizations actually do work to maximize opportunities for these kids and these adults. To mainstream them. To mainstream them, make sure they have access to all kinds of programs that the society offers.

Here's the problem, though, and I saw this debate internally. No doubt the biggest issue that the Downs community faces is there's not that many children with Downs because they're aborted. Yes. And what's interesting is you have a lot of people that serve and participate and contribute and give their time to these boards. And you get people from all walks of life. And when you deal with people from all walks of life, you have some who are pro-life and some who are pro-abortion. And when you can't fundamentally

get to the place where you're going to say, we are going to support babies with Down syndrome, you're missing the message. But because you have pro-abortion people on there, they didn't want to be seen as being too pro-life. And so they didn't want to touch the issue. They want to remain silent on the extermination of these little babies. So that's problem number one. But also, we have to recognize our child. This is a point that you made. Our child has Down syndrome. Wait, before we get to that, because that's the second point, but I want to just jump on that just for a second, because the Down syndrome association isn't the only organization

ignoring sort of the elephant in the room, right? Abortion and eugenics and Down syndrome diagnoses. It's also the Kennedys. The Kennedys have the Kennedy family. They had a child with special needs, an adult now. I'm not sure if she's still alive or passed away, but in any case, having a family member who had special needs, they created the Special Olympics, which is an amazing thing that they've done. You can see her. She's falling off the chair. an amazing thing that they've done. You can see her. She's falling off the chair. She's not going to participate.

She's okay. Come here. And they created a special Olympics and it's an amazing thing they've done. It's continued. It's grown. They've had massive corporate sponsorship. They've really lent their family name, which is a powerful family name, and they've lent that to

this issue. And that's a wonderful thing. But they also, Sean, refuse to touch on this problem. They refuse to talk about abortion. Why? Because the Kennedys are Democrats and the Kennedys have lots of powerful friends who are in bed with the abortion lobby. And so instead of talking about the fact that this is the ultimate discrimination, I mean, right, you have a party who talks about tolerance and acceptance, and they are being discriminated in the womb and denied life because they aren't quote unquote perfect by some standard that I don't know what that standard is. Just to put a button on it as well, when you have, as you've mentioned, 90% of diagnoses

of Down syndrome that end in abortion, those who support equal access for children with abortion, with Down syndrome, with adults with Down syndrome, equal access to opportunity, the most fundamental issue is you should then fight for their equal access to life. To life. Thank you. And, and these organizations, because the politics, they, they don't touch that with a 10 foot pole. And it is the elephant in the room. Again, if you want to normalize Down syndrome, the easiest way is to see more of them. And then we can talk about, you know, which we should, you know, access to special, you know, to special needs therapies, which our daughter has access to. I'm going to give a lot of props to the state of New Jersey, which I complain a lot about because they have very high taxes. And bad roads. But I think I'm getting my money's worth when it comes to, you know, the kind of services they provide for special needs, which I'm very grateful for. And I think every American child with disability should have access to that kind of care and help.

But, you know, and we want to talk about access to employment and all kinds of things that we need to do and even just the way they're accepted in society. But the first thing, as you said, the first right of all of our rights is the right to life, right? And so that's the most important one. It is. And so if you're not going to talk about the right to life, because you're going to skirt that issue, you have to go to other shock issues. And so in this ad, Rachel, talk about what was the most shocking part of what they thought would be a compelling argument for equal access to opportunity, opportunity to do what. So they really relied on a lot of shock value. And I really encourage people to watch the ad and make your own opinion, draw your own conclusions from it.

But I think that they have the young girl in the ad, who, by the way, has been in different films, so she's sort of a celebrity, especially among the Down syndrome community. She says, well, you know, she drops the F-bomb. She talks about having, you know, living outside the home and having sex and all this kind of stuff and drinking. And then they show her at a bar with all these other people. And she said, you don't want to give me a margarita, but I can drink an art margarita. And the idea is, you know, don't assume that she can't. Well, listen, as the parent of a child with down syndrome, I'm going to tell you that, you know, she does, first of all, there's a range of from low to high functioning. Um, but let's be really honest. There is an IQ difference. There are developmental and intellectual delays that

exist with this population. And so I already feel pretty nervous about my 22-year-old- Drinking at a bar. Drinking at a bar. She's in Europe right now, and I've been worried about it. There's no way that I... And I've talked to mothers, by the way, Sean, because I've wanted to know everything I could about Down syndrome when I had this diagnosis. And so I've spoken to many mothers who have daughters, adult daughters with Down syndrome. And they say by far the most terrifying part about having an adult child with Downs is their fear about the fact that they can be taken advantage of, that they're very vulnerable, sometimes have very poor judgment because of the cognitive disabilities that they have. And so we can't lie about that.

Let's be honest about that. And let's protect our children with special needs. Let's not pretend like they're not more vulnerable because that would be lying. So claiming that we want equal access is actually not equal access. We have to recognize their disability is your point. And again, if you already have some cognitive disabilities, alcohol does not improve your decision making. No, it doesn't. Thank you.

That's a great point. It diminishes the decision making and especially with Down's, again, an idiotic message, but also encouraging sex for young adults with Down syndrome. This young girl in the ad wasn't married. It's like go to the bar and also hook up with someone. Yeah. I thought the message was cheap. It was a cheap message. It was a way to get message. It was a way to get clicks, get attention, but it wasn't really, it was not a thoroughly thoughtful or safe message. And I think it alienated a lot of Christian parents who are trying to, listen, my expectation, by the way, Valencia has many talents. We talked a little bit about how she did Pilates. The other thing that she does really well, at prayer time, she passes out the rosaries really, really well. She has a lot of talents. So I'm not just raising

a child who happens to have this chromosomal variation called Down syndrome. I'm also raising a Christian child. Valentina knows how to do her prayers. She knows how to do the sign of the cross. I'm raising her the same way I would raise all my other children and so this message that somehow I'm you know empowering her and I'm being more tolerant of down syndrome by sort of having this very permissive amoral attitude about her because she has downs I think really undercuts her I think it it it diminishes her in many ways and and And I think it underestimates her moral capacity, which I believe might even be superior in some ways to some of ours. It celebrates the worst parts of society right now. Yeah. And the promiscuity that's taking place.

And again, to celebrate that and say Downs kids should have access to the worst parts of society as well. that and say that Downs kids should have access to the worst parts of society as well. I would hope that those who care about, you know, young people with Downs would care more about protecting them than having access to the worst parts of our culture. And again, it goes back to the fundamentals and how they get it wrong, where they're not supporting. You know, Sean, there's a lot of talk right now about this comedian. You know, Sean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of talk right now about this comedian. His name is Sean. The name is going to escape me. I'm going to look it up right now.

But he has a child with, he has a niece who has Down syndrome. And so in his comedy acts, he talks about his niece and he can, you know, he's a very politically incorrect. Did our producers tell us the name do you guys remember the name sean i'm not gonna remember the name um but anyway he's very politically incorrect and he uses what they they're where i will say is the r word he uses retarded and he's talking about them not a word i would ever apply to um to valentina but it's been interesting it took me a second what's the r word and not a word i would ever apply to her because i think she's you know brilliant in her own way and um but a lot of the people have come out and really gone after him for saying this are the same people who have no problem discriminating against people with special needs, down syndrome and physical challenges in the womb.

And so, you know, what's real violence is violence words. I don't like I said, not not terms I would use. not terms I would use. I know where he's coming from. He loves his niece. His family, I believe, has a coffee shop here in New York City, which I think you and I should go to. Apparently, it's run by people with special needs. And so obviously, this is somebody who loves his niece and says she's actually, as we say, the best person in the family. And so I just think it's kind of funny that the people, and ironic that the people who are criticizing him for saying that and are the same people who think, you know, words are violent, but actual violence in the womb is not violence. And just one last point before we move on, because we have a couple of topics we want to cover.

I think it's important to recognize, and again, if I'm really honest, Valentina, she's the ninth of nine kids. So we've had eight that have not had downs and one with downs. And has she given us a few more challenges? Yes. She had open heart surgery. It's pretty stressful on a family with turning your baby over to a doctor. In the middle of the pandemic. Exactly. And they're going to cut her chest open and do open heart surgery. I mean, that's crazy. Some of the challenges with...

To try to get her the therapy she needs, the care she needs. She doesn't. I mean, she'll be delayed in her talking and she does sign. We're trying to learn sign as well. Sign language, yeah. There's some issues that come up

that are different. All manageable though. But I'm being realistic. Yeah, they're manageable. Would I trade her in? Would I go a better choice for our family would have been that she's aborted? Hell no. Our family is so blessed to have her as the ninth. She's the capstone of our clan. And to have her here. She's the only thing our family agrees on. She's literally, when I say she's everyone's favorite, I mean it. She's everyone, maybe not Patrick. Until she gets a little sassy. She can be sassy too. She has to demand in a big family what she wants and what she needs.

At her school, Sean, you know this, she is so popular because she's so friendly and she says hi to everybody. They literally call her the mayor. They call her the mayor. And that's the kind of personality she has. She's confident. She's loving. She loves music. She loves to dance. She's a dancer. She loves to hug. And one of the things that she has before we move on to another topic, which I'm going to spring a topic on you, Sean, that you're not ready for, but you are actually ready for it. One of the things that she has that is she actually really doesn't see differences. She loves everybody equally. She has no malice.

She's truly a beautiful individual who brings out the best in everybody. She really does bring out the best in everybody. Most people like her. I will say our dog Skippy does not like her. Do you love Skippy? Skippy feels a little tormented. But Skippy feels tormented by her. I would say when I come home at about-

Skippy felt tormented by any little baby child. 8.15 at night, I come home. How does she greet you, honey? Who cares more about you when you walk in the door? Skippy and Valentina care the most about me, I come home. How does she greet you, honey? Who cares more about you when you walk in the door? Well, Skippy and Valentina care the most about me when I come home.

Some people don't care when I come home. But when I walk in the door, Valentina is by the door and she says, Daddy's home! Can you say Daddy's home? Daddy's home.

Daddy's home. That's right. Daddy's home. So I get an appropriate welcome from Valentina, which I appreciate that. She does. She waits by the door. She hears you pulling up from work, and she's there, and she says, Daddy's home.

Say it again. Daddy's home. Daddy's home. That's right. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Bet MGM is an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League and has your back all season long.

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Alright, so listen, we mentioned the Kennedys, Sean. Oh, we did. And there's something that happened so you know rfk jr is running for president um i think he's declared as an independent now he started as a democrat now he's running as an independent and he had to because the democrats were not going to allow a primary nobody was allowed to challenge king biden um well he's sort of king the real king's obama Right. But the the power behind the throne is Obama. But in any case, they did not want they did not want him challenging him. And so he moved over to be an independent. But his family, who are, you know, basically royalty themselves.

Right. The American the most famous American family in modern history are the Kennedys. And many of them are in office, tied to many powerful people in the Democrat Party. And so they're all very publicly supporting Joe Biden. And some of them have been very critical, I think, in a really negative way towards RFK Jr. saying that he's a conspiracy theorist, even though so many of his so-called conspiracies have come true. He's been very critical of Dr. Fauci, who's basically like a patron saint of the Democrat Party. And again, turned out to be true about his criticisms there. Well, this past weekend over the St. Patrick's Day, so fittingly, Joe Biden, an Irish American, invites the Kennedy family to come to the White House. And they all are there

and they take a picture and they post it. A very public, I think, repudiation of their own uncle, brother, sibling. I found it so distasteful because even if you don't want to vote for your brother or your uncle, you do not have to make a public display of this. For what? For what reason other than to show disloyalty? I think politics should always come. I think families should always come before politics. And I think the perception of the Kennedys is they're a clan, right?

They always stick together. Yes. Right? And through rape charges, murder charges. Through death, through like all these, the tragedies and difficulties the family has had. And this is personal for me because, again, you're always surprised by who will support you

and who won't support you, who will work against you. When you're running for office. When you're running for office. And again, I know candidates are Democrats, right? work against you when you're in running when you run for office um and again i know democ kennedys are democrats right um and i know that they think that they're that their uncle or brother or um can't win right they don't think he can win um and the trouble is you would to your point rachel that you would still say one of our family members is running for president and I'm a Democrat and I'm going to support Joe Biden. However, I'm not going to make public public supporting comments and pictures with Joe Biden because one of my family members is actually running against him. He wants to win.

Nobody would expect that of them, would they? No, they wouldn't. But I think it wasn't. This is good for Joe Biden's campaign. I think it wasn't Joe. It's this, but this is good for the, for Joe Biden's campaign. But I think the family, the Kennedy family was all too willing to say, we want to make sure we message to America and to the Democrat party. We are with you. We're more loyal to the Democrat party than we are to our own family, which is, which is, I think I was at Rose Kennedy, Rose, Rose was the mom, the matron. I think Rose was probably rolling over in her grave saying,

was the mom, the matron, I think Rose was probably rolling over in her grave saying, you know what, the clan that I built, you are shattering over politics. Listen, we've been Democrats, but we're family first. And now you see their party first, family second. And you know, that rot does not build long-term family bonds. It will cause, I think, great dissension within their family. I couldn't agree more. You know, when you were, I think, great dissension within their family. I could agree more. You know, when you were running for office, Sean, we didn't have any problems with our own family, even though in your family, there were Democrats and independents. In fact, I still remember one of the funniest stories was when you were running in the early months, somebody said, Sean, I think that you've really, you're really penetrating here. You're

really getting a lot of people engaged in your campaign because I just saw a car drive by and it had a, a Barack Obama tick sticker on it. And it had a Duffy for Congress sticker. And then you said, is it a yellow Jeep? Like, yes, it was a yellow Jeep. I'm like, yeah, that's my mom. That's my mom's car. And actually it might might have been a Bernie's ticker, actually. She was a big Bernie Sanders fan. She was a big Obama fan. But of course, she would never not vote for her own son. And the thing was, she didn't have to vote. She didn't have to put the ticker. All she had to do was do nothing and just not work against you. We had friends who were Democrats who we thought were really good friends. I mean, friends that you

actually spent holidays with. And when you ran for office, boy, they came out against us, started working against your campaign because they were more loyal to the Democrat party. And it was interesting to me because I thought to myself, well, you know, because somebody, I mentioned it just, obviously I was pretty upset. I mean, these are our good friends. Why would they do that? I think they even put out an op-ed saying they're really nice people, but their ideas are so dangerous. They open up campaign offices. I'm like, what? These are our friends. Like what is going on? And I remember somebody said, well, what would you do if, if your friend's husband was running? And I said, I would never vote for him. Because he's crazy.

We think his politics is crazy. We would never vote for him. I would never vote for him. He turned out to be not such a great dude anyway. But in any case, I said I would never vote for him. But I would never publicly have stated that, wrote an op-ed, opened an office against him, worked against him. Because I care more about my friend than I did about politics. And that is how I feel about family more and more.

And Sean, we saw this, I think about two cycles ago, we started to see ads coming out. And I'd never seen anything like this before, where it was during the Trump era. That's right. And I think the Trump era so created so many deranged, Trump derangement syndrome, like on a scale that had never been seen before. Anything that happened to George Bush or even Sarah Palin looked so small in comparison. When Trump was running, suddenly you could do or say anything because Trump was such a threat. And so you started to see siblings taking out ads against their own siblings. And you and I were horrified. We actually went public about it and said,

this is a very dangerous trend. I think this was Paul Gosar, the congressman from Arizona. Also, Dennis comes from a big family. There was a guy in Wisconsin who was running for Senate and his family, I think, donated to another candidate. That was that was I think there was a Senate race, wasn't it? Yeah, there was a state Senate race. But this was a big the family cut the siblings cut a commercial against him. Oh, my God. And this is the betrayal that you feel from your family doing that to you

is real. And again, there's a lot of things I like from RFK, a lot of things I don't like about RFK. But the one thing that should exist is family. And even when I don't agree with people, I want their families to be strong. Well, and the thing is, Sean, the elections come and go, I want their families to be strong. And the thing is, Sean, the elections come and go. The family is forever. And so they're making a decision about this presidential cycle because they probably bought into the whole like democracy is on the line, like whatever that the Democrats are saying about about about Trump. And they obviously believe that JFK's presence in the race could help Trump.

I'm sure that's why they're doing it. And they've bought into this threat to democracy. But this election will come and go. And as important as you and I think it is, we could never imagine. I mean, there's something very communistic about this kind of mentality. And basically, this is what communism communism does communists have always tried to break down the bonds of family because they are a threat to their ideology and this and and your loyalty to to the party to the state you know the image of the the kennedys playing football um where's their place in massachusetts is it Kennebunkport? No, they were in Hyannisport.

The big football games and how muscular and manly they were. Listen, this 4th of July football game at the Kennedys is going to be real. They're going to be tackling each other, beating the crap out of each other. It's like 40 against 1 in that thing. You know what? I want to tie this up by saying nothing. It's like 40 against one in that thing. You know what? I want to tie this up by saying nothing is more important than family. No political race.

No single issue, whether they're doing it because they want to protect abortion and women's rights. There is nothing more important than family. And all they had to do was passively, not publicly, not support him. They didn't have to vote for him and they didn't have to post pictures online to sort of rub it in his face. And he has been so gracious, by the way, Sean, about it. He has been so gracious to his family. But that's a lesson for all of us. Politics, especially now, can be very divisive. There's people on all sides of these issues. And because they're our family, we know how far we can go, how far we can push a conversation before it can turn into something that's going to be longer lasting of anger and animosity.

Whether it's, again, when we get together for Easter that's coming up or for the 4th of July when our families are together. And I think it's important for everyone to know, again, even today, politics is not more important than our family. We need to make sure that we're going to have these conversations. It's okay to have these conversations, but don't push it to the place where you're going to ruin a relationship with someone in your family over politics because it's not worth it.

You're probably not going to change their mind. They're not going to change yours. You can engage in a little back and forth, but don't go to the point where it's going to be long lasting, this disagreement. So a lesson for what not to do from the Kennedys. That's right. A lot of lessons there, but don't want to stick them together. All right. Stay tuned because we're going to come back with my visit to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's district where I met angry business owners, prostitutes, and constituents, former volunteers who say, we don't love her anymore.

And a whole lot more after this break. You got it. This episode is brought to you by Missouri. From November 25th to December 2nd, get 25% off everything on orders over $150 in Missouri's biggest sale ever. From bold hoops to minimalist stacks, Missouri has something for everyone. Missouri makes handcrafted fine jewelry for every day made with responsibly sourced materials. So you can look and feel good about gifting and wearing them. Shop your wishlist 25% off at Missouri.com today.

All right, welcome back to From the Kitchen Table. As Rachel teased before the break, she went this week to AOC's congressional district. Yeah, that's how people feel there. And wanted to see how these socialist communist policies of AOC are actually working for the citizens

that she represents. Rachel, how did it go? So I went down to Jackson Heights, and it's interesting. It was an area that has just deteriorated. I mean, the one thing that I have, the one common thing that everyone said was, it's been deteriorating for the last couple years, but over the last seven to eight months, it's really gone into overdrive. It's almost unrecognizable. And it's ironic because so many of the people who legally immigrated from the third world are now seeing their own neighborhood turn into the country they left, the countries

that they left. And in some cases, the countries they left are safer and look better than this. So one of the problems is you have all these illegal immigrants who have come in in the last, you know, seven, eight, nine months. Many of them bust out by governors like Ron DeSantis and and and Greg Abbott, who who say, you know, we're going to let these guys end up in, you know, send them out to, you know, sanctuary cities where, you know, the the Democrats in those areas say they want all this illegal immigration. They want the open border. So let's bring the border to you. And so that's what's happened. And so what they've done is many of them don't have jobs.

They're basically either stealing or taking things from donation bins. And then they're setting up these makeshift flea markets. And they're setting up like these makeshift flea markets and, and they're selling the stuff. It's creating a neighborhood that's not safe in many ways because it's attracting people that aren't good. There's all, it's also turning into a red light. Oh,

by the way, the vendors that are, aren't just clothes. They're also selling tamales or ceviche. And they're doing it on the streets, out of carts. I watched a woman who, by the way, was, you know, she was kind of blowing her nose. She had no way to wash her hands. She's peeling potatoes. She's selling things. So there's no health inspection going on. And then you have a situation where, you know, the people who own the businesses in the area,

they have to go through, they have to pay the rent, they have to pay the taxes. In many cases, they're getting liquor licenses and then they're looking outside and these- Deal with the regulations and the inspections and everything goes- And liquor license, which is very expensive, Sean.

And they're seeing them selling bottles of booze outside. We don't know where they got the booze, if they stole it or what, but they're angry because they're like and then on top of it it's turning to a red light district so you have prostitutes they have prostitute there's i mean listen i showed up at 9 10 i was there 9 10 11 o'clock in the morning i saw many women turning tricks um right there in front of, you know, establishments that are like, this is shooing people away from our establishment.

And then of course this is a human trafficking situation. They're no longer ladies of the night. No, they're ladies of the day. No, no question about it. And I ended up being able to talk. Nobody wanted to talk to me on camera. And I was able to talk to two of them. One was from Colombia. One was Venezuelan. The one from Venezuela was from an island called

Margarita. She'd been in our country about 11 months. And she was looking over her shoulder. She was clearly afraid that somebody was watching her talk to me. And we have no idea how this woman got here. For all we know, she's paying off her debt to the cartel. She's basically an indentured servant paying with her own body. These are not good conditions. And the other part of it, Sean, is she's in a district where the congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, doesn't refer to prostitution as prostitution. She calls it sex work. She wants to normalize this kind of activity. And even though, as we know it, you're more likely to die as a prostitute than you are in combat.

That's how dangerous this line of work is. So it's really disgusting that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is trying to normalize it. I talked to a guy who's running, his name was Ramsey's Frias. He's running for assembly in that district. I asked him what he thought about normalizing prostitution in his district. He said, I live down the street. Heck no, I don't want this to turn into a red light district. This is a terrible idea that only somebody who lived outside of this neighborhood would ever be in favor of what she's concentrating on. Sean, I Googled her. She is entirely focused on climate change and she's working hard and getting a lot of attention for passing legislation on deep fake AI pornography, not really caring much about the pornography that's happening on the streets right now. Yeah. The problem is if you have a family and you have little boys, little girls that you're trying to raise well, you might've come to this neighborhood and go, listen, it might not be

the best neighborhood, but I can afford to live here. And there's good people that live here. And I've got a community around me. I've got restaurants and bodegas and whatever. Well, all of a sudden, a year later, it's turned into an absolute slum where people, again, are having flea markets on the streets. There's prostitutes, there's prostitution, there's drugs, there's all the bad elements of a third world country now are in your neighborhood. And you have to try to raise your kids in that environment, which makes it that much more difficult. It's hard to raise kids today anyway, right? But to raise them in that environment is troubling.

The business owners that I talked to said, you know, they're losing business, not just because the crime outside and the prostitution, but they have to close early. Their workers and the owners who are female can't they can't be walking at eight o'clock at night. They have to close by seven. And in any case, they said the customers won't come after seven. So they're losing business and they're wondering where is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And so she lives in a high rise apartment with the Whole Foods underneath, um, uh, with a penthouse, like a, like a very nice, um, sort of open air area on the top of it in DC, very sort of, um, of it in D.C., very sort of yuppie existence in Washington, D.C. And these people kept saying, either they didn't know who she was or they knew her and they were angry.

And they said, we had one woman. Here's what she had to say about it. She is never here. I was a volunteer for her. She completely abandoned our community. She said, I hope that she sees this interview because we all helped her get elected. She said she only cares about Washington and her money. She said nobody loves her here anymore. So you can see, she says she only cares about her Washington and her money.

She abandoned us. She doesn't care about us. And this is a woman who knocked doors for her. Can you imagine having that kind of reaction? You remember Congress. Yeah, no. And again, those who help you get elected, especially when no one knows you, no one likes you, and you're trying to get your message out. It's the people that first volunteer to help you knock those doors and distribute your literature that are so important to your campaign. And it seems like AOC has forgotten the people that sent her to Washington. Again, she's wildly famous. She's on the cover of magazines. Do you think she's in trouble, Sean?

Listen, you know what? I think it's really hard to beat an incumbent, one with as much money and celebrity as she has. So even though people are angry, unless you have far greater offenses, I think it's going to be hard to beat AOC. I hope that's not true. I hope someone can take her out. It'd be a great victory for freedom. But I just, I don't see it happening. And we'd see polling right now that would show that she's vulnerable and we're not seeing that. I don't have their internal numbers. Let me say something else.

I think this goes to a broader issue. There's a lot of people who are coming to our country and there's a lot of disrespect, I think, for people who have come. Whether they're breaking our laws, just by one coming over the border and lying about the circumstances for which they're coming, whether they're involved in criminal activity, crime on the streets, drug use. Urinating in public was one of the things that people were really upset about, Sean. I heard that over and over. They're like, they're peeing in public in front of children, in front of churches. That kind of disrespect is so unbelievable. But it's foreseeable. Because if you have a government, whether it's at the state level,

local level, or the federal level, that doesn't respect their state, their municipality, or their country by not wanting to enforce the laws that they have in the books, they have no respect for themselves. And how do you expect people who come to this country to respect your country when you don't respect it by saying, you know what, we've passed certain laws by which we're going to live, and we're not going to enforce them because we don't have enough respect for ourselves. So whether it's the people selling things on the street, the vendors, they don't have permits or license.

They just let it happen. The drug use, the vendors, they don't have permits or license. They just let it happen. The drug use, the prostitution, the list is long of things that the city and the state and our federal government have allowed. And then we sit back and go, well, why aren't these better migrants? Why don't they follow our rules? Well, you don't enforce the law. Of course, you're not going to follow the rules when you don't enforce it. And the people that pay the price are the mom and pop little shops in that community who invested their blood, sweat, tears, their last dollar to build a little business, to build their American dream.

And it gets shattered because some guy can waltz in and set up a shop right outside your door and have none of that overhead, none of the inspections, none of the regulation, none of the taxes because it's all under the table cash free. And a lot of the goods are probably stolen. And how do you compete with that? So what happens is you end up cashing in your American dream because you have politicians. because and the neighborhood will suffer when that the the restaurant i walked into sean it was run by a uh well i walked into several but the one that i i'm referring to in this in this moment was a a a venezuelan restaurant run by a couple she was venezuelan he was mexican american both of them legal residents who came you know 15 20 years ago and they said

residents who came 15, 20 years ago. And they said, when we first came, we would be afraid to even jaywalk. That's how lucky we felt to be an American. That's how grateful we were to be in this country. And they said, we understand there's illegal immigration. We're not judging. This is an immigrant community, so they're not judging. They said, but they must follow the law once they get here. And they said, we are following the laws. They're not following the laws. They're not looking to work as hard as we are working. They're getting freebies that we never got and never dreamed of asking for. So when, when Donald Trump says they didn't send their finest, maybe on this route because of the conditions and the lack of vetting and all the things that are happening, maybe that's why they haven't brought their best. These people, you could see the restaurant. It was impeccable, Sean.

They took such pride. They had a bar. And I could tell the liquor license was a big deal for them. They worked really hard to be able to afford to buy the liquor license, and then to see the state not provide, you know, law enforcement. And they said, they must follow the same laws we're following here. I asked them about the prostitution and they just, you know, they just throw their hands up in the air and you see how hard they work.

And it just makes you sad. I think you told me the story about Argentina, where people don't pay their taxes, right? And it's kind of a national joke that they do all they can and just not pay. Once your neighbors don't pay their taxes and their neighbors don't pay their taxes and you pay yours, one day you go, they're not paying. Why am I paying? Same thing here. They're not following the rules. And I am. At one point, people throw up their hands and go, none of us are going to follow the rules. You start to lose the law-abiding citizens as well because of the filth you've allowed to fester in your community. Not the people I'm

saying, but I'm saying the bad- The little trash. That's what they said, Sean. They said the trash was piling up because these people are on the streets. They rigged this cart, like a shopping cart. And it's kind of ingenious. They put metal around it and turned it into a makeshift sink of sorts.

Obviously not hygienic at all. Not up to code. Not up to code at all. But the irony, of course, is that the person who represents this district, the legal immigrants, the residents of this community that are suffering, they are represented by somebody who is completely complicit in opening up the border and creating the conditions that they have to live in under that she does not. No doubt. And listen, I look forward to continuing to cover this story. I think it's important. I'm going to stay on it. And these are people

who don't have voices and you give them a voice on a very good platform. We've got to run here in a second, but I want to just acknowledge some great qualities that we have. This is number nine, that we can sit and do a podcast and ignore the chaos around us. If our listeners were able to ignore as well as we are, we could just tune it out. If you made it through the whole podcast, we apologize for some of the disruptions, made it through the whole podcast. We apologize for some of the disruptions, the backtalk from Valentina. But as the ninth, we can navigate, shut her out and focus on our conversation. It's a well-acquired taste or trait. It's a skill set. It is a skill set. It's a skill set. Kudos to you. Kudos to you too, honey. Thank you. I appreciate that. Listen, if you like our podcast,

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