It Could Happen Here - Police Killing Outside RNC on ‘Make America Safe Again’ Day

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Robert and Gare report from where Ohio police shot a houseless Black man, meanwhile Sophie attends a Moms for Liberty event starring Ron DeSantis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast recorded at the Republican National Convention, which I do not very much like. We're having a great time, though. Well, not really. This is the worst day we've had so far. This is one of the worst days I've ever had. Yeah. We did get to talk with Rudy Giuliani, which was a highlight of the day. You'll be hearing more about that later. But first, let's go around, let you know who's going to be talking on this episode. First off, we've got Garrison Davis. Hello. Finally identified as she, her by the Secret Service.

There you go. Congrats. They're going woke. They're going woke. That's why it happened. That's what Rudy talked about. And I guess he was right. And then speaking of woke,

D.E.I. Jesus Christ. Sorry, Sophie. D.E.I. supervisor. Sophie Lichterman. I've had a day. Don't make fun of me. We are in the, like the chunk of the,

there's like the main stadium where all of the very red and Botox people give their speeches. And then there's this part where all of the different like media companies have booths set up. iHeart's got a booth there. A very large booth. Very large booth. And we are kind of above that right now because it's a relatively quiet place to record. For some visuals here, we are sitting in this part of an arena. The Panther Arena. The Panther Arena.

There is red carpet everywhere and there are cubicle style booths for various publications. Let's see. I see OAN. We are sitting right above the iHeart and the Daily Wire booth. They have a whole wall of Matt Walsh. A wall of Walsh.

Walsh, if you will. Breitbart's got a tiny little cube. Very small. Frank Speech has a little booth. A lot of local radio. When we met Rudy earlier today, he was at the WVON booth, which is a local radio station. They did not let him speak this

year at the RNC. Did not really seem to want him to be here. That's too bad. He claimed to be happy that that was the case. Well. Yeah. Interesting guy. Took a little tumble today. Took a little tumble today, fell and then kept falling on the floor of the event. Classic Rudy. And when we went to lunch earlier and wound up in the same room as Ted Cruz briefly, who was also at that restaurant, a lady came up to us, a Republican alternate delegate, and said, are you a band? Are you musicians?

You look like musicians. Solely based off of Robert having tattoos. I do think it was entirely based on the fact that I have tattoos. You probably just look cooler than anyone else here. Thank you. I said we. That's the first time you've said that to me, Garrison. And it really, you know what?

It took a convention. It took a convention for that. Older than my grandparents. I will say that at this restaurant, the restaurant worker did give us all free shots of vodka because she said we had looked like we had had a week. And boy, howdy, is she right? I'm sure she's been having one, too. Yeah, she was very nice.

So, Gary and Robert, do you want to take me? We weren't together for most of today. Do you want to take me through your day, and then I can tell you about my really fun day? God, yeah. So, we'll start by talking about our morning. So, yesterday was a pro-Palestine march. That was Monday for reference. Kind of billed as a march on the RNC.

It was a sizable demonstration. Yeah, at least 500. At least 500. Uncleared to me the exact numbers, but not tiny. A march is a little bit of a misnomer. It was located in the park that's kind of closest to the RNC security area. Today, it was a very different vibe. There were counter protesters, but there were also like,

there was like a church group who was there with signs. It was like a Westboro Baptist church style street preacher group. They do not like Catholics. They don't like gay people or Catholics or fornication or adultery, that sort of thing. You know, if you can picture the big signs that people carry around,

it's that. Sounds fun, guys. We saw an amazing t-shirt today. Robert, do you have a recollection of the best t-shirt that we saw today? Oh, God, is that the prolapsed an amazing t-shirt today. Robert, do you have a recollection of the best t-shirt that we saw today? Oh, God, is that the prolapsed rectum t-shirt? It sure is. Yeah, anal sex equals prolapsed rectum. God, it felt

like a John quote. There was a book of the Bible that I know does not refer directly to prolapsed rectum. Romans. Paul. Paul was not talking about rectums. Well, but Paul is the most homophobic of all the New Testament writers. But basically we talked to some of these, these types of people gathered at this little, this little square, this little park. There was

maybe like one or two people protesting the RNC itself, just holding signs, you know, someone with a megaphone, but the rest of the people gathered were these, were these street preacher types. And then we went over to this media section earlier this morning. That's where we talked to our now good friend, Rudy Giuliani. So again, if you're picturing this floor, it's like a bunch of large cubicles. If you've ever been to a trade show, it looks like a trade show, right? But each of the cubicles is a different radio station or internet media company. And Rudy was just sort of chilling at a local radio station booth with Laura Loomer when we first walked up.

Amazing vibes. She thanked God left. And I will say, Laura Loomer, famous on the internet for looking very peculiar, one of the more normal looking people at the RNC. Which I don't think is a testament to how normal Laura Loomer looks. It's a testament to the types of people that we are seeing every day at the RNC, that everyone kind of looks a little Loomer-esque. Yeah.

So she looks a little bit less bizarre in comparison to just everyone else we're seeing who all has, you know, a curious amount of facial surgeries going on that makes them just look a little different. Just a little different. We saw the Fox News head anchor today whose face was as smooth as a baby's ass. It looked like carved marble. It looked like carved marble

and was clearly bloated with botulin toxin. Incredible. Yeah. He was a beautiful man, Sophie. He was a beautiful man. Do you think he uses retinol? He must use retinol. And he had a chin as wide

as like Glory Days Bruce Campbell. Very wide face. I bet he never forgot to wear sunscreen, unlike you two. So yeah, kind of the last thing we did at the convention before coming back was we had a little conversation with Rudy, primarily about Ukraine. His basic stance is that Ukraine is stealing all of the money that the government gives it. When I pointed out that that money was primarily coming in military subsidies and like military weapons, he said they were stealing the weapons and selling them. And I asked to who, and he said he didn't know, at which point his handler got him out of there. And we wound up walking over to the I heart booth where one of our coworkers, Dan O'Donnell, who's a more conservative guy on the network, but who through a law

enforcement contact got the story that a man had just been shot outside of the RNC security zone, but by police who were in town for the RNC. It wound up that they are Columbus, Ohio police. So we rushed down there, split up with him pretty quickly, because I think he was mostly interested in talking to the police on scene. And we wound up right in the middle of, you know, what is the poorest neighborhood in Milwaukee, the poorest zip code in the state, one of the highest rates of incarceration in the country. It is a deeply deprived area. The first guy we talked to, he was with Lighthouse Ministries, I think was the name of the organization, which is essentially he was running like a Christian halfway house. And we saw another larger halfway house even closer to the shooting. Like there were two halfway houses effectively right next to each other. That's

the kind of neighborhood this was. And when we got there, police had just started setting up cordons. They had started with about a block or two, fenced off with police tapes, but were widening it every few minutes. They were adding new blocks. Quickly expanding. And a large number of cops were on scene. There were horse cops on scene. We could not get closer than about a block from the site of the shooting itself, but we were able to get into a park where there were a lot of local people who were very angry at what had happened. And one of the first things I encountered was a couple of guys, you know, one of whom was filming on his phone, yelling at the police, a couple of whom were

sitting in lawn chairs. And one of whom was speaking about like, you know, who had clearly witnessed the shooting saying like, you know, they were just having an argument. If you'd let us, the neighborhood handle it, we would have handled it. The most there would have been was a black eye. What the fuck is wrong with you guys? We talked to him, his name is Emmanuel, and I'm actually just going to play a clip from that interview with Emmanuel right now. All right, here's what happens.

All these policemen on the bikes, the ones that you see, so they parked in the King Center alley, and they were just basically patrolling and watching us, right? So two guys have a little brawl, about a brawl, as we call it, about to fight. So they didn't really fight, and everyone on the bike, what I'm saying, police or shoppers, shot him.

They emptied the clip. Every 12 officers on the bike emptied their clips, because you can see we cocked back. Emptied their clips, and then when they were done doing that, they turned the guns on us. And then now they're pushing us further and further away like we're an issue because they don't want us to tell you guys what really happened. When they could have tased him and the rest of them sitting in jail,

they shot him and they was going to shoot the other guy. And then he ran, so they turned the guns on about 16 of us. Robert. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, they were. Other reason why they didn't shoot because they realized their guns were empty. So they called the backups, and that's why they have more backups and more backups and more backups and that's why we are backing up yeah and is that the uh that's the plan now is my guess

they just keep on moving us around yeah yeah i don't know if they think we're part of the rnc they have tear gas and uh yep tear gas and masks well you, Emmanuel Nice to meet you Yep, tear gas and masks Starting to feel like Portland again And yeah, I would say that what Emmanuel said is consistent We talked to two other people who had witnessed the shooting And then a couple other people who had been close by And they all agreed with the gist of what emmanuel had said well and emmanuel told you something before you started uh recording there about how like they felt this was

like a very very solvable problem yeah for like the community like this is just like a an average fight that they could have they could have ended themselves yeah and you know in the next hour these people would have been friends again yeah and instead police from out of out of state showed up and just started shooting and that is what the initial thing we heard through our you know co-worker who was talking to law enforcement was a man had had a knife or knives was brandishing them police told him to drop he didn, and they had to shoot him. Locals on scene said police did not tell him to drop anything, ran up and just started shooting. And as you heard from Emanuel, his experience of the event was that police then turned their guns on the crowd. And he felt threatened deeply by this for reasons that are obvious. And I will

say that everyone we talked to in the neighborhood had broadly consistent stories. This was not a serious fight. This was not a thing that would have escalated to lethal violence in the normal course of human events. But a huge number of out-of-state cops rolled up to the altercation unnecessarily and drew their guns and started shooting. So there was a fairly nice homeless encampment. They had a wonderful community garden. Really nice garden. Just like a block away. And we figured, oh, this guy might have been houseless.

And we started to talk to more people who knew him. And yes, we found out. We actually walked right past his tent on the way to the shooting. He had a tent by himself in this little alleyway. I guess, Robert, you talked more to that guy that knew him. I talked to a guy who knew him. He said his nickname was Jehovah because he was a Jehovah's Witness. The guy who I was speaking to was a Muslim and specifically stated to me, like, you know, I'm a Muslim.

He's a Jehovah's Witness. But we always got along. He was a really nice guy. He didn't deserve this. Like, he wasn't a dude who generally caused problems. He was not a dangerous person. He was maybe a guy who was having a little bit of a heated moment with another dude. And again, there happened to be a bunch of out-of-state cops who decided to make it everyone's problem. That was his attitude. And a couple of things were noteworthy. I mean, we talked to a woman

who was kind of dropping her daughter off at work who lived nearby. This is a lady who lived in a little bit nicer of a neighborhood. She wasn't quite there. An older black woman who was like, you know, the cops show up to do this, but there's no cops. Like if this had been any other time of the year, there would have been no cops in this neighborhood ever at all. Like they're never around when anybody wants them to be, but they show up to kill a guy because the RNC is in town. And that was very much the consistent response we got from everyone in the neighborhood. You know, we stayed there a while. Yeah, that's what happened. One of the things that I couldn't not notice is once we were down in the RNC, you know, earlier in the day, very cool,

a lot of shade, tall buildings. When we were in that neighborhood near 14th and boulette right outside the martin luther king jr community center yeah sun was beating down on us there was very little cover it was very hot the streets were notably poor repair uh the buildings were in a lot poorer repair but there was actually also evidence of like street life. Like here, the RNC is, all of downtown Milwaukee has been sanitized, right? They swept encampments close to the RNC perimeter and stuff. People have had to move around. And no one you encounter lives here, right?

Not during the event. That's just the way that it goes. A lot of the local buildings are shut down. And one of the things that was interesting about this was the degree to which all of these people in the most deprived neighborhood in Milwaukee had a really clear understanding of what had happened near and around them and knew each other. And there were a couple of people we saw who were going around different chunks within a block or two of each other and clearly knew all of their neighbors, which was very different from kind of the vibes that we've gotten downtown. Milwaukee is as nice as it is. And I think we've all really enjoyed the city, one of the vibes that we've gotten downtown milwaukee is as nice as it

is and i think we've all really enjoyed this city one of the most segregated cities in the country and that was very clear because i think there was one white person who was a resident of the neighborhood that we talked to that woman who was next to the guy who knew jehovah and um i guess that's most of what i have to say yeah i mean more and more police kept showing up there was this uh it's basically like a riot squad with mace and gas masks showed up. You know, there was bike cops, mounted patrol cops. They just started to flood this area. Eventually, they slowly kind of, you know, dispersed out as the scene got more under control.

And they realized there probably wasn't going to be a huge protest at this location. I believe there's going to be a vigil tonight at 8 p.m. near the site of the shooting. So, yeah, I mean, it's just tough to go from the RNC with, you know, this massive police presence, all of these extremely wealthy, rich white Republicans, and then be reminded the real people exist and put events like this on. People get killed by police to make sure that people feel comfortable going to these sorts of events. Just completely unnecessarily. Yeah.

And that's just a good reminder every time I walk through one of these police checkpoints. Yeah. Donald Trump, you know, survived his brush with the shooting. This young man didn't. And he died because this event was set up in his town. young man didn't. And he died because this event was set up in his town. We know that the Secret Service and the, you know, the other agencies, because it wasn't just the Secret Service that was responsible for Trump getting shot. There were a lot of other law enforcement agencies there, failed at their job, you know, last Saturday to stop the former president from getting shot,

failed very badly at that. But still at the RNC, the only thing that the security state knows how to do is flood the zone with cops. And the only thing those cops know how to do is when they encounter anything a little bit hostile, draw their guns and empty them. You know, that was my impression. And yeah, I think that's probably all we need to say about that right now. Sophie will tell us about her experience as me and Robert were walking around this site of this police murder after this short break. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every

week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandenti. And I'm Jumae Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu,

aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. colleagues were out on the ground, I went to a super duper fun event called Giving Americans a Voice Town Hall, hosted by the Moms for Liberty. It was interesting to say the least. It was a three-hour event with various speakers. It was a long event. Very long. And I recorded all of it, so we can put that out at a later date. Let me just give you a quick rundown of what the event was. And Moms for Liberty is like a lobbying group for parental rights.

Very supportive of banning books. Banning books, parental rights, a lot of stuff around education and school. They're very active in Washington. They're the sponsor of a lot of these really horrible really like horrible bills about limiting like information to children, limiting the rights of children, that sort of thing. Yeah. And additional sponsors for this event were conservative partnership Institute, heritage, heritage foundation authors of project 2025 young Americas.

I can't even read this logo. It's like the young Republicans voting association, young Americans foundation. Young Americans Foundation. We did it. Great job. And Public Square, which is a very strange app. And there were three separate panels. And some of the people that were featured on the panel were Governor Ron DeSantis of

Florida. Sarah Huckabee Sanders made an appearance. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. The governor of Wisconsin was there? He opened.ott walker the governor of wisconsin the governor of wisconsin was there he opened the governor the governor of wisconsin was there that's upsetting he was like one of the first people who spoke not a senator did not the actual governor the 45th governor jesus christ and scott walker yes correct various groups of attorneys general yeah and uh get the senator as well ron johnson yeah of wisconsin and it was uh it was it

was a strange event what sort of things did they talk about well uh they that started off with them giving an excuse that the reason why that there was an attempted assassination on former president trump was because of the media falsely compare a k him to Hitler, to which they said there is only one Hitler. There's actually been quite a few Hitlers, although there's less now. Also, I would like for them to field that question to J.D. Vance, but anyway. Fair enough.

You described Trump as Hitler, yes. Fair enough. And then there was, you know, as there are at most of these events, there was a prayer, and I just thought it was super interesting that the person giving the prayer referred to the panelists and various speakers

as great actors, which was just like an interesting word choice to me. Extensively like political actors, I would assume, but there's some interesting associations. And like one of the main things that they talked about at this event was education. And they said their biggest issue that they have in the United States

is the creation of the Federal Department of Education and that they were going to change that, which got huge, huge cheers from the crowd. They claim that one of the reasons why the young man had attempted to assassinate Donald Trump was because he had gone to a large school. They are very anti-large school. Why not? And that was one of the main reasons, as well as the media referring to former President Trump as Hitler. They were adamant that teachers unions do not protect kids and that they are only out for themselves and that all teachers unions have been infiltrated by the left. Well, that part is kind of true. But no, I mean, attacks on teachers' unions are, I've seen those more in the past four years among a lot of either

like right-wing influencers or actual politicians. The teachers' union is a very good boogeyman. Yeah. Because some people, you know, like their individual teachers, but no, no, no. The real problem is the teachers' union. Yes. That actual distinction was brought up multiple times. There you go. There you go. And at one point, somebody in the back of the room dropped their phone, but it was very loud and an unsettling noise to the point where everybody thought that it might have been a gun. And everyone kind of, understandably so, jumped up and around. Oh, they're scared of guns, huh? The Republicans, really. Bunch of fucking babies. understandably so jumped up and around uh oh they're scared of guns huh the republicans really

yeah fucking babies and the overall energy is that they hate the federal government they want things to go back to a local level and that the left is ruining and grooming children lots of weird as you can imagine stuff about gender lots, lots of stuff about sports. The trans stuff consistently got some of the biggest applause. Oh, something to note here. Anytime Elon Musk was brought up, which was quite a bit, the crowd went batshit. Yeah. Huge, wild cheers for anything to do with Elon,

which I thought was, you know, not unexpected, but just that, like like he got louder cheers than I think he got a louder cheer than when they brought up Donald Trump. He's really one of one of their new great heroes. What did the attorneys general talk about? They were mostly talking about different wins they had had in terms of like their states and things they were bringing to the table and mostly like personal stories of like things that they look for in their family the missouri attorney general andrew bailey his biggest uh reaction from the crowd was when he said in missouri we don't co-parent with the

government and the crowd loved that yeah i mean this is a big a big big parental rights group and yeah i mentioned in the attorneys general because back in 2023 the attorneys generals from a lot of these red states drafted this this very angry kind of threatening letter to target kind of demanding that because because some of their states own like an interest in target they have to remove any kind of any products that cater to trans people, because this is betraying the investors by making this poor economic decision. And really, the attorneys general have been one of the strongest forces against trans rights in a lot of these states. And I believe because I showed up near the end of the attorney general's segment,

I believe they referred to themselves as like the last line of defense, even if you have like a Democrat, you know, like mayor or, you know, you have more Democrat officials in like your city or state, the attorneys general are like the ones that are going to hold it down, even if the rest have kind of sold out or are liberals or Democrats. Yeah. I would say the AGs were the most transphobic of the bunch before I was doing ranking, which is... Yeah. No, that and all the... And DeSantis. And DeSantis,is yeah one of them

said you know in a laughing way which again got a great reaction from the crowd think about a kindergartner saying what's your pronoun very very funny ha ha ha ha they were laughing and like ha ha ha about that yes very good um and just the last thing I'll say about the AGs was that that same AG from Missouri said, our rights come from God, not man. Famously in the Constitution, yes. Anyways, and then DeSantis and Sir Huckabee Sanders closed it out. Which we arrived for. We arrived just in time to see DeSantis.

Thank God. Old meatball Ron. DeSantis and Huckabee Sanders got to be the two most uncharismatic speakers I've seen at the convention so far I'm not surprised they were both shunted off to the I would call it the shame coliseum DeSantis was wearing jeans which is just a fascinating move the knees were very worn very worn jeans and essentially when he got up he basically did like a brag list of all the things that he has gotten done in florida talking about you know taking a fight to disney enacting a universal school choice making

sure that there's no sex ed in his schools very cool and then uh he talked oddly enough a lot about college university is correct yes he was he was talking about how like even if you raise your kid right even if we fix you know public schools you put in 18 hard years you spend 18 years raising your kid you do it right we fix all of the public schools everything's good as soon as they turn 18 they're going to go off to one of these liberal colleges and they're going to undo all of the good work that you've put in and and that needs to be the next thing to stop and he said that florida is the first state to take on higher education we've had a lot of focus on lower education. We now have to take on higher education, including doing like performance reviews for 10 good

professors every five years, in which case they can be fired for poor performance, which is kind of a wild concept for a 10-year-old professor. He also had a one-off wild line where he was like, you didn't see Hamas over on our universities. Yes. He referred to Palestinian human rights campus protesters as Hamas. Just saying that they are Hamas. He didn't say these people are like Hamas. He just said when Hamas was coming to the universities, they didn't show up in Florida.

Which is a very standard Republican line. It is. Yeah. And like there's just no difference between someone showing up to a protest in the United States because they don't like that thousands and thousands of Palestinians are being murdered. And that person is now indistinguishable from Hamas, according to the Republican Party, according to all of these speakers. Yeah. And so Sarah Sanders just tried to kind of ride on the coattails of DeSantis being like, hey, we're also fighting the transgenders. She did the same. She listed, you

know, some of her brags mentioned always has to do. She talks about her dad. I wrote down something she said because I was like, she said, the only war on women is on conservative women from the far left. Where are the feminists? They can't even tell you

what a woman is. Well, someone who's famously taken a woman's studies course where they never define what a woman is, totally. I guess the main upsetting thing for me, because the police just killed a black man a few hours ago, I was just reminded, you know, there's so many real people in Milwaukee, right? All the food service workers have been very nice,

but there's all these real people facing real issues in the poorest part of Milwaukee. And we just saw someone whose life was ended because police were here for the RNC from a totally different state and people with real economic concerns, real concerns about, you know, their life from police brutality, all this type of stuff. And as soon as we walked in to this moms for Liberty panel, the first thing we heard them complaining about was that they were being censored on Twitter. Yep. And that was their concern joe biden censored us their hardest thing to them was that they find all this gender stuff a little bit icky and that we're being censored on twitter and that is the level of

problems that these people are dealing with our kids didn't turn into the people we wanted them to yeah and that should be the entire country's problem they They are not, fundamentally, they don't have real problems, these people. They don't have real problems, but they are unhappy that everyone in the world does not inherently act to serve and validate them. And they are going to make that everyone's promise. That is what the RNC is. The people on the floor are what we would call like successful used car dealers, like level of capitalist, right? And they are worshiping an alliance of venture capitalists, guys like Vivek, guys like J.D. Vance, and of course, people who inherited a shitload of wealth and then eventually succeeded

in making money through a combination of vice casinos and the entertainment industry trump you know like that's that's who this is and uh speaking of a vague as we were getting up to leave they quickly announced that there was one more person who was going to speak and it was him yeah he sure did speak he gave a speech that i would say was indistinguishable from ai yes just about how how good america can be And even though we're in a tough spot. Chad GPT could have read that. Even though we're in a tough spot right now, I feel like America can do better.

And it was just, it was like, I could predict every other word. Yeah. Hey, this is Gare recording just outside of the main arena at the RNC where Governor Greg Abbott

just gave a speech. And now I'm giving you a short speech to tell you to enjoy these messages from our sponsors. We'll be right back. Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be

digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand

what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about

my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. True Rays. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head. Search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. This is Robert and Garrison recording from our hotel room later in the night because we have learned some new information about the police killing that happened earlier today. And also, we listened to a whole bunch of the RNC closing speeches tonight, which kind of relate to this question of police violence. I'll hand this off to Robert. Yeah. I mean, so since we were down there, the police have released both their security camera footage, body camera footage, and we have the name of the decedent,

who was Samuel Sharp Jr. This is the guy everyone in the neighborhood identified as Jehovah. That was the nickname that he went by. He looked younger. I've seen some reports that he was like 43, but he doesn't look 43 from the footage. You know, and he had just, he had used a community shower earlier that day that comes by the neighborhood for some of the homeless folks and, you know, told everyone he loved them. Footage is, I understand like exactly how it's going to be used and already is being used by the police. And I understand what they're saying, which is that if you look at the footage, they rush on scene, I think about 15 of them, five of them fired at once and immediately open fire.

You can see from a distance, the two guys are five to seven feet apart and are kind of crossing the street together while it looks like they are yelling. As the police rush in, Samuel runs forward. And if you clip frames out of the video, you can make a case that he was charging the guy with his knife or knives. Police are saying multiple. It's a little unclear to me in the footage if he had two or just one. But I can see how the police showing up on scene, being trained the way that they are, why they opened fire. The problem is that he ran forward in the first place because they rushed in. These two guys were squared up on the street and not

in an encounter that any of the locals considered to be particularly threatening. If you have spent a lot of time around homeless encampments, if you have spent a lot of time in neighborhoods that have a lot of homeless residents, it is not wild or uncommon to see people yelling and to see people with knives on their person, you know, even in their hands. Obviously, that can be upsetting to some people, but like the folks who lived in the neighborhood did not consider this an odd circumstance and was something that in the normal circumstance of events and the normal following of events would have been de-escalated. And in this case, it wasn't. The police opened fire before there was any attempt at de-escalation. Yeah. And like conservatives will always

point out, you know, why is he just following orders? Why isn't he just doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They will take little screenshots that make something look a certain way. And the simple fact is that these two men were not in any physical altercation before police arrived. He started running away as police started charging towards him. I think it would be very odd

that he would choose that moment to suddenly lunge forward and stab this person he knew. And I think it's very clear that he's actually just running away from police as people often do. And police have a long history of just shooting at people and killing people who are running away. You can look at what happened at the Wendy's in Atlanta in 2020. They shoot people when they don't follow what they're saying. They shoot people when people try to run away from

them. And that's just how cops work. So this video came out later in the evening, right as me and Robert arrived at the RNC second session. And the theme today for the RNC is Make America Safe Again. And some of the first few speeches I heard, one was from the mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson. Democrats in power demonstrate they don't care about stopping the killers or the thieves who terrorize black and brown communities. They don't care about securing our border. And they don't care about dangerous homeless encampments. And then there was also like a police chief who spoke. A former police chief who now runs a charity, I think for like wounded police officers. Yeah. But was also like a police chief who spoke. A former police chief who now runs a charity, I think, for like wounded police officers. Yeah.

But he's like a cop who is also an activist. And so all this framing is around talking about how the Democrats are the defund the police party, how Joe Biden and Kamala Harris themselves advocate for defunding the police, which is simply not true. If you look at what they say, Joe Biden will always reiterate that he always has argued for more police funding, for more police training. But they have framed this issue as there are not enough police around. That's what is making cities dangerous. Talking about, you know, all of the people dying of violent crime. Not a single mention, of course, that the out-of-state

police just killed someone a mile away from the Republican National Convention. The Make America Safe Again rhetoric shifted towards, you know, border rhetoric, you know, people believing genuinely, the people that are speaking in the audience, that we currently live under an open border policy, that people can just walk in totally fine, just a complete alternate reality view about what's going on in America, about what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's border policies are. And there was a number of speeches that tried to capitalize on this, on this, on this like border framing of like, there's ISIS terrorists pouring into the border only under Joe Biden, right? As if no one ever crossed the border illegally under Donald Trump. I know, Robert,

you were talking about some of the Ted Cruz speech tonight on his comments around the border. Yeah. And Cruz was interesting. I've never considered him a particularly strong speaker. And coming out, he initially went into kind of a conspiracy theory that you'll hear on the right about people being trafficked, sex trafficked, kids being sex trafficked across the border. He made a comment about them having colored wristbands, which is, again, not a thing that happens, but a reference to a widely believed right wing conspiracy. And that got kind of a scattered amount of applause, not not what I would call a reaction, given how we saw the crowd react to Marjorie Taylor Greene and how we saw them react, you know, whenever Trump comes out,

very muted. But as it went on, he started going into this kind of fear mongering spiel about migrants. He talked about the woman in San Francisco who was killed by that guy who found a gun in a bag and accidentally fired it. He talked about a number of different other cases that were people not from the country, undocumented immigrants who killed generally white Americans. And every time he would tell a story, he had like a refrain line that was something like, and that's what happens every damn time or something. And every time he gave the refrain, more and more people started to cheer in the audience. And by the end of it, with the last kind of couple of cases of, you know, migrant on white people crime he brought up, the crowd was like legitimately roaring, like as much as they did for Marjorie Taylor Greene. Roaring like as much as they did for Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now, the cop that came up next got a much louder response. And by far the biggest response of the night, even maybe including Trump, was when the delegates on the floor launched into a series of back the blue chants. They actually interrupted the cop with back the blue chants. And people were roaring for that. Yeah, there was a lot of these chants. And the Dallas mayor told a really funny story, how in 2020, some anti-police or defund the police activists showed up around his neighborhood

to try to, you know, get him to defund the police. And he got so scared by this that he changed from being a Democrat mayor to a Republican mayor. And now he runs the biggest Republican led city in the country. And he had this comment talking about how he grew up in, you know, poor black neighborhoods. And the thing that they've always wanted, the thing that makes them safer, is more cops, not less cops. Folks, I grew up in high crime neighborhoods. What we wanted was more and better policing, not less. And just contrasting that with our experiences today in a very

poor black community that just suffered an incident of police killing, that is just a lie, right? And everyone knows this. This is theater for the convention. Everyone at the convention is really into this sort of thing. They genuinely believe this sort of stuff, but it's just an alternate reality. We spent time in one of the poorest zip codes in the country, in the state today, and no, that's simply not true. Yeah, these people are angry about primarily theoretical problems, you know, this kind of specter of migrant crime, which is not really real in a demographic. You can pick out individual cases of that, but you can pick out individual cases of doctors stabbing people to death. And that doesn't mean we have a wave of doctor related crime, right? The reality of the situation is that like, these are super fans of the Republican Party, and they are super

fans of the narrative, and they are cheering for some of the moments, you know, they're not, there's some stuff that's gotten boring to them. I kind of think the child trafficking conspiracy theories might be boring to them. Maybe it's because that guy from the child trafficking movie got disgraced or whatever. They're just not as interested. So you can see every now and then as like their interest in certain things fades, but they're reacting like an audience that like a Comic-Con would to see in like a Star Wars trailer where some guy does a thing that's evidence of something that happened in the comics or whatever, people waiting to see. Like when fucking DeSantis comes on and starts talking about banning children from receiving gender affirming care, that's like

fucking Spider-Man showing up, right? And they react. So like the guy next to us when DeSantis started doing this, started screaming and like sticking his fist out towards DeSantis and like yelling at a volume that was honestly kind of surprising. The man could project. I'll give him that. So I think ultimately the way I would sum this up is that these are not normal people. These are people who love politics. And again, to be clear, I'm not saying these are not normal people because they're conservative.

My entire family are conservative. A lot of them are Trump voters, but they would find this audience deeply weird because these people are politics fans. And even most of the conservatives I know really dislike politics. Most normal people do. And I guess that's kind of where I've concluded is the difference between like the crazies and the normies. Normal people don't enjoy this stuff. The term I've used the past few years is politics as fandom. And that's all this fucking is. This is a convention. Just like Comic-Con.

Just like an anime con. This is a convention. And that is how they view politics. Anyway, back to the past versions of us to discuss a funny closing story regarding presidential footwear. So, that has been our day so far the last thing i would say we'll leave you with is on our way to the convention site this morning we we were walking through this hotel to get through security and we found this wonderful section called it was it was it was called the presidential experience yeah we walked in there

was a there was a replica of the ovalval Office. The Reagan era Oval Office. The Reagan era Oval Office. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. It was not good Netflix production, but like Netflix production level quality. Bad Netflix production quality. Yeah. So we walked through and then we found just a glorious site.

And I will let past Robert and myself tell you what we found at the presidential experience. We are here in the presidential shoe section. We've got Harry Truman, Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan, Warren G. Harding, who has a, quote, charming spat requested by President Harding exemplifies the elegance of the Victorian era. Dwight Eisenhower's shoes are pretty good.

JFK's are a little bit more fancy but less polished. Lyndon B. Johnson's completely unsurprising, very, very versatile, very efficient. He can get off easy. Kick off and show his bare feet up to a table. Slip on and off to get those dogs out when you need to. Abe Lincoln has some, honestly, very stylish boots. Theodore Roosevelt's as well. Large foot on Theodore. And Woodrow Wilson's shoe is the only white shoe in the bunch. Very small. Tiny feet. Very small feet. Kind of surprisingly. It

says he chose fashion over tradition with these white buckskins. Also, they have Ulysses S. Grant's little riding boots. The Victorian boots are very stylish, but honestly, I think I would go with Dwight D. Eisenhower's. They're just a beautiful shoe. Reagan's aren't bad, but I don't know. The Eisenhower shoe is just a little bit more elegant. I'm going for LBJ. Slip-on life. That makes sense for you. That shows you're a man who's got things to do. You don't have time to be tying your shoes. No, that makes sense.

Nixon and Kennedy's are very similar. Welcome to the White House press briefing. Unlike my press predecessor, I will tell you the truth. Thank you all for coming in today. Pretty good. Looks like this was presented by C-SPAN, this presidential experience. We have a Reagan-era replica of the Oval Office. Not a big room, not a big room, but overall a decent replica.

Nice JFK portrait up there. There's a women's suffrage article. Oh, interesting. Women's suffrage little table. Very controversial topic among Republicans these days. It has gotten to be increasingly so. Some old Pennsylvania packet and daily

newspaper. From 1787. Oh, yeah. So this is, I guess, the original Pennsylvania newspaper coverage and printing of the 1787. Yeah. Of the Constitution. Yeah, of the Constitution. Yeah, there's the preamble right there.

Yeah, and they spell establish justice as ethablif justith, because that's a... The oldie days. A lot more Fs back in the day. Yeah, but they have these little information placards about all the presidents, the first ladies, that kind of stuff. We'll try to talk to the organizer of this little shindig in a sec. But honestly, the shoe section is the most interesting thing to me. Just because of how tiny, just how tiny those Woodrow Wilson shoes are.

Hey, Jay, that's a long foot. It's not a wide foot. Sure. It's a fairly long foot. Roosevelt's feet are pretty wide. Ulysses S. Grant, also very small. Also very small feet. Hmm. Yeah.

You know what they say about... Anyway. Who's your favorite president? Favorite? Honestly, you know, I... I think I gotta go with U.S. Grant. He's not my favorite president in terms of what he did in office, but in terms of as a person,

he's the U.S. president that I think was probably the best person. He really did try. I've always been a Harrison fan myself. Oh yeah, William Henry? He was my favorite as president. Also, rhymes with my first name, so a little bit of a bias there. He really, I like

a man who there's not much, like, fat on that presidency. He really... Efficient time in office. He cut in and out. Wow. Very exciting. All those little feet. I can't stop thinking about, you know what I think about that's the weirdest is that they did not have, they didn't have any Bush feet, sadly.

Well, they didn't have Bush feet. And there was one guy who they didn't have his shoes. They just had the U.S. Grant. They just had, they had like the model that they built the shoe around for him. Yes. Which was weird. I was like, where's your, where's your U.S. Grant shoe? You don't want to show us the hardest working man who ever lived to be president? But yeah, no, I thought that was some important breaking news for our listeners to hear who had the smallest foot. Yeah. But as of right now, that is day two of the Republican National Convention. Until our next update, don't come here. It's unpleasant. our next update. Don't come here. It's unpleasant.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. books while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hey, I'm Gianna Pertenti. And I'm Jamee Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.