Tangle - Frank Morano on Donald Trump, Andrew Yang and policing in New York.

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

Frank Morano is the host of "The Other Side of Midnight," one of the most popular political radio programs in New York City. This self-described "center-left" populist is a two-time Trump voter with high hopes for Andrew Yang and stories about his relationships with everyone from Roger Stone to John Gotti Jr. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all my Tangle listeners, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some reasonable debate, and independent thinking without the hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, the founder of the Tangle newsletter, which you can find at readtangle.com. And today, my dear friends, I am very excited for our guest. He is the host of The Other Side of Midnight, one of the most popular conservative radio shows here in New York City. To some, he is Staten Island's favorite son. And to me, he is a well-connected political insider here in New York,

friend of everybody from John Gotti Jr. to Peter Navarro, and one of my newest political acquaintances, Frank Marano. Thank you so much for being on the show. Oh, it's my pleasure, Isaac. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Frank, first of all, I have to just say you have a great radio voice and you're going to outshine me today. Oh, please. I'm going to have to, I don't even know how I compete with this. I mean, a classic New York city radio voice, man. Well, as people will soon find out what, uh, what you may lack in voice, you more than make up for in substance. So, uh, I am a all style, no substance, but I'm happy to be here and I'm going to do my part. I appreciate that. So before we jump in, I think it'd be cool to just start with how we got acquainted. You reached out to me actually

to basically to come on your radio show and field questions about election fraud, which was really fun. It was my first time ever on late night New York City radio. And we basically offered some of your listeners a cash prize if they could stump me with their election fraud allegations. And as someone who is in conservative radio and a supporter of the president, I thought that was a pretty bold thing for you to do. And I'd love to hear about your thought process and how you ended up reaching out to me and how that whole thing came to be. Well, I'll be honest with you, just by way of context, I really don't view myself as a conservative. I've never been a Republican. I never voted for a Republican presidential candidate until Donald Trump.

I kind of view myself as a populist, maybe a centrist populist, maybe even a center-left populist. And I, you know, kind of try to do with the Trump presidency the same thing I do with the presidency of any president, which is, you know, root for them to succeed and then, you know, kind of call them out on their shenanigans whenever there's shenanigans and just be honest about my analysis of anything they're doing. And the sad thing about radio from where I'm standing is how rare that's become on both the left, on the right, and in the center. And I have just been amazed that so many of my listeners seemed to buy all of these baseless election fraud allegations hook, line, and sinker. And every time I would even make a remark about Biden winning the election, I was deluged with callers saying,

oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, he didn't win the election because of this or because of that. And I wanted to provide a forum for all of these conspiracy theories to be aired and somebody that was very well studied on the subject to address them. And in my research, I tried to find the most studied person I can on all these election fraud stuff. And you were by far the most astute in terms of addressing these election fraud allegations. So you were kind enough to stay up late one night, take callers from all,

all quarters. I thought it was a lot of fun. I thought it was pretty interesting and I'm, I'm glad that you came on. Yeah, me too. I mean, I had a blast. I thought it was pretty interesting. And I'm glad that you came on. Yeah, me too. I mean, I had a blast. I'm curious, what has the reaction or response been to that segment? I mean, I know

from listening after I got off the call and we were on the line for about an hour or something like that, I heard you say, this is it. I'm done. I'm after this segment. I'm not addressing election fraud claims anymore. But has it come up since? Have you heard anything from your listeners about their reaction to that? Well, not really. You know, I do have a Facebook fan group, which mostly has just become a platform for listeners of the show to complain about me, everything I do and everything, all of the guests that I have do. And a couple of people in that Facebook group felt like you didn't adequately address any of the substantive allegations. But I'm beginning to realize that there's nothing you could say to some of these folks that would actually get them to believe that Joe Biden won the presidential election.

They're actually sticking with this election fraud belief as if it's some sort of a religion. So when it comes to challenging someone's religion, it becomes very difficult to get them to change as a result of a radio interview. Yeah, I have run into the same challenges as well. You know, look, before we get in, there's tons of stuff we can talk about, and maybe we should sort of work in chronological order. I mean, I'm curious to hear as an independent, as a political independent, someone who even yourself at the top of the show describes yourself as a, you know, maybe left of center populist, what was behind the support for

President Trump? I imagine being the New Yorker that you are with some of the connections that you have, you might know the president personally, maybe met him a few times. What went into your vote? Well, a few things. One, looking at the 2016 election, in terms of his views on a lot of the key issues, he was saying a lot of the same things that I'd been saying and waiting for a major candidate to say for many years. I mean, I've always been very opposed to the Iraq War. And it was great, especially running against a warmonger like Hillary Clinton, who's never met a regime she didn't want to overthrow in the Middle East, to have a candidate

talking about what a disaster all of these never-ending Bush wars and Obama wars in the Middle East have been. And it was great to hear somebody so vocal about the folly of this Middle East military adventurism. So that was like a hamburger for a starving man. Also, in terms of foreign policy, I have been incredibly frustrated at the policy from the foreign policy establishment calling for perpetual hostility with Russia for the last 20 years. And it was wonderful for me to hear a major presidential candidate say, you know, we should actually get along with Russia. So that was nice. It was also nice to hear somebody that recognized the folly of free trade, reckless free trade. And I've been

so frustrated year after year, administration after administration. You'd see Democrats, you'd see Republicans all embrace these reckless free trade deals. NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, WTO, this free trade deal, this free trade deal, TTIP, and every other possible – the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And it was wonderful for me to see a major presidential candidate that said, yeah, no, there's nothing wrong with favoring American manufacturing, and we're going to go ahead and pursue a protectionist trade approach. China, I mean, everybody else just sits by and watches them manipulate the currency and watches them steal American intellectual property. And Trump was willing to come out and call them out on it and say, we're going to implement a significant tariff. So trade, immigration, the never-ending wars, Russia policy, that was a big part of it. Stylistically, I found it so refreshing, and people may think this is kind of superficial. Maybe it is. I found it so refreshing to hear a candidate for any office so unabashedly politically correct.

candidate for any office so unabashedly politically correct. And we're in an era, unfortunately, where people are afraid to tell a Polish joke or say black instead of African American. There was something so nice about somebody willing to be so unpolitically correct. And then, as you point out, as a New Yorker, I've had the opportunity to meet President Trump And then, as you point out, as a New Yorker, I've had the opportunity to meet President Trump several times over the last 20 years and speak with him on the radio a few more times. And when you meet Donald Trump and people who only know him through the lens of his presidency and the media coverage of his presidency may not fully appreciate this, but he's a remarkably impressive guy. He has this just incredible magnetism and charisma about him that you can't help but be at least a bit impressed by. So that's sort of, those are some of the reasons that I voted for the president in 2016. And given the choices in 2020, I kind of felt that he was the best choice in 2020 as well. Were you surprised when he ran for president? No, no.

Roger Stone is a, is a close friend who I've known for over 20 years. And he had been telling me for four years that it was definitely going to happen. And I knew some other folks that were working for president Trump at the time. And they said, bet every dollar you have that he is going to run for president.

And I was part of a group in late 2013 and early 2014 that was trying to persuade Donald Trump to run for governor of New York. And we met with President, then Citizen Trump, several times, and he basically told us very clearly at those meetings that, you know, I don't have an interest in running for governor. The job that I really want is president. So he made no secret of it, either to us privately or in the people that I knew who were around President Trump at the time. It's funny, you know, there are sort of these two divergent stories about the New York version of President Trump. And I speak to a lot of reporters or people in New York City politics who, like you, have known him for 20 years and

always knew that he had these political ambitions. And the knock on him is like, this is a guy who's run around New York City, stiffing workers and cleaning up in the tabloid pages, pretending to be somebody to call in New York Post page six and do some reporting on himself. You know, there's this level of the past regarding Donald Trump. The New York version of Donald Trump is exactly why he shouldn't be president. What's your reaction to that? why he shouldn't be president. What's your reaction to that? I mean, as someone in New York City politics, that seems like there's certainly some paper trails, some evidence of him stiffing workers at the least in New York. I wonder how you react to that. Well, look, that's certainly

a valid criticism. And even outside of New York, my favorite city outside of New York is Atlantic City. And there's a lot of people that were stiffed when one of his companies declared bankruptcy. And a lot of the vendors that he used to build the Trump Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza, they ended up getting pennies on the dollar for work that they did, if at all. Certainly not something that I viewed as being

beneficial to his candidacy or a resume enhancement. But if you compare him to the neocons that were running on the Republican side or the corporate shill that was the Democratic nominee, to me, it was something that I was willing to overlook in the grand scheme of things, recognizing that there are no perfect presidential candidates. Do you have any good Trump stories, any Trump memories that stick out to you from your time? Sure. I'll tell, I'll give you, um, three quick ones. Uh, one is when I was, uh, about six or seven years old and then one was a little more recently. So he had just begun courting Marla Maples. Marla Maples was was appearing in a Broadway show at the time. And I saw him at the Broadway show, Donald Trump, who was there, I guess, in support of Marla Maples.

And I I said to my my parents at the time, do you think I can go and get his autograph? They said, sure, go ahead, get his autograph. And they gave me the playbill for Will Rogers Follies, which is the show that she was appearing in at the time. And neither my father nor my stepmother had a pen. And so my stepmother gave me her eyeliner pencil. And Donald Trump had just finished doing an interview with Entertainment Tonight. And I went over to him. Nobody was around him other than the Entertainment Tonight reporter. I went over to him with the playbill and the eyeliner pencil. And he signed the playbill with the eyeliner pencil. And once I went up to him, immediately, as he started talking to me and everything, there was a line of 15, 20, 25 people who all immediately began to line up behind me and also seek his autograph. And Trump kept the eyeliner pencil and proceeded to sign everybody's autograph with my stepmother's

eyeliner pencil. So that was kind of fun. When I met him years later, I told him she wanted it back, but he had misplaced it. Then I will tell you when we were at Trump Tower for one of these meetings trying to persuade him to run for governor, he was very nice. And he had been very gracious in terms of meeting with the dozen or so of us that were there at the time, gave all of us a book that he had written after the meeting and he was signing the book for everybody and he he got to me and he knew I was working with a radio talk show host at the time named Curtis Sliwa and he asked me so what's the story with Curtis I watch him sometimes on New York One and elsewhere and sometimes he's very nice to me and then other times he just kills me on TV what's

his story and I kind of shrugged I said you know i don't know what to tell you as my conversations with curtis have always been positive about you and then he says uh all right well in this when i sign this book i'm gonna write say hi to curtis is that okay i said sure it's fine with me and so he signs this book his book he says to frank say hi to curtis donald trump And it was one of the more unusual signings for for a book that I'd that I'd ever seen. And then once the Staten Island borough president had asked me to set up a meeting with Donald Trump to get his feedback on developing what was formerly a landfill on Staten Island. And I walk in with the borough president of Staten Island and Donald Trump knew that he knew me, but I could tell that he didn't remember my name, but he still wanted to impress the other person who was in this case was the borough president

that I knew Trump, even though he didn't remember my name and he couldn't say hi, Frank. So he went over to me first before anybody else in the room, went over to me, shook my hand, pointed at me in front of the other guys and said, you see this guy? This is a very famous guy right here. So I thought that was that was kind of nice is that he went out of his way to show that that we knew one another, even though he clearly had no recollection of what my name was. one another, even though he clearly had no recollection of what my name was. Sort of. Yeah, that's kind of the showmanship he's famous for, getting himself out of a jam in a big room full of people. Exactly. Well, look, it is Thursday, February 11th, 2021, and Donald Trump is no longer

president. So there are other things to talk about. In my opinion, thankfully, I mean, as interesting as a presidency as he had, I am happy to have some oxygen in the room for other issues. And I'd love to hear, I mean, I say Joe Biden's presidency, the first month of Joe Biden's presidency, what comes to mind for you as a political independent? What are you seeing? How are you feeling about things so far? Well, I think it's mostly a return to conventionality in terms of style and in terms of policy. By and large, what we're seeing is not anything different than what we might have seen in the Obama administration, bad, worse, or indifferent. worse or indifferent, you know, you know, you're not going to wake up in the morning and find some tweets where he's ordering some change in military policy or insulting somebody at an award show or taking issue with what Morning Joe said.

You know, none of that is happening. So in many respects, it's much more like a conventional president. You know, he's done some things that I agree with, some things that I don't agree with. But I think in terms of style, it seems to be pretty conventional at this point. When you hear from your listeners who call into your radio show in the last few weeks, mostly conservative listeners from what I've gathered from listening to it, what are their concerns? I mean, what do you hear the most about President Joe Biden that is on people's minds that they're worried about, that they're pissed off about?

Well, honestly, I've made a concerted effort not to talk much about Trump or Biden just because I'm so over this national polarized political divide. However, that's not stopping callers from calling in to talk about him. And I would say the the consensus among a lot of the people that call, particularly Biden critics, is that he he's sort of an empty vessel, that there's not much substance to the Biden presidency and that others, whoever those others are, are in control of the messaging and that he's essentially a living version of Weekend at Bernie's. He's not very visible. They'll trot him out to do an appearance or two, but that there's not really much going on in terms of the Biden presidency. That's what I would say the view from most of our conservative listeners happens to be. You know, on that point, and it's actually a pretty good segue, you obviously are deeply entrenched in the local politics here in New York. And there recently has been an intersection of local and national politics

because of Andrew Yang's race for mayor. And I know I have a lot of listeners and readers who were supporters of Andrew Yang for president. And he obviously grew a really big national profile and became a pretty well-recognized Democrat. What's your perception of him? How do you feel about him as a candidate for mayor of New York? Well, I have mixed views, right? So for starters, I really liked Andrew Yang.

If I were a Democrat, I would have voted for Tulsi Gabbard in the primary, but I think it's easy to say that Andrew Yang would have been my second choice. And I said so very publicly on Twitter during the presidential election. Andrew Yang was saying a lot of things that I just loved in terms of universal basic income and in terms of some other areas. But even beyond the policy, I really like the humor that he brought to a national campaign. And there was a lot to like about him. And so I was pretty optimistic about his mayoral candidacy. I think from an analytical perspective, he is in a very difficult position,

which is right now he's number one in the polls and in terms of name recognition. And the one thing that you do not want to be four months before a primary in New York City is the top polling candidate. Because history has shown in New York that that person never, ever wins. And it's due to a bunch of factors. Part, the media tries to tear you down if you're the number one candidate, but two, because you then have seven or eight candidates sniping at you. So I see after the poll that came out this week showing him to be the number one choice of Democrats, I see no scenario in which he will be the nominee because no one who's ever been number one this far out has ever been the mayor. So on the positive side, his use of social media, his name recognition, the fact that he's the only Asian candidate, the fact that he does have a lot of celebrity support, that can only help him. In terms of my personal preferences towards his

candidacy, I've been pretty disappointed as to his candidacy so far. And I would say that as somebody that had very high hopes for him. One, he's demonstrated area after area where he's been tone deaf. And I'm not talking about a lot of the superficial stuff like him saying this pizzeria in the middle of nowhere was the best pizza he'd ever had, which goes over like a lead balloon with a lot of New Yorkers. And I'm not even talking about him saying during the campaign that he was trying to escape from New York. I don't think most people are going to pay much attention to that. But the optics of him releasing a video or doing an interview and saying that during the pandemic,

he was not even in Manhattan, not even in New York City, and he fled to his posh second home the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Kind of underscores what he was saying during the campaign, which is that there's one set of circumstances for people with money and privilege and one set of circumstances for everybody else. Now, I'm watching this and thinking, well, I and so many other New Yorkers still had to go to work every day, risking life and limb. We didn't have the luxury of going to our second home in New Paltz, New York, while the peons, you know, soldiered on in the pandemic. Also, the fact that he's never even bothered to vote in a New York City mayoral election his whole life. I mean, call me crazy, but I think if you want to be mayor of New York City, you should actually care enough to have voted in at least one election. Is that true? He hasn't voted? Yes. And his entire time in New York, didn't vote in a single election, either in the primary or the general, which you

kind of wonder about someone's desire for the job and their interest in the job. It looks to me like this is more of a consolation prize for Andrew Yang, benefiting from his name recognition and so forth. In terms of issues, I really had to take issue with what he did last week. I don't want to get too into the weeds on this one, but there's a big issue with education at yeshivas in New York City, namely that there is no education going on at many New York City yeshivas. You have kids, mostly boys, graduating from these yeshivas functionally illiterate because there's no science education going on, no English education, no history education. The only thing these folks in these yeshivas do for five, six hours a day is learn the Torah. And the mayor de Blasio, who's been

a pretty disappointing mayor, mayor de Blasio, finally, to his credit over the last 10 months or so, has actually started to have his department of education cracked down on the lack of education going on in these yeshivas. And Andrew Yang came out the other day and essentially said, well, we're going to leave the yeshivas alone and we should respect their independence. Well, sorry, Andrew Yang, respecting their independence means violating the promise that all New York school children have under the New York state constitution on guaranteeing them a sound basic education. So Andrew Yang knows better. He's a smart guy. He knows there's no education going on in these yeshivas. And I viewed that as blatant pandering to the Orthodox Jewish community.

And it was really disappointing. Also, his call for having all New York City police officers reside in all five boroughs when currently they can live in Orange County, Westchester, Putnam County, or Long Island. Struck me as very tone deaf because rents in New York are so astronomical that you can't even afford to live in New York if you're a first year police officer because the cost of living in New York is so out of control. Also, I'm reminded of all the New York police officers that have been heroes, either dying or thwarting terrorist attacks or getting hurt, who happen to live in places like Long Island. So I was sorry to see that. But look, we're all entitled to some early stumbles and some

rookie mistakes. The hard-boiled world of New York politics is a tough one. And I'm hoping, for the sake of the city and as someone who is still a Yang fan, I'm hoping that he gets over some of these stumbling blocks soon and will be more like the Andrew Yang that so many of us grew to appreciate during the presidential campaign. You know, the policing issue is something I think that applies to a national audience. It's something I've written a lot about. I'm really interested in. I think from a lot of people's perspectives to play the devil's advocate here and to be totally transparent seems like a positive thing. I mean, regardless of where you stand on the issue of policing in New York City right now,

it seems pretty indisputable that the relationship between police officers and citizens in New York is fairly poor at the moment. That's exactly right. And for years I was for bringing back the residency requirement, but my views have changed primarily for the two reasons I just cited. One is seeing all these instances of hero cops on Long Island and elsewhere who would have not been on the job had these rules been in place. And two, just seeing how and talking with many first-year cops that can't afford to live in New York City, even in so-called affordable housing. So that's sort of what's

turned me around on this question. You know, I'm interested to hear more about what you're seeing on the ground in New York when it comes to policing. I mean, there is obviously this summer nationally, we saw a huge groundswell of support for the quote unquote defund the police movement, which I think means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But at least here in New York, there was tons of tension and controversy around use of force. It's been an issue in the city for years. What do you hear from police officers you talk to in New York? And what's your view on some of the changes that might improve the situation as it is now?

that might improve the situation as it is now? Well, you know, there's not, the temptation among everybody in the punditocracy and among public safety advocates and among politicians is to do an if P then Q sort of situation. Oh, the reason crime has skyrocketed in New York is because of X or because of Y. And the fact of the matter is, it's not one thing that has caused crime

to skyrocket in New York. There's a multitude of factors. And it is amazing watching what's happened here in New York and seeing, even though people are fleeing the city in droves, that violent crime and specifically shootings are skyrocketing and are increasing to their highest levels in literally decades. So that's been frustrating to watch. But given the degradation of New York City that we've

seen in every measurable respect, homelessness, graffiti, the overall level of filth that hasn't been present for a long time, it's not that surprising to see crime also go back to the bad old days of the 1990s. But in terms of why that's the case, I think there is nationally and in New York City a lot less desire on the part of some police officers to be proactive, call it the so-called Ferguson effect, call it the so-called Freddie Gray effect. Police officers don't want to go looking for trouble, even if that means not exactly being on top of things when it comes to stopping crimes, because they don't want to get called before the Civilian Complaint Review Board or be put in a position where they're caught on camera doing something that's going to get them an indictment or something else. So I think less proactive policing is a factor. Bail reform, which I was a proponent of in some respects, but the way they did it in

New Jersey was much smarter, where they actually gave judges the discretion in evaluating whether or not defendants are a potential danger to themselves or someone else or a flight risk. In New York, the judges have no discretion. They just have to let everybody go. Bail reform has been a disaster. A lot of the people that have been released from Rikers in the midst of the pandemic have gone on to commit new crimes. The removal of the New York City street crime unit, which was responsible for a lot of the crime reductions that we saw in the 90s and 2000s. I think all of this has played a role. Even under Mayor de Blasio, Mayor de Blasio and his first police commissioner, Bill Bratton,

did what a lot of people thought was impossible, is he took rates that were already record lows in terms of crime, and he brought them down even further. I mean, early in the de Blasio Bratton tenure, he brought crime down or the police department brought crime down to a level we hadn't seen since the 1950s. It was really pretty extraordinary. And to see things go so far in the other direction so quickly has really been a textbook example on mismanagement of a major agency. And in terms of one of the things the de Blasio administration did right early on is just at the very beginning of their administration, when shootings were starting to uptick, as a result, most people felt, well, some people felt, as a result of doing away with stop, question, and frisk, you saw the mayor and his police commissioner lobby the city council for hiring more cops. And this was always a progressive thing.

This is what Mayor Dinkins did 30 years ago when there was record shootings in New York City, is they, you see crime go up, what do you do? You hire more cops. And that's what de Blasio did. Now that has not at all been part of the equation. Nobody's talking about hiring more cops. In fact, they actually cut the police budget by a billion dollars.

It's difficult for me to see how that's going to result in addressing this crime problem that New York City has. There's a ton to unpack there, but something that sticks out to me specifically that I'd actually be interested to dig in on is the cash bail reform. You know, I think that is an issue I am particularly left on. To me, as just like a fundamental principle, it seems like a morally repugnant thing to not allow someone out of jail because they can't produce the money to make bail. You know, the difference between being a poor person who committed crime A and a rich person who committed crime A. Who's accused of committing crime A.

Sure. Who's accused of committing crime A and not being able to leave or have your freedom based solely on the fact that you don't have the money to make bail strikes me as an imbalance. How do you reconcile that with the predictable result of it, which is that sometimes some of these people who are released without making bail are going to go commit crime again? Well, first of all, I agree. I mean, nobody should be in jail because they're poor. But the way New Jersey pursued bail reform was so much smarter than what Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature did, which is they still allowed the judges to deny bail to someone they felt was in imminent danger of committing more crimes. In New York, the judges have no such discretion. Now, in New York, particularly New York City, all of the judges, or at least 90% of the judges,

are pretty liberal. They're not hardline criminal justice warriors. They're people that are 90% to 95% Democrat and clubhouse Democrats. So they're people whose discretion is not going to result in defendants being locked up and have the key thrown away. But, uh, in Jersey, you haven't seen the flood of people being let out on bail and then going out and committing new crimes. And you haven't

seen the similar uptick in crime that we've seen in New York city because the judges, if someone, they can tell if someone based on their track record, their behavior, they can tell if someone based on their track record, their behavior, they can tell if someone's going to go out and rob a bank for a third time if they've just been arrested. In New York, the judges can tell too, but the state legislature has taken away that discretion. I'm all for cash bail reform. I don't think anybody should be in jail for being poor. But at the same time, if a judge can tell that a perp is likely to go out and commit that same crime the next day after being released, and that's not hyperbole, there's been documented instance after documented instance of just that very thing happening,

then the judges need that discretion. And some people shouldn't be entitled to getting cash bail. And those folks, very small percentage, those folks are the ones responsible for a big percentage of the uptick in crime that we've seen. Interesting. Yeah, it's a tough issue because I think that response makes a lot of sense to me. I feel, you know, on the one hand, I feel like you're right there. What's the point of a justice system if we don't have a judge who can exercise some sort of discretion? On the other hand, for the opponents of cash bail, it's pretty easy for them to make an argument like, look, these judges have had discretion

for the better part of the last 30 years. And now look at the country. We have, you know, over three million people in jail, some people, thousands, hundreds of people on Rikers Island who are there awaiting trial for months or years. I mean, it seems like they've had that discretion and they've fumbled it. And because of that, we have the blowback that we have now. Well, yeah, nobody should be in Rikers awaiting trial for years. So, I mean, if that's the case, it would seem to me the thing to do is address the long delay between arrest and trial, right? I mean, does it mean hiring more judges? Does it mean hiring more prosecutors?

Does it mean making sure that people that are arrested have easier access to counsel? I think the answer to all those things is probably yes. So let's streamline the process of arrest to trial to the extent that we can. Let's, in my view, let's not just let everybody out. Now, even before the pandemic, when we saw the increase in crime, Mayor de Blasio, he said that the reason we were seeing the increase in crime pre-pandemic was due to bail reform. Now, Bill de Blasio is not exactly a hardliner when it comes to criminal justice issues. So I kind of, and even the governor, when he was talking about the need to fix the very same bail reform measure he signed, he even cited the bail reform measure

that he signed as being part of the reason there was an uptick in crime. And the other thing that's so frustrating about what happened with bail reform isn't just that the judges have no discretion. It's that the manner in which it became law, it was not exactly heavily debated with different people calling in different experts to testify about the effectiveness of this version versus the Jersey version or that version versus the status quo. They shoved the bail reform measure into the state budget and it was passed in the middle of the night along with 900 other significant policy things. It was really never voted on and evaluated on its own merits. And that sort of legislative sausage making, which has become standard for observers of politics in Albany, it confounds all of us that thought this was a pretty important issue that should have been more thoroughly vetted,

addressed, and dealt with by the legislature before they simply passed it by shoving it in to a larger omnibus budget bill. Frank, I've taken up a lot of your time. I want to wrap this. And before we go, I have to confess that like any good reporter, before we got on this podcast, I did a bunch of research on you. I go Googling, you know, I'm looking up your name, news articles, what your history is, what your background is. And I come across this article about your wedding, which was a bizarre thing to find in the first place, because I'm thinking, who has a write up in a news outlet about their wedding? And then inside, it's just this laundry list of celebrities, New York icons who are attending your wedding.

And the name that pops out off the page of me is John Gotti Jr. I mean, as a as someone who lives in New York, a fan of mob movies myself, I was just I was stunned. And so I have to ask, what's the deal? Why is the Gotti family attending Frank Marano's wedding? Are you in the mafia? Do I have to be worried about this now? Well, so thankfully, even if I were in the mafia, I don't have to worry about coming up with the money

for bail to be let out on the streets if I'm arrested. So we could do, and I'm happy to do this in the future, a whole podcast just discussing my relationship and my analysis of the Gottis, but I'll do my best to do what I haven't done thus far and be brief in my responses. So I met John Gotti Jr. and his family when John was on trial back in 2005 in a trial that I was covering. And one of the things he was accused of was ordering the kidnapping and assault of one of my coworkers at the time, Curtis Sliwa. And I would go to court every day and

observe the trial, talk about the trial on the radio. And because I was on the radio with both Curtis and Ron Kuby, who was an activist, is an activist attorney on the left side of things and has done legal work for the Gotti family at times, everybody would tune into our show every morning to find out what Curtis was going to say and what Kuby was going to say. And because I was sort of their outlet to the rest of the trial, everybody subsequently tuned into hearing what I was going to say by osmosis. Everybody subsequently tuned into hearing what I was going to say by osmosis. So everybody in the courtroom had sort of an interest in befriending me so that I would say nicer things about them on the radio because the prosecutors were listening to me, the defense, the FBI agents, the other reporters, probably the jury, even though they weren't supposed to be. And in the course of that eight-week trial, you know, you end up seeing the same people every day, having lunch with the same people every day, and you kind of become friendly. And I saw what the government was trying to do to John Gotti Jr. in that first trial, and it was clear that there was very little evidence in terms of that case.

And to me, the evidence to acquit was overwhelming. And I said so repeatedly on the radio. And that led to the Gotti's, John's mother and his sister, sisters befriending me during that first trial. And then the government subsequently tried, even though there was a partial acquittal in that case and then a hung jury on the rest of the trial, on the rest of the charges, the government subsequently tried John Gotti Jr. for essentially the same crimes and the same conduct three more times. So over the course of four years and four trials and untold millions of taxpayer dollars wasted going after the government's vendetta of pursuing someone with the name Gotti, I became increasingly more vocal about how idiotic it was for the Justice Department

to keep prosecuting John Gotti Jr., even though no one seriously believed that he was still in the mafia. And throughout trials two, three, and four, two and three, actually, John was out on bail, so that means he could come to the cafeteria and have lunch as well.

So we would have lunch pretty regularly, and you get to know someone in that kind of close quarters, and we kind of took an instant liking to one another, and he appreciated some of the things that I was saying on the radio. I appreciated some of the insight that he was sharing with me when no one else was around.

And over the course of the last 16 years, we've gotten to be pretty good friends. And we've experienced a number of adventures together, some of which I'll be happy to share with you in a future podcast. I love it. Yeah, well, we're going to have to do that. I might be a little too New York-centric, but you know what? I don't give a damn because it's just good stories. That's all that matters. Frank Marano, thank you so much for coming on and sitting down with us today. It's been a pleasure. I'm sure our listeners will get

a kick out of this and yeah, we'll hopefully circle up in a few months, maybe next year sometime. And we'll have to get into Gotti pod and dig in on some of that. I'll look forward to it, Isaac. Thank you so much. And thank you to your listeners foriPod and dig in on some of that. I'll look forward to it, Isaac. Thank you so much. And thank you to your listeners for their patience and for indulging me. Awesome. Thank you. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first

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