The Daily Signal - Former Mayor Ken Blackwell's Response to the Violent Riots in America

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

As riots continue across America’s cities after the killing of George Floyd, local law enforcement and leaders struggle to stop the violence. Today, Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a board member of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, joins the show to discuss how state and local leaders can keep the peace.  Blackwell also challenges Americans to remember our history in order to see the progress we have made and to rid our nation of racism once and for all.  We also cover these stories:  Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin now is being charged with second-degree murder and the three other involved officers are charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder.  Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he doesn't endorse using military force to quell riots and looting if governors fail to take the initiative.  Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, walks back his decision to green-light FBI spying on a former Trump campaign aide.  The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, June 4th. I'm Rachel Dahl Tudis. And I'm Virginia Allen. As riots continue across America's cities after the killing of George Floyd, law enforcement and local leaders are struggling to stop the violence. Today, I talk with Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a board member of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund,

about how state and local leaders can keep the peace in their cities. Don't forget, if you, If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Derek Chauvin, the police officer who arrested George Floyd and pressed his knee against the man's neck for over eight minutes, is now being charged with second-degree murder. The original addressing charge against Chauvin was third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. On Wednesday, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar tweeted that, quote, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is increasing charges against Derek Chauvin to second degree in George Floyd's murder and also charging the other three officers.

This is another important step for justice. The other three officers present at Floyd's death are expected to be charged with aiding and abetting second degree murder. Amy Swearer, Heritage Foundation Legal Fellow, joined us on the podcast yesterday to explain why third-degree murder was not the most appropriate charge to have been brought against Chauvin. Swearer wrote in a Daily Signal op-ed that, quote, if Chauvin's criminal assault played a causal role in Floyd's death, and it appears it did, then he is guilty of felony murder, even if he did not intend for his assault to kill Floyd. Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, says he does not endorse using military force to quell protests if governors fail to take the initiative. On Monday, President Trump said that he would be mobilizing all available federal resources, both civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting and looting, and to end the destruction in arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights. Here's what Esper had to say Wednesday while giving remarks at the Pentagon via global news. I've always believed and continue to believe that the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities in these situations in support of local law enforcement.

I say this not only as Secretary of Defense, but also as a former soldier and a former member of the National Guard. The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act. President George W. Bush is speaking out about the death of George Floyd. In a statement released on Tuesday on the George W. Bush Presidential Center website, Bush wrote, Laura and I are anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd and disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country. Yet, we have resisted the urge to speak out because this is not the time for us to lecture.

It is time for us to listen. It is time for America to examine our tragic failures. And, as we do, we will also see some of our redeeming strengths. The president raised the question, how do we end systemic racism in our society? And he proceeded to answer that question in part by saying, The only way to see ourselves in a true light is to listen to the voices of so many who are hurting and grieving. Speaking to the need for a strong and fair justice system, Bush said, But we also know that lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice.

The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system, and achieving justice for all is the duty of all. Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, is walking back his choice to greenlight spying on a former Trump campaign official. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rosenstein said he regretted giving the final sign-off for the investigation warrant for Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official who was spied on by the FBI in 2016 because of supposed ties to Russia. Here is the exchange between South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham and Rosenstein via C-SPAN.

You signed a warrant application in June of, I think, 2017 to get the Carter Page warrant renewed. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Have you looked at the Horowitz report? Yes, I have. I have it with me, Senator. If you knew then, what you know now, would you have signed the warrant application?

No, I would not. And the reason you wouldn't have is because Mr. Hallwartz found that its sculptory information was withheld from the court. Is that correct? Among other reasons. Yes, sir. And somebody actually altered an email. Correct.

Right. So there were 17 violations that Mr. Horwitz found, but I can't stress enough to the country, that he found the most egregious of all. The dossier was the only reason that. the Carter Page warrant was issued to begin with. In January 2017, the man who provided steeled all the information told the FBI it was a bunch of garbage and they used it twice more. What kind of country is this? What happens to people who do that? President Trump is restricting travel into the U.S. from China. The U.S. Department of Transportation

wrote on Twitter Wednesday that, quote, today the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an order suspending the scheduled passenger flights of Chinese carriers to and from the United States, effective by June 16, 2020. The move to suspend the flights is in response to China not allowing American airlines, such as Delta and United, to fly air carriers into their country. The formal order released by the Department of Transportation states, quote, based on the facts before us, we continue to find that the government of China has, over the objective, of the U.S. government impaired the operating rights of U.S. carriers and denied U.S. carriers the fair and equal opportunity to exercise their operating rights under the agreement.

Now, stay tuned for my conversation with Ken Blackwell about the protests and riots across America's cities and how state and local leaders should respond. I'm Amy Swearer. And I'm Johncarlo Conoparo. And if you want to understand what's happening at the Supreme Court, be sure. to check out SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast. We take a look at the cases, the personalities, and the gossip at the highest court in the land. It's SCOTUS 101. I am joined by Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a board member of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

Mr. Blackwell, thank you so much for joining me today. It's so good to be with you. Now, you were born in Ohio in 1948. You witnessed firsthand America's journey through the civil rights movement. And I want to begin just by asking you to share a little bit of your own story and what you've seen firsthand as you've watched America over the years really fight against racism. Well, you know, when my father came back from World War II, there was still vestiges of segregation in Cincinnati. there was a housing shortage. And so I lived the first few years of my life in a public housing community.

Great American story. Later in life, I became one of the undersecretaries at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development under Jack Kemp dealing with how do we expand market housing And how do we use vouchers to make sure that we created a market system for people to break out of projects and high concentrations of low-income families? And so I've been blessed in that way. And right maybe three-fourths of a mile from that public housing community, there was City Hall. And I became the mayor of my city.

but I've watched over the years, having been a member of the Congress on racial equality, better known as Corps, and a young member of the Student Non-Balant Coordinating Committee when it was under the leadership of James Farmer. It was quite an experience to see the changes that took place in. public accommodations and systemic discrimination with legislative action. And I guess I grew up in appreciating that there were four levels of activity that affected major change, cultural and societal change. The first level I learned, you know, was direct action. There were peaceful protests, people who spoke to injustices, even in the face of hostility. But then there was legislative

action. You know, the great bipartisan efforts in the Congress that brought about major civil rights legislation in the mid-60s and late 60s. Then you had court action. And so that was, you had courts that broke down systemic racism and segregation. But the other area of activity was person to person, you know, whether it was neighbor to neighbor, family member to family member, church member. it was a genuine dialogue that brought about meaningful action. And I came to realize that great nations are not the products of great governments. The great nations are the products of good people doing great things together. And it's no mystery to me why over 240 years we've gone from the institution of slavery to in 2008.

electing a black man president of the United States. And even if I didn't agree with his policy initiatives, what I saw in Barack Obama's election was that there was a continuous breakdown in race as being a barrier to opportunity. And so whether it's been the Heritage Foundation or my work with Jack Kemp, my own personal experience has put me on the side of creating and expanding an opportunity society as opposed to initiatives that expands the welfare state and the role of government in our lives. And it starts with a basic understanding that that family unit that I was a part of, you know, that family unit was the incubator of liberty in my life and gave me an appreciation

for individual initiative and hard work. And that's what I've tried to do in terms of my public activity. And I'll just tell you, that's what breaks my heart when I see businesses being burnt down, when I see some of the most vulnerable in our society not having access to badly needed prescriptions when their CVS or their Walgreens are looted and burned. Yeah, well, and I'm glad that you brought that up because I want to discuss that further with you. And first, I just want to say thank you for providing us with that history. And I think it's so important to look back. And, you know, we need to see where we've come from and how far we've come in order to see the work that's

still needs to be done. So that's so important to look at this pivotal moment in history from that, you know, broader historical context. I want to ask you about a piece that you wrote in Fox News discussing the violence and the role specifically that mayors play in keeping peace in their cities. Speaking as the former mayor of Cincinnati, how would you recommend mayors handle the riots that they're seeing in their cities? Well, first, they had to realize that they, are on the tip of the sphere. The reality is that if you look at the landmass covered by the United States of America, you know that it is, and you look at the size of our population over 225 million people,

there's just no way that we're going to create a context of peace and civility. a context is necessary for positive political and cultural change from the White House or from the governor's mansions. It takes place in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and mayors and local leaders are at the point. So one, at the moment of the outrageous taking of George Floyd's life and people started to speak to the vivid imagery

that they saw on their TV screens the ability to address this in public protests and civil discussion was very, very important and it's a legitimate part of the American experience. And believe me,

that was working. It was cross-party lines. It was cross-ethnic lines. It was cross, you know, geographical lines. And what happened is that a sluggish government response picked up steam. And you had the firing. You had the arrest. And you had an accelerated effort to construct a vigorous,

prosecution strategy. And now you see that the other officers are being arrested. That was, that was progress. That was constructive. That was the sort of action that you want to see in America in 2020. But then you had those who saw it as an opportunity to disrupt and destroy and divide. And so at a moment when we should have been turning to one another, these forces had us turning on one another because what they want is a disruption of civil society so that they can advance their agenda, which is to take America off of the track that we're on, where we are the most diverse, the most prosperous, the most prosperous, constitutional republic in the history of the world.

And that is not to say that we are perfect. It's like what Lincoln said. We are not a perfect union, but we are perfectible. And it goes back to this sort of person-to-person, community action level using the subsidiary model where the action is most meaningful is at the lowest level and in this case, that action is in families and communities and cities. In recent years, many people have argued that police treat African Americans unfairly

and that there's really a problem of police brutality towards African Americans. What do you think about that? Do you think that that is correct? Well, there's been that history, but things have gotten better. If you look at the trend line of excessive use of force and deaths that have resulted and you look at it in terms of race, if you look at it in terms of, you know, death per thousand,

what you find is that there have been more whites that have died as a result of the excessive use of force from police officers than blacks. You know, yeah, if you look at the numbers, it doesn't fit with the proportion of the American population that blacks are compared to whites. But the trend line has come down. And as a former mayor that dealt with the reviewing of action by police officers that resulted in citizens' wrongful death, what I have seen across this country working with police unions, community activists,

is that we've seen a trend line where it is rapidly coming down. Do you have individual actors who act on the basis of racial presidents? Yes. And they must be rooted out just like a tooth with tooth decay. But to say that America is the most racist country on the face of the earth, or that we are a racist country, which the 1619 project hosted by the New York Times wants to say, it's just flat out wrong. You have to have the imagination of Jonathan Swift to buy into that. we've in fact seen progress. And so this is not a matter of whether or not we have, we still experience bad actors.

We do. It's our response. And that's why it is so hardening to see what the response is in Minneapolis today. Well, and, you know, you mentioned that, you know, as Americans, we have come a long way. And I think, you know, I think you're so right that we're kind of, we're in this critical moment. And do you, do you see what's going on right now in the wake of George Floyd's death as an opportunity for further progress that we could actually move even further towards, you know, eradicating racism in our nation out of really a tragic situation? I think, I think, one, we, there's, there's been decade after decade, of breaking down the racial divide.

The whole notion of eclubus unum from the many one, it really does pivot around our buying into transcendent ideals. And so there is this confrontation between those moral absolutes and moral relativism. And Dr. King, in his effort to bring about a better union, a better United States, understood that it was organizing around those universal values, those moral values that actually gave us the basis that we could affect change. because, you know, if relativism wins, you don't have equal justice.

And so those that would like to choose policies and practices of division and subtraction, if they have their way, it gets harder and harder to bring about the sort of community action that's necessary to totally and substantially irreconciliation. eradicate any vestiges of racism that is reinforced by any institutional practice. We've come a long way and again, we will always have idiots who act on motives of race, but we, in fact, have a history of creating opportunities and and reducing any institutional practice of race. Again, I look at departments across, and we have to look at data.

You know, and so a lot of the officer citizen deaths through excessive use of force, a nice percentage have been black officers on black victim. You know, we have to understand that those are, of us who went on the line to integrate our police forces now are just as concerned by making sure that those folks who we depend on to keep our communities safe and our properties protected, they, in fact, must be respected and protected. Given your experience on the law enforcement legal defense fund board, I want to ask you, just kind of circling back to the riots and the protests, how you think that police have been

handling that? Do you think that they're using the correct level of force? Or do you think that in some cases they should adjust their method? No, I think they have. You know, I think what I've been able to witness, I've seen them some line officers being willing to take abuse. And that's crazy. You know, so the issue here is there are techniques, you know, make sure that there are corridors where public protests can take place. Yes, if you have to use curfews, use curfews. If you have to use schedules where protests and voices can speak, you know, their concerns to those in authority, do it do it that way. But there's no reason, no reason for anybody to accept bottles being thrown at police officers. And here in Cincinnati, you know, a firearm being shot and hitting the equipment of a police officer.

You know, let's go back. There have been police officers that have taken not only gunshots, there have been police officers kill. And so we really have to make sure that we are looking at data and understanding that these police officers have a job to do. And their first obligation is to keep us safe and provide their resources to make sure that we have an atmosphere of civility where we can disagree, but we disagree to disagree and we can bring about justice through genuine dialogue. And we're starting to see that pay out in Minneapolis. But for some folks, you know, any progress is no progress because they have a false standard of progress.

Well, I certainly want to encourage our listeners to go to Fox and read your op-ed that was so well-written and so well articulated on this subject. And Mr. Blackwell, I just really want to thank you so much for your time and your insight today. Well, God bless you. Good to be with you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast.

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Thank you.