The Daily Signal - He Grew Up Poor In Chicago. Then Conservative Values Transformed His Life.

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

“After I began to volunteer with this alderman and learn the ways of the Democratic Party … I began to question some of the narratives,” says Gianno Caldwell, author of “Taken for Granted: How Conservatism Can Win Back the Americans That Liberalism Failed.” He found himself wondering, “Why is it that although these politicians come every year during election time, why is it the conditions and the communities never get better?” That was the beginning of his journey to the right.  We also cover the following stories: ·        The Supreme Court hears the first major gun rights case in almost a decade. ·        President Trump criticizes Democrats for having impeachment hearings during a NATO event. ·        Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg says social media shouldn't censor politicians. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, 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! 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 Tuesday, December 3rd. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Gianno Caldwell grew up on the south side of Chicago, surrounded by poverty, drug addiction, and broken homes. He says liberal policies have failed to make a difference in communities like his and actually made things much worse. Today, he champions conservative values, and he's written a new book aimed at winning back Americans who had put their faith in big government. Kate recently spoke with Gianno and we'll share that conversation. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes

and please encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. The Supreme Court heard on Monday its first major gun rights case in around a decade. The case was about a New York City law that banned transporting a gun from your home to virtually anywhere except for a handful of approved shooting ranges. The law was recently changed to allow gun owners to bring a gun to residences in shooting ranges outside the city. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg focused on the change to the law asking, What's left of this case?

The petitioners have gotten all the relief that they sought. They can carry a gun to a second home. They can carry it to a fire. They can carry it to a practice range out of state. The plaintiff's lawyer, Paul Clement, pointed out that the new law still had issues, including that it would be technically illegal for the plaintiffs to stop for coffee on their way to an out-of-state shooting range. Justice Samuel Alito got the lawyer representing New York City to concede that the new law hadn't made the city less safe. At that point, Alito said, if they're not less safe, then what possible justification could there have been for the old rule,

which you have abandoned. President Trump criticized House Democrats for holding an impeachment hearing while he's out of the country. The House Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing on impeachment Wednesday the same day that President Trump will be attending NATO meetings in London. The president criticized the timing of the hearing, saying that the NATO trip is one of the most important trips a president can make. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed that sentiment on Fox and Friends. Yeah, it's long tradition that we support. presidents when they travel overseas to do their work for them to hold hearings back here in Washington to distract America's president from his important mission overseas.

I mean, these are some of our most important allies and partners in keeping the American people safe and secure. I regret that they've chosen to hold these hearings at the same time that the president and our entire national security team will be traveling to Europe to London to work on these important matters. It's very unfortunate. In a new interview published by Time magazine, Ukrainian president, Voidemi, Zalinski talked about the Trump White House and its negotiations with Ukraine. He was asked,

when did you first sense that there was a connection between Trump's decision to block military aid to Ukraine this summer and the two investigations that Trump and his allies were asking for? Can you clarify this issue of the quid pro quo? Zolensky replied, look, I never talked to the president from the position of a quid pro quo. That's not my thing. And you have to understand. We're at war. If you're a strategic partner, then you can't go blocking anything for us. I think that's just about fairness. President Trump tweeted, Breaking news. The president of Ukraine has just again announced that President Trump has done nothing wrong with respect to Ukraine in our interactions or calls. If the radical left Democrats were

saying, which they are not, it would be case over. Lisa Page, the former FBI attorney caught in the 2016 scandal that involved Peter Strach, is speaking out against the president. President Trump has long criticized Page and Strach, who were having an affair in 2016 and whose text messages, now unearthed, show hostility to Trump at the highest levels of the FBI. Well, Paige is now speaking out. She gave an interview to the Daily Beast in which she responded to President Trump's persistent attacks, saying, I had stayed quiet for years, hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse. She added, it's like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has

tweeted about me again. The President of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He's demeaning me and my career. It's sickening. She also said, when the President accuses you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there's no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason, he's still somebody in a position to actually do something about that, to try to further destroy my life. Last year, an Inspector General report found no evidence connecting Page and Stroke's political views with the decisions they made in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server. President Trump announced on Twitter he is putting back tariffs on two South American countries steel and aluminum exports.

Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies, which is not good for our farmers. Therefore, effective immediately, I will restore the tariffs on all steel and aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries. The Federal Reserve should likewise act so that countries, of which there are many, no longer take advantage of our strong dollar by further devaluing their currencies. This makes it very hard for our manufacturers and farmers to fairly export their goods, lower rates and loose and fed. Mark Zuckerberg is holding the line against political censorship on Facebook. On Monday, the company's CEO and co-founder reiterated his refusal to censor political ads on the social media site,

even if they contain allegedly false information. His reason came down to free speech, and he defended it on CBS this morning. What I believe is that in a democracy, it's really important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying so that they can make their own judgments. And, you know, I don't think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news. But a small group of your employees, about 200 wrote a letter saying that they wish that you would reconsider because they said free speech and paid speech are not the same. Do they have a point? Well, this is clearly a very complex issue, and a lot of people have a lot of different opinions. At the end of the day, I just think that in a democracy, people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.

Even if the ads are containing false information, that's the issue. I think that people should be able to judge for themselves the character of politicians. Next up, we'll feature my interview with Gianno Caldwell. Americans have almost entirely forgotten their history. That's right. and if we want to keep our republic, this needs to change. I'm Jared Stepman. And I'm Fred Lucas.

We host The Right Side of History, a podcast dedicated to restoring informed patriotism and busting the negative narratives about America's past. Hollywood, the media, and academia have failed a generation. We're here to set the record straight on the ideas and people who've made this country great. Subscribe to the Right Side of History on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Stitcher today. We're at Presidents' Club, the Heritage Foundation's annual news. meeting, and I'm joined by Gianno Caldwell, a political strategist, a Fox News political analyst,

and the author of the new book, Taken for Granted, How Conservatism Can Win Back the Americans that Liberalism Failed. Gianno, thanks for joining me. No, thank you for having me. Okay, so you recently tweeted, conservative values helped me, a kid from the south side of Chicago, find a life of opportunity. Absolutely. Tell me about that. So to know what that means, you have to know a little bit about my story.

I grew up on the south side of Chicago, extremely poor, lights, gas, and water off at the same time. Mom addicted to crack cocaine, grandmother who at one time was a private duty nurse when she gave over temporary custody of me and my siblings, ended up having a car accident, injuring her back, and things were really, really bad. What ended up happening? And was your dad in the picture of all? My dad, I saw him on the weekends, and that's what I was about to go into. my dad, I was blessed to see him on the weekends, most weekends, and he would take me to his grandfather, his father house, which is my grandfather, and small business, plumbing, construction, that kind of thing. And he would take me with him on Saturdays to go work with him. He would pay me $10 a day to hold the flashlight, hand him tools, and I felt extremely blessed to be able to earn something for myself. And from there, I had an instinct of, it was a moment, really, that transcended my life. One day I was about 14 years old and we're riding through this area of Chicago called Inglewood.

This is one of the hardest hit areas or the hardest hit area in Chicago in terms of the guns, the violence, drugs, prostitution, etc. As we're riding, I see this lady who looks beat down, drugged up. She was clearly someone who was addicted to drugs. And I saw my mom. And as we're riding, I'm tearing up. My grandfather sees me tear up and he says, very southern voice. What's wrong with you, boy? And by that time, we were passing this lady, and I realized it wasn't my mother, but it could have been. And I say, this lady, I'm trying to,

what can I do to prevent this from happening when he said, what's wrong with me? He tells me about the elected officials, the power that they have to change people's lives, the power that they have to create stiffer penalties for those who sell and distribute drugs, the power that they have to provide grant funding for those who want to be rehabilitated for. from drug use. And I said, I want to be an elected official. So that very next week at 14, I started volunteering from my local alderman at that time. And I was there every day after school like it was a job. And that what created this trajectory of policy, of politics, and certainly public service. So when we talk about conservatism and how I got there,

that's a longer version of the story. But I'll tell you, what ended up happening is after I begin to volunteer with his alderman and learn the ways of the Democratic Party. And I began to question some of the narratives. You know, why is it that, you know, although these politicians come every year during election time, why is it the conditions of the communities never get better? They would try to shut me down and blame white people for it. Like, oh, you know, we're in Chicago. The white politicians, they just give the money to the white neighborhoods.

Okay, well, the politicians here are black. Why is it nothing changing? And they're coming with the same rhetoric year after year. So at that point, I began to really think really deeply about the differences between both parties. And after having a conversation with a Democrat, a senior Democrat on the street, is the older man who challenged some of my viewpoints on the Republican Party. I went to research the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans. And I learned that the Republican Party was started in 1855.

for in opposition to the Kansas Nebraska Act, which wanted to expand slavery into the West. I'm like, wow, this doesn't sound right. This isn't the Republican Party that people have talked about in my community, the ones that they've said were races and slave owners and pushed Jim Crow and all these other different policies, which wasn't true. It was all lies. Democrats were the ones that were pushing those particular policies. And as I began to further examine, it just seemed like propaganda, because why is it

that I haven't heard this before. And why is it Republicans aren't talking about this? And after really examining that and realizing that it was all true, Republican Party pushed every civil rights bill pretty much that there was. Even the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I get London v. Johnson, was a part of that.

But if it wasn't for Republicans in the Senate, it wouldn't have passed. And mind you, Democrats had the majority. They didn't want to pass it. So learning these things in understanding the morals and values of conservatism, which I come from a line of ministers and my family, learning that the party was anti-regulation. My grandfather, small business owner, often talked about how regulation

would draw of his business out of business, immigration policy. My grandfather lost a lot of business deal due to illegal immigration. I began to see the virtues of the conservative movement as a part of me. And that in and of itself was a longer story, reconciling what that meant, especially considering what people in my community has said about the conservative movement or the Republican Party for years. Right, and I find that so interesting because I grew up in different background from yours, where family and friends tend to be very conservative. And I always find it very interesting when people are able to convert, as it were. And were you upset when you started to think I might agree more with conservative ideas?

And what was the response of your community? You are asking excellent questions, by the way. Was I upset? I felt sad and depressed, to be honest. That's hard. I felt, because you got to keep in mind that Democrats have been really marketing geniuses is painting a picture of the Republican Party and a conservative movement that doesn't exist. It's not backed by any factual basis.

It's really emotional rhetoric that's driven or derived by way of pointing to racism and slavery. That's really the angle in which they, choose to push their messaging. So what ends up happening is you get a whole community of people who believe this rhetoric and everyone just begins to believe the same. Nothing changes. There's no one with an individual thought. That's why when you look at now the number of African Americans that vote for the Democratic Party,

talking about over 90%. You mean 90% voting for it? And it's not like their policies are making our lives better. Their policies are looking to entrap us and to not just a, victimhood mentality, but keep us dependent on government. And that's troubling. It's really troubling. So, yeah, I felt sad.

I felt depressed. I said, how could I be one of them? And it was a long time of like soul searching before I really was able to reconcile what the truth was, how this aligned with me. And when I came out and told folks in my family they disowned me. I lost a lot of friends. there were women who chose not to date me because of my political affiliations. Things were bad in that sense.

And then worst of all, there was not really any conservatives around me for me. So what group I'm going to really go to? That was like a rough time. Yeah, it was rough. It was rough. But it led to a life of opportunity. It really did. So you, in your book, you're talking about the conservative ideas and the conservative solution. So for neighborhoods like the one you grew up in, an inner city neighborhoods, what are the conservative ideas that you think would help them?

I think if entrepreneurship is a conservative idea that would help people, I think so often, especially considering the dependency that Democrats have empowered themselves with, by saying, hey, if we can just give you another check, you don't have to work. just let me give you another check or if you see in today's policies you see counties and cities saying let's give you a universal income a thousand dollars a month so you don't have to do anything that's a trap it really is a little bit right now kidding it sounds a little bit no no it really is a trap so let's let's let's think about um for example the 94 crime bill was something that was pushed by both clintons and i i just follow me. 94 crime bill was something that was pushed by both Clintons. And within this 94 crime bill, if you were

an individual who went to jail for something like having a bag of marijuana, you could not go into public housing. You couldn't have that person go and live in your public housing, which left women, a lot of African-American women, without a man in a home, which brings about

those traditional family values. This left them trapped and dependent on government because you don't have anybody that can earn. So what else are you going to do? You're going to stay in the same cycle. If we think about the fact that if you receive these particular benefits and you say, okay, I want to come out of this cycle and I want to go get a job, maybe you don't have skills, maybe you don't have education. So what kind of jobs are you really going to get? Minimum wage job. Well, I'm going to go and get this job and I'm going to try. Well, maybe on your first, second,

third check. You're getting a letter from the state government or whomever saying you're making a little bit too much money. We may have to cut you off from your benefits. What does that do? Well, if you're going to cut me off from my benefits and I'm not making much money, I'm just going to stay collecting your checks. That's a

trap. You're following me? Yeah. So how do we break through? We reform the system. Like legitimately, you reform the system and you bring about individuals within the community that can really be a testament. to a change in a dynamic.

So how can conservatives communicate this message? Because you just told me, you know, half the people in your life rejected you when you became a conservative, even after knowing you for years and years, and hopefully eventually some of those relationships yield. But, you know, conservatives walk into an African American community. It's like, are you getting, you know, there's no credibility. So how do conservatives reach African Americans? Well, so this is like a very interesting thing that I'm about to say. And truthfully speaking, in 2016, when President Trump ran, I have always been a defender of the president where I believed appropriate.

That's the key word. Because I don't defend everything what I believe appropriate. And President Trump was one of the smartest messengers that the party has ever had. He went in and said, listen, your schools are broken. You can walk down the street in Chicago and get shot. Unemployment is bad. They've taken your votes for granted. This is what he said to the African-American community.

Unlike some Republicans that may say it one time, he continued to say it. But it wasn't just him saying it. We got a list of deliverables from this president. The lowest African-American unemployment rate in history, deregulation of the economy, more people to work than we've ever seen ever. A change in an immigration dynamic where we're seeing, we know a lot of African-Americans are disenfranchised by illegal immigrants. including my grandfather.

Who's the messenger? We need messengers that are forceful like President Trump. We're going to speak the facts and we're going to communicate them continuously. And by virtue of the results through the Trump administration, we have credibility. And that's really it. And I know it's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people.

But you definitely don't want to go and speak in a way that may not be appropriate. But certainly you definitely want to. to communicate the results that have been done by way of this administration, and Republicans usually run away from that kind of thing. So do you think overall the African American community thinks well of Trump and thinks of his results, or do you think the message is not getting out, or what's actually going on on the ground here?

Okay, so let me take you back, because I can tell you something by using the factual data the reference. So during the 2016 election, you had about every influential African-American. American on television saying don't vote for Trump, etc. Right? Then we see his rhetoric, him continuing to mention policies that impact the black community, what he's looking to do for the black community. Again, something we had not seen from, and let me be clear, a Republican president in

that same way, because a lot of Republicans are very concerned about being considered races or being called races. If you mentioned just the simple facts about the unemployment rate in the black community or how some of these communities are really and truly marginalized, look at Baltimore, look at Chicago, then people will say, oh, you must be racist because you're mentioning these things. No. So when considering that, he continued to do it. The data showed that he won more African Americans than Mitt Romney and John McCain.

He was double digits for African American men at 12 percent. he was about 8% for African Americans overall. He was over in a 30%tile for Latinos because he kept on message. He continued to communicate that. And I think that's important and powerful. So to switch gears a little bit. So you grew up in the inner city,

and I think one of the things that the left talks about a lot these days that there's a lot of concern about is the American dream still alive for all Americans. And is it possible? You know, maybe if, you know, you had your dad in your life who sounds like is a really positive influence. My grandfather especially. And your grandfather.

But for other kids who may not have any father figure, is the American dream still alive for them? I would say yes. And let me be very clear. I have, it's a total of nine of us, me and my siblings and I. There's seven different dads of these nine kids. And what, it was maybe my dad was active. the most active of them all.

Maybe one of them would, you know, send gifts on Christmas, that kind of thing, maybe a birthday. And I can tell you, there's some, you know, some of my siblings aren't doing well, but then there's others that are doing very well. They may not be doing the kind of things that I'm doing, but they needed examples of what was possible. That's why I push in my book, taken for granted how conservatism can win back the Americans that liberalism failed. the power of mentorship.

There's groups called, like there's one called 100 black men of America. And these guys, their philosophy is kids will be what they see. So you got all these successful African Americans who went out and they're business owners, their politicians, their lawyers, their doctors, and their focus is on giving back to communities

that they may have come from. And I think that's important to do, whether you be black, white, or whatever, if you're listening to this and you feel like you can feel a void of mentoring people, not just black kids, because my book, although, you know, my story is where I come from, I'm black, but there's kids in the Appalachian region that can benefit. Those are people who have been told that the American dream is dead. They're experiencing similar problems as I did growing up.

The difference between me and them is the color of our skin, but it's just as bad as them. And I think, you know, that's really for me, that's the focus. The American dream is for everyone, and it's available for everyone, but the liberals have really made it a punchline. Like, oh, unless the government is really helping you, you can't make it, and that's a lie. Okay. Now, you mentioned all the good things that President Trump has done for the black community, but a clip of you talking about Charlottesville two years ago went viral, and you were crying and very upset. And that's something that, you know, frankly, I was pretty upset when President Trump said. And I'm wondering, that is the incident

that over and over again the media returns to and people say, do you think that's still affecting how blacks perceive the president and do you think there's other areas where maybe the president could grow in his outreach to African Americans? Let me be very clear. And I talk about Charlottesville in this book. This president, as I told you, in 2016, I defended him where I believed appropriate.

And I lost even more friends and family over that. I believed in this messaging on a number of issues. And yes, I also talk about it in my book, Taking for Granted, about holding members of your party accountable, even more so than even the other side. Because in that moment, we needed a president that was going to unite us and not divide us in his language, to me, was divisive. And there was a number of members of the Republican Party who support him,

senators, congressmen, et cetera, who also said that it was dividing language. So I wasn't along on that front. And it really impacted me because, I happen to work for the number one cable news network in the country. People actually listened to what I say, and I was hired for a reason. And certainly to express how I felt in that moment coming from where I come from was something that the president needed to hear.

And the White House did hear me. They heard me loud and clear, and they let me know about an hour or two after that segment began to go viral what they thought about it. So would that be, in matter of fact, like, even to be even more clear, and I talk about it in the book. Before that segment even aired, I was in touch with the White House saying that President Trump needed to get in front of the cameras, and we needed to have a dialogue on race in America. Think about what happened in 2001. I know it's different. But when we were attacked in 9-11, we needed somebody that was going to bring us together, and that's what George Bush did. It didn't matter if you were black or white. We were brothers and sisters. We were Americans. And that was an opportunity. I think that the president certainly meant. Certainly. So lastly, you write very movingly in your book about your mom's drug addiction. And that's a problem that we see more and more of the opioid addiction.

But even here in D.C., there's certain places, Union Station, a corner of New York Avenue, where I regularly see people who seem to be on drugs and addicted. And it's heartbreaking. And it seems like a problem that no one is able to solve. What do you think we is, you know, both as communities and as policymakers should be doing? And I'm going to have to go to this point again. President Trump in 2016 talked about this crisis and he said that he was going to do something about it. Him, with him, his administration in Congress, they passed the bill and they provided a lot of money,

hundreds of millions of dollars, I believe it was, to this fight. And it's been working out. There's been a reduction in those in deaths for OIPAAIDS. And there's also been a change in dynamic. on how people view it. There's been more education. There's a more serious consideration around it versus like some kids that are just popping pills here and there. So people are taking this matter very seriously. So that's something that we can thank the administration for.

For me, it was a lot different when I was growing up. Crack was something that impacted mostly black communities. There was a lot of people who said lock them up. There wasn't a lot of compassion for those who were on those drugs. and we see the continuation of that through the 94 crime bill. People were demonized. And that's why I'm so big on that because they really created a mass incarceration generation.

The Clintons and the Democratic Party, Republicans didn't support that bill. There were a few Republicans that supported it, but the majority of Republicans didn't support it. So having these discussions and putting politics aside, I think we're going in the right direction on it. And so long as more people are informed about the ability to get help and be rehabbed from this addiction,

which is very serious and impacts millions of families, I think that's really the route to go in terms of changing the dynamic in our country. And I see it going on every day. I see a change. I really do. Okay. Gianno Caldwell, he is the author of the new book, taken for granted, how conservatism can win back the Americans that liberalism failed.

It's been endorsed by Angeload. to Brian Killed-Mead, Mrs. James, the president of Heritage, Ben Shapiro, Newt Gingrich, and Clarence Cox III. I thank you so much for your time, and please have everyone. And follow me on social media at Gianna Caldwell. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. In the agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda all, also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online,

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