The Daily Signal - What NYPD Ex-Cop and 9/11 First Responder Says About Patriotism, July 4th

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Rob O’Donnell is a former New York City Police Department detective who was involved with the response to, and rescue efforts in, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as well as the response to 9/11. He joins "The Daily Signal Podcast” to talk about the 4th of July, patriotism, the contempt some show for the American flag, and how he would encourage Americans to embrace patriotism.  "We promised on the 4th of July to become a more perfect union, and each American owes it to this nation to do their part to make this country a better union, to make us a better nation, to make us a better people, to make us the shining light of the world, which we are," O'Donnell says. "There's no doubt we are. It falls on dark times lately with all the rhetoric that goes on, but it's up to the individual citizen of America, the person who lives here, the people who came here to make this their country, to pay into that philosophy that we are a more perfect union and we strive to be more perfect union." We also cover these stories: The Supreme Court upholds two of Arizona’s election-integrity laws. The high court also rules in favor of charities against California's attempt to compel them to disclose their donors to the state's attorney general. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visit the site of the Miami condo collapse.  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 Friday, July 2nd. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judis. Rob O'Donnell is a former NYPD detective who was involved with the response and rescue in the 93 World Trade Center bombing, as well as response and recovery on September 11th. He joins me today on the Daily Signal podcast to talk about what it means to be patriotic, the contempts of the American flag we have seen in recent days and how he would encourage Americans to embrace patriotism. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave us a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Arizona's election integrity voting laws.

The court ruled six to three to uphold Arizona's voting laws that restrict the submission of provisional ballots outside of the precinct where a voter is registered. The high court's ruling also upholds Arizona's restriction. on ballot harvesting. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court's majority opinion that having to identify one's own polling place and then travel there to vote does not exceed the usual burdens of voting. On the contrary, these tasks are quintessential examples of the usual burdens of voting. Alito was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice's Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett in the decision to uphold Arizona's election law. President Joe Biden criticized the Supreme Court's decision on Thursday.

In a statement, the president said, I'm deeply disappointed in today's decision by the United States Supreme Court that undercuts the Voting Rights Act and upholds what Justice Kagan called a significant race-based disparity in voting opportunities. Biden vowed that his administration will continue to promote Democrat-backed voting legislation. The Supreme Court ruled six to three backing conservative charities in a Thursday decision. The High Court ruled in favor of two conservative organizations, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, and the Thomas More Law Center, not disclosing their largest donors to the state of

California, which required disclosure of largest donors. The organizations maintain that disclosing the donors was against their First Amendment rights. In the opinion for the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, the upshot is that California casts a judge. Ragnet for sensitive donor information from tens of thousands of charities each year, even though that information will become relevant in only a small number of cases involving filed complaints. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited the site of the Miami condo collapse on Thursday. Speaking to first responders, Biden said, the job you are doing is incredible. What you are doing now is hard as hell to deal with, even psychologically.

The president added that, in the end, I just want to say thank you. Biden met with Florida governor Ron DeSantis and a number of other local leaders. The president told officials that this is your show. We just want to make sure whatever you need. Biden and DeSantis sat side by side during the meeting as DeSantis praised the president for his support per the hill. Well, thank you, Mr. President, and you recognize the severity of this tragedy from day one, and you've been very supportive. DeSantis added that he is thankful for the promptness of the federal government's response. The cooperation has been great. The local, both the municipal and the county have been fantastic. And you guys have not only been supported at the federal level, but we've had no bureaucracy.

When we're dealing with FEMA, we're literally getting requests routed from local to state to federal in no time. And the approval is happening. Yeah. And so that really, I think, I think is important. And so we've had people, this is the first response in Florida's history outside of a hurricane where all of our urban search and rescue teams were mobilized. So they've been going in and out of the rubble, searching, trying to find people, trying to rescue people, at a minimum, trying to identify anyone who may be deceased to bring closure to the families, which is very important. But they're tired, and this has taken a toll on them. And so the fact that we now have that search and rescue team from Virginia here, and I know we have that search and rescue team from Virginia here, and I know we have have some more on the way. That's going to be helpful because this is grueling and obviously the

family's lives have been shattered. Mental health is going to be important. We're going to need some mental health support for some of the folks who've been in that rubble because it's not easy to do. But we thank for the support and we do appreciate the collaboration for local state and federal. Biden assured DeSantis that there will be no bureaucracy as efforts move forward to find individuals in the rubble. The president also said that he believes the federal government will be able to cover at the county and state financial costs of the tragedy. Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, will be the only Republican on the Democrats Committee to investigate the January 6th unrest at the

Capitol. Cheney did vote to impeach former President Donald Trump following the January 6th incident and has said publicly that he should not have any place in the party's future, saying in February, I don't believe that he should be playing a role in the future of the party or the country. Now stay tuned for my conversation with former NYPD detective Rob O'Donnell. I'm Zach Smith. And I'm John Carl O'Conaparo.

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. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you find your podcasts. It's SCOTUS 101. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Rob O'Donnell, a former NYPD detective. Rob, it's great to have you with us again on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you for having me, Rachel. It's glad to be here. Well, it's great to have you with us again on the podcast. I knew he'd Rob.

I think back in February or March, and he shared his story, which we'll link to in this show notes. But today we're going to talk about the Fourth of July and Independence Day. It's coming up next week. And since this country will be celebrating Independence Day, Rob, what do you think it means to be patriotic? Service to your country. You know, we promised on the 4th of July to become a more perfect union, and each American owes it to this nation to do their part to make this country a better union, to make us a better nation, to make us a better people, to make us the shining light of the world,

which we are. There's no doubt we are. It falls on dark times lately with all the rhetoric that goes on. But, you know, it's up to the individual citizen of America, the person who lives here, the people who came here to make this their country, to pay into that philosophy that we are a more perfect union and we strive to be more perfect union. We're going to make mistakes. We've made mistakes in the past. And we've owned them and we've changed them as we've come along with them.

And we're going to change mistakes that we make in the future. But it's each citizen's duty to strive their best, not just take from this country, but also give back to it. How would you encourage just generally Americans to be more patriotic in their day-to-day? what you see on social media, conversations, maybe you've overheard. Given the filter that you have, how would you encourage this year Americans to be more patriotic? My number one encouragement is to get off social media. Go out and view America. See it with your own eyes.

See it for yourself. Talk to the people of different diversities in this country that have done their part to make this the greatest country in the world. And go see it and experience these experiences that we have across this nation. And you can't do that three for your phone. You can't do that through your TV watching the nightly news. Go out there and do it because, you know, you watch what other people give you to watch. It's a narrative. It's a narrative to, you know, to slant their view or to get advertisers.

You know, when you go out and see America with your own eyes and see how beautiful this nation is, see how beautiful its people are, that's the number one thing I can recommend the people this 4th of July. Well, we've seen in this past year a lot of attacks on law enforcement. We've seen, as we talked about in the past, Rob, the defunding of police and different cities across the country. As someone who has served this country in a few of her darkest hours for sure, given your service on 9-11, what would you say to the people about the importance of law enforcement and all they do for us as we celebrate this country? Law enforcement is not a perfect profession. I will be the first to admit that, but we do our best, and I would hold our track record

up against any other profession in this nation. As far as defunding the police, I think we're seeing real-time test cases across this nation in cities like Baltimore and Chicago and New Orleans in St. Louis, in New York, in Philadelphia, on what defunding the police does to these cities, the rise in crime, the percentage in shootings and homicides and just, danger for the everyday citizen. And if we're not going to learn from these immediate reactions to their actions of defunding the police, then we're in for a sad future in a sad couple of years. Well, as we talk about the Fourth of July in patriotism, something that recently

happened in the news, I think, to a degree illustrates where we're at in this country when it comes to how people feel about it. There's an Olympic contender, Gwen Berry, who, when the national anthem was played during a competition. she turned her back to the American flag and held of a T-shirt that said activist athlete. She's competing, you know, was competing for a spot to support our country, and she may be in the Olympics representing the United States. What is your perspective on this and the attitude that we're seeing more prevalent in today's day and age where people openly show contempt for a country that they're representing to the rest of the world?

Yeah, I've actually touched base on this on social media. You know, she absolutely has the right to protest the way she did. She absolutely has the right to feel the way she did and act the way she did. What she doesn't have the right to do is represent the United States and Team USA during the Olympics if that's the way she feels. I think it's quite hypocritical on her part to use the platform of representing the USA for her personal agenda to be an activist. Your position as team USA member is an USA Olympian is to represent your nation and be the best person you could be for your country. on the world stage. And she's totally failed at that aspect. So I 100% support her right to protest, but if that's the way she truly feels, she shouldn't be representing Team USA at the Olympics.

Well, Rob, you've talked about this on the podcast before, but for anyone who missed that episode when you were on, you were involved in response and rescue to the 93 World Trade Center bombing, as well as the response and recovery on September 11th. Can you tell us about what that experience was like for listeners who may have missed, getting to hear you talk about that. Yeah, I mean, responding on 9-11, I saw the worst in the world. I saw the worst this nation has faced, one of the worst incidents this nation has faced. And then I saw the best of America. I saw the way we responded to that, how we responded that day.

How everyday citizens, our first responders, the firemen, the police, you know, your medics, your everyday doctors and stuff that went down there to try and help. You know, that was the very best in America. And after 9-11, how we came together as a nation, how we embraced our neighbors, how we were afraid and decided that, you know, we had more in common than we did that drove us apart. And that was the beautiful thing out of that that I like to remember now that we're coming on the 20th anniversary. Well, since we are coming to the 20th anniversary and given the fact that you were there on that

day and you saw, as you mentioned, the best and the worst at the same time, what is your perspective on the current climate of patriotism in the United States as someone who was there on 9-11th has that as their filter and then sees some of the things that, as you mentioned, we see on, you know, the nightly newscast and other things. As someone who's experienced that, what would be your admonition or your perspective on just the current climate of patriotism right now in this country? Well, based on what I saw with my eyes and my family experience with me seeing what I saw, you know, several years later, my son decided to serve our country and attend the service academy and it's currently active duty military. You know, my daughter is in a BFN nursing program

to serve our country in the medical field. And my youngest child just got accepted to all three service academies. And, you know, she's going to be attending one, you know, tomorrow, starting tomorrow and is going to serve our country. So that's my perspective of the future patriotism of this nation. There are young men and women out there. that love this country and want to serve it and give back to the nation before they go out and take what this country has to offer them. Well, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you to them for their service. On a somewhat different note before we end, we're going to end with the Fourth of July, but I wanted to talk about the Fourth of July in terms of summer season and crime. That tends to be, the summer tends to be a time where there is an increase in crime in big cities.

What is your perspective on what you've seen 2021 be like so far? I don't think we've yet hit rock bottom in these cities, and I think that's what it takes. You know, back in the late 80s, early 90s in New York, when I was a police officer, the city was begging for help. They were begging for more police because these people of all diversities in the inner city said enough's enough. I'm tired of sleeping in my bathtub. I'm tired of not being able to walk to the store. I'm tired of not being able to walk my child to school and keeping him home because of the gunfire. The crime is increasing exponentially.

These cities are dangerous now. You see the crime every day on the news for these cities. and until it gets as bad as it can get before enough people say enough's enough, it's not going to change. And these cities are going to remain danger for the everyday citizen that just wants to live their life. Well, as we wrap up here, and as many families will be meeting together across the country to celebrate the Fourth of July, people will be in our nation's capital watching the fireworks or anywhere else in any of the cities across this country. what do you think should be top of mind for all Americans as we celebrate July 4th this year?

What the 4th of July stands for? You know, our independence is a nation to make us a more perfect union. Get out there, do your part to make America a more perfect union. You know, correct what you don't know about this nation. Learn our nation's history. You know, take one day that day to learn one thing about our nation that you didn't know and teach it to your family, let them teach it. And go out and see things for your own eyes. Again, don't view it on social media or the TV or listen to it on the radio.

Go out and see America with your own eyes. It's truly a beautiful country. Well, Rob, that's a great note to end on. Thank you for joining us. Once again on the Daily Signal podcast. It's always great having you with us. Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for having me.

Happy Fourth of July. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcast. and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening. I have to add a little note in here.

I've got to meet some of you listeners, and just thank you for listening. We appreciate you. We hope you all off a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. We're going to be off on Monday for the holiday, but we will be back on Tuesday morning with a brand new episode. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

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