tv The Axe Files CNN July 27, 2018 11:00pm-12:00am PDT
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need some help managing your oab symptoms along the way? ask your doctor if myrbetriq is right for you, and visit myrbetriq.com to learn more. welcome back. the news continues so i want to hand it over to don lemon. "cnn tonight" starts right now. don? this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. donald trump's presidency can be defined by lies. >> his fight to remove confederate monuments. >> became really, very clear. >> race in america. >> do you think the president is a racist? >> in the south if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. >> whegaw
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>> whether he will run for president in 2020. >> mitch. how seriously are you thing about it? >> welcome to the ax files. >> mitchell andrew. good to see you. here in cafe. why is it a special place for you? >> of when i grew up. after finishing that run actually became the pastor of a downtown inner city church. started talking about ways to help kids and to connect -- people with money with people who needed money. and, he wanted to start a place where kids could have a better future. and he said that, we have got to go to -- to, you know the toughest of the tough places.
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some of them have been shot. parents of children who have been shot. some of them are young men and wi women that have served time. they're running the facilities. >> they go on from here. >> go on from here. every restaurant, hotel, every business looking for really great employees comes here because these kids that, in some instances one of them had been shot three times. this is a really special place. >> i read your wonderful memoir that you put out this year, in the shadow of statues, white southerner confronts history. you write about your family. it seems as if racial reconciliation has been a mission of your family for 60 years. your dad went to the legislature. your dad moon landreau want to the legislature at the height of the, battle over civil rights.
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voted time and again against jim crow laws. led fight to get confederate flag out of city council. became mayor. deseg ra gatd the work force. you grew up around this issue. all right of your life. >> yeah, i can't remember, a moment in my life where race was not a part of it. it wasn't all reconciliation. it was a lot of battles. my dad, really, a very interesting. because he was 29 years old. he was married. he had four babies. my mother a saint had nine children. in 11 years. they're both still alive. they both are happy. they have 38 grandchildren now. back in 1960 when things were really, intense. how he found the courage to volt against the segregation. he was one of two legislatures. i asked him, what were you thinking afwut? he said, well, i was really fighting for my friends. he had -- befriended a young
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man, on the first day of law school whose name was norman francis. norman was better looking, faster, smarter than everybody else. i asked my father. well he informed me. taught what it was look to walk in somebody else's shoes. he said i wasn't just fighting for norman. i was fighting for my right to be with my friend. and weep just kind of group in that ethos. i scant remember, i had written in the book. a number of examples throughout our life. white people have been very angry at us >> you experienced that as a kid. >> no, i did. when i was 13 years old. back then it was white people in the council chamber, really, trying to get after the city of new orleans. the city was becoming majority. african-american. way on its way to it. and there were, rabid people. you know, in the streets. yelling and screaming about integration. the story its that, that one afternoon. at 8th period. father harry thompson. the same priest that helped start this facility with the community. came to -- my classroom.
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he said i knead to walk you across the street to the gym. because the, there has been a death threat. when i got over there in the locker room. you know of course all of my friend. run in. say there is some woman outside who said she wants to kill you. this angry white woman. just as angry as she could be. and she went to reach in her purse. one of my friend says she has a gun. of course they did what great friend would do, scattered to the wind. left me standing there by myself. she took out a card and threw it. threw it at me. it had written on it, your father is an n lover, ruined city you should be ashamed. i wasn't an adult. i was old enough and ma sure enough to get what that does. back then it was all of our lives. but i wasn't unique. that happened to a lot of people in city and the south all the time. >> you say back then. but when you made the decision to remove confepd rat statues from places of honor here in new
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orleans, you melt with some of those very same reactions. your children metd with some of those very same reactions 40 years later. >> yeah, that makes you understand that we're not, we're not really through the issue of race. you know, president obama got elected the country wow, we elected our first president. we got past it. that's not true. every day in america as we are, witness to, african-americans continue to suffer discrimination. we continue to tear ourselves apart on the issue of race. on the issue of race in america which is of course, the, the greatest fault line in american politics, i have just come to learn you can't go over this. can't go around it. you have to kind of go through it. you have to talk through it. work through it. i made a political miscalculation. i, i had assumed that we were further along than after the shootings in charleston. when governor haley and the entire folks in south carolina, south carolina finally took down
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the flag. i said, you know. >> confepd rat flag. >> confederate flag. number one, time to take the monuments down. secondly everybody is going to guilt. and everybody didn't get it. it was much too hard a fight. to have in the year that we had it. than we should have. >> in fact your, you got elected with overwhelm sag part and re-elected with overwhelming support of both white and black residents of the city. your support among whites in new orleans, drops by half. >> the stimty was racially united when i came. when i got re-elected it was for the most part. the same. when i took those monuments down though, it, it, it really really, really touched people in a much deeper way. i didn't lose all of my white support. i lost half of all it. in a way that, will never come back to me. and what was curious to me as a politician, i have been involved as you know for 30 years. a legislator for 16 years.
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>> when i met you we both had hair. >> yes, that was a long time ago. and i have voted on some tough issues. and -- i have had people come up to me and say, you know i didn't like the way you voted on the abortion issue or on capital punishment, or whatever. but i generally like you. and think you are a good guy. i will vote for you again. on this thing, it was, it was, much deeper than any other action i have taken. where people said to me, i am never, ever support you again. which i thought was really curious. >> you actually wrote that today's public square is teaming with hate red we haven't seen since the 1960s. why do you think that is? >> i don't really know. >> it's too glib to say the is all because of donald trump? >> yeah. >> he seized on something and exploited it. >> listen, i am not a fan of the president's. but it is not his cause. he didn't cause it. he is a sim touchl it. now, he is a perfect fit for exacerbating it.
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and he knows that, strategically division is working for him. even though it is working against the country. but there is a much deeper thing going on. so the reason, i don't want to concentrate for the moment on this. just on president trump other than to acknowledge he has been complicit and heap has put the accelerator on it. is because it is a bigger issue for all of us. it is not just him. but it is worth noting that the germ, the seed of all of this is, is racial hatred and sense of white supremacy. which is why in the book i talk a lot about david duke. when david duke was in the legislature with me. >> white supremacist. neo-nazi. >> he was a neo-nazi, leader of the ku klux klan, got elected in 1990. subsequent ran for governor and ran for the united states senate. in one or both of the elections got two out of every three white votes. i have said in the book, that, we are not seeing anything now on the national level that we
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haven't seen in louisiana. relating to that racial issue. it is critically important, it is critical to talk about the cause of white supremacy. because we have seen examples in -- in our history. that when one group of people think they're superior to another, atrs tees occur. you can see examples where we as human beings have allowed ourselves. we didn't check our worst impulses to get to a place that created very dark moments in history. >> you actually setd the parallels between david duke and president trump as demagogues are breathtaking. his make america great again slogan is the dog whistle of all time. >> so, yeah, if you spend any time in the south, you speak to most people. african-americans you say i want to make america great. they will go, me too. if you put the comma in again
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next to it. that its a dog whistle of epic proportions. to people in the south who are saying, when, when were we great? like exactly what years were we great? what were we doing? and by the way do you know what i might have been doing at the time? so, you know, taking people back to a time when they didn't have the right to vote. the idea of america, based on freedom. not race, creed, color, sexual orientation, not nation of origin. just the need to be free. to feel liberty to have justice. that's what makes america the greatest country in the world. so, when, when people in the south hear that they go that is a dog whistle. and the reason why i compared him to david duke. >> do you think he is a racist president? president is a racist? >> let me answer that question this way. if i said yes, the headline would be, mayor calls president
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something, rejects it. never get to the issue. i would recommend that people judge other people based on their behavior. when you see an individual, speaking or creating a policy, based on race, creed, sexual orientation, check off the boxes that's by definition racist behavior. so i've don't think there is any question that the president, since the moment he began running for office when he said all mexicans are rapists, talking about muslims being evil and terrorists, or, the fact that, this false equivalency in charlottesville between white supremacists and the protesters. any body who reads a book on racism would say that kind of looks pretty good. in the south, if if the walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, i mean it is usually a duck. >> i'll take that as a yes. you wound your way around it. >> i think i explained my self well. we ought to judge him. not by calling names. it's about accurately and
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without judgment describing behavior. >> you watched what's going on at the border. do you, do you think that's part of the dog whistling? >> the answer to the question is yelgs. these are all -- different ways of exhibiting the same -- heart, or the same mind. is that somehow these people are -- evil. zero tolerance policy is, is -- is premised on, the simple notion that if you come into our country. whether you are frying to flee persecution or not. by definition, remember they use the word criminal. it is a misdemeanor offense. that would be akin to calling your mother criminal for running a red light and getting pulled over. when you continue to judge people, based on those characteristics, it, it makes americans afraid of them. because if you can make them afraid. then you can, get rid of due process. get rid of constitutional requirements. get rid of all, and begin to
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oppress. not a good place to be as a country. >> you were elected lieutenant-governor of this state. the state that gave donald trump a 20-point victory. and where he still very popular. >> he's done well here. >> you wouldn't call all the folks who voted for you and for him. racists? >> no. no. i've would not. >> what is it that is provoking support? >> an excellent question. not every person that voted for donald trump is a racist. there are some people. not everybody against taking the monuments down was a racist. they, in essence, are frustrated with the fact that washington is broken you. know what, they're right. congress is incape bum of solving any problem. this last election, to me, its was -- was not really about donald trump. it really wasn't about hillary clinton. though those were the two personages and whom people could vent their anger and frustration.
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but when you look at operation wall street or the tea party, and, and that whole thing. it is fair to say that people in america are feeling alienated. forgotten. left out. and all of that frustration, found itself and manifested itself in the election of president trump. >> next on "the axe files." >> collusion in motion is what we witnessed this week. >> you can't have a coach plan for the -- playing for the other team. when i received the diagnoses, i knew at that exact moment ... i'm beating this. my main focus was to find a team of doctors. it's not just picking a surgeon, it's picking the care team and feeling secure in where you are. visit cancercenter.com/breast
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>> i work for a game who made a speech that catapulted him into the national conversation. >> there is not a liberal america, and a conservative america, there is the united states of america. >> you made a speech when you took the statues down that went viral. >> these monuments celebrate a fictional sanitized confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that they stood for. >> why were people so hungry for the message of that speech? >> when i gave this speech, i, i gave this speech in new orleans to a local audience. i was delivering a speech to the people of new orleans but to white working class people as an invitation to see things in a
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different way to. explain the facts that had never been explained to them to. talk about what the real story is and inviting them to, to, think about things differently. in an effort to reconcile. and i was, i was really shocked that, that -- anything that i said went viral. because as you know, 30 years of public service you give a lot of speeches. some of them you think are pretty good. >> mitch, i want to ask you this. and i, i, don't want you to be, don't want you to go into politician evasive tactics here. people talk about you as a presidential candidate. partly because of this message. and because there is this, this sense that we are deeply divided. and it's not healthy for the country. how seriously are you thinking about it? >> well, couple things. first of all, disingenuous of me to tell you i don't hear that. a lot of people call and ask and talk. but i have been doing this for 30 years now. so i listen to that with skeptical ears. i know -- first of all how hard it is to get elected.
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second how hard the job is. and how many people there are out there that would look to do the same thing. so when you are thinking about something like that. you got to think hard. you got to be 100% in so. i hear that. i've am thinking about it whechblt you say seriously. i am not doing what other people are doing which is to, say i am not running then preparing to or setting up. all of these apparatuses. there are a lot of good people that are thing about it. most important thing, david. not trying to, skirt the issue. especially, given the way the president handled himself on the world stage. humiliated the united states of america. and as i said before, took a knee. >> to putin. collusion in motion. is what we witnessed. that it is got to be clear, even to, to some, some presidential trump's most ardent supporters. those who supported him because of trade or the economy. that was a bridge too far. that you can't have a coach playing for the other team we
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just witnessed something no president in history. i'm not interested in figuring it out anymore. president from has us spinning in circles trying to figure why he does. what we need to focus. his decisions. does it make america stronger or weaker? he weakened us in a way we have never been weakened. should be ashamed of hifl sell for the way he handled it. we need to figure how to work around him as a country. how to contain him. >> hard to work around the president. >> it's not impossible. it is possible for the speaker of the house to, to grow some courage. and to start checking the president's power. and there are lots of ways we can do that. some republicans are going to have to hold their noses and vote for democrats in the congressional race. congress if it will not do its job, it has the not done its job, are going to have to, going to have to change them you. know what if those folks don't do their job. they will change them as well. this isn't about party any more.
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this is about country. the republican party has always prided itself on being the party of faith, family, country. though i think the democratic party is as well. but how do you, how do you really kind of maintain, that sense of i'm a true patriot when you are allowing your leader to actually, you know, give to russia whatever it is they think they need. ronald reagan is turning over in his grave. i can assure you of that. >> so you think this was a watershed moment? >> i have no idea. how many watershed moments can you have before people -- >> i have off to tell you. this one feels different. >> a lot of them have felt different to me. everything we thought we knew about politics has not come to be. there is a silver lining, the country is tougher and more resilient than we thought it is. the american people are more circumspect. at some point in time though it becomes clear and obvious, whether the president is working on behalf of the american people or against them. whether he is making a stronger or weaker. whether or not we are heading in the right or wrong direction. the more important question --
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is, why his base will stay with him no matter what. and you know what? even if they will, it is incumbent upon the people not in his base, but like him, for certain things to finally say, listen. this doesn't work anymore. doesn't matter how high the stock market is or what the return to the shareholders is or what the unemployment rate is, you can not basically undermine the essence of what the united states of america is. i can't last for a long time. >> leave yourself out of it for now. what kind of candidate do you think needs to run in 2020 to be an effective counterpoint to trump? >> an excellent question. because the democratic party can always be counted on to shoot itself in the foot. if it was a constructive primary. then as you know, the democratic party much like the republican party, family food fight. will have a number of different iteration. you have, the progressive wing of the party.
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really tilting, tilting to the left. then you have -- basically, the moderates. then you have people that are kind of falling in both of the categories. inside. jouf outside players. for me, the, this notion of having a new, young, macron come along. that may happen. i'm, more of a traditionalist. you know i would like somebody with great experience. i would like somebody that can restore america's stature in the world day one. i would look somebody that knows what they're doing. because the they have done that before. that can stabilize and just rebalance the country for four years. >> sound like, kind of describing, joe biden. off awe i think i am, honestly. i've had to pick today. he could take over tomorrow. and life would be better. for everybody. plus he understands, working class folks. and, in a way, that, that -- most people don't. but, for my liking. i think stability. i think certainty. i think a good world view. i think experience. all the stuff should matter more
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to the world, at the moment. than, anything else. >> you know, a number of mayors are, considering -- >> good ones. >> what you are describing doesn't seem to speak to -- the mayors? no one has been elected president. as the a mayor. >> true. >> do you think mayors have the experience necessary to run the country? >> yeah, yes, actually. but i want to stay clearly, about this. if we were in a there mall time, and we are not in a normal time. we are in an abnormal time. my view might be different about who should ascend to, to the nomination of the democratic party. as it relates to mayors though. i've don't, think there is another job, in america, that actually prepares you to be president. belter than being a mayor of a major, american city. because -- >> why is that? >> mayors are executing every day. in fact they're ceos. >> you are also more exposed. >> well. >> get immediate feedback from your constituents. >> let me tell you how it works. i have gotten laced more times
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than i would like to. in the morning if my wife says, we don't have any break, can you run to the store, grab some milk. by the time i go out of my car get that milk and get back to my car the i have been spoken to in way that would make you blush. if the day before, you did something that the people didn't like. when i go off to the cleaners, at the market, at ape restaurant. what happened to sarah huckabee sanders. >> what did you think about it? >> i didn't like that. made me uncomfortable. obviously don't agree with sarah huckabee sanders on, but she is doing a job. there has to be private space for individuals working on behalf of the public to live. i fully believe people ought to have a right to protest in reasonable time, place, manner. you can be vociferous as you want, as passionate as you want. but at some point, there has to be a line. because then it is impossible to work i the thought it was plain
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rude. we are not going to beat them by being like them. >> what is your reaction to the movement among some democrats, to abolish ice? >> that is a bad idea. i had as you know, mayor, a consent decree on our police department. we had to completely reform the way the police interacted so that they became part of the community engage in community policing. never said we are going to get rid of the police department. we said we are going to fix it. the border agents, all of them, are operating at the direction of the president of the united states. everything that they're doing is at his direction. that's where the problem is. so, i would not abiologicalish, ice. i would, refocus their attention. on making sure that, that they take care of people and not hurting people. i, i really can't think of a, of a crueller thing than a politician do than separating mothers from their children. i think that speaks poorly of the president. doesn't reflect well on our country. it was really wrong. >> next, on the axe file.
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the others don't. we offer up to 6 hours of 4g wireless network backup. everyone else, no way. we let calls from any of your devices come from your business number. them, not so much. we let you keep an eye on your business from anywhere. the others? nope! get internet on our gig-speed network and add voice and tv for $34.90 more per month. call or go online today. >> what did you learn from your dad about politics and growing up in a home? he was in office from the time you were born. what did you laern but politics? >> not all of my brothers, i have eight brothers and sisters. >> your sister mary was the eldest. she took to it.
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she was a three term senator. from this state. >> beth my mom and dad came from a focus of service. we're catholic. we were born kind of into, the -- ethos during the civil rights movement. mom and dad were always about helping other people. that was true in politic thousands. it was true in private life. i can remember just really liking what my dad did. and hanging out with him. i used to jump in the car. saturdays when he was, in the car. drive around the city. which is what mayors do. they drive around. they can look at the pothole. >> i work ford rich daly. >> he would come home. never told me this. come to the office say that, that, that plant, that's on second. >> the worst day in city hall when he got into the office. he would drive every day a different route to see what, whether this abandoned building. >> correct. correct. correct. >> whether the light was fixed. >> who was supposed to fix snilt. >> we talked about it.
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it's not fiksxed. get your behind out there. fix it. he would always tell me really in the course of life without being theoretical. be fair. be just. treat other people well. and, and he would always tell me something that really got later in my life. just, like bother fd the hell out of me. when i would go to him. what do you think i should do. he would say play your politics in the future. just reverberate. whatever happened. don't ignore it. but ask yourself what is the smart thing to do. not the, i'm going to get you back thing. what's the why thing to do. you know, for the right reason. that always was helpful to me. >> he wanted the job so much the that you ran for it several times before you go out. >> yeah, three times. >> what did you learn? >> it's awful to lose. a miserable. there is nothing good about that. people say, it's, you do learn from it. you would be an idiot not to learn from the stupid things you do that cause you to lose. but it's not, it's not fun. you would never choose to do that. i lost twice.
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and, i always wanted to be, i mean, just in my dna. all wanted to beep mayor. >> you talked into a city, in desperate shape in 2010. reeling frumg katrina. fiscal problems so on. you, you -- did a lot of great work to, to deal with those, use. the one issue that you struggle with right to the end was violence. talk about that. because the you wrote, right, very movingly in this book. about the experience of having to go, console fathers and mothers -- >> well, first of all. serving was the greatest honor of my life. a tough, tough, tough eight years. we, rebuilt a great american city. but one of the issues that i still -- don't have a handle on. don't understand and won't accept. is the number of deaths of young african-american men on the streets of america, that nobody seems other than the parents and their namely members, to want to
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spend a lot of time of on. and i think it is a fixable problem. something i wanted to understand. know. >> how is it fixable. i come from chicago. tremendous issues. >> walking by faith, not sight. this isn't rocket science. this is human beings hurting others with guns. i want explore, violence as public health threat, transmitts like a violence. a behavioral pattern that develops over time. not just because of personal choices. but because of conditions people live in. so i simply wanted to save kids' lives. we got the hate done to the lowest since 1970. however that number its too high. in cities in am kwachlt in baltimore, chicago, even in neighborhoods in new york, miraculously reduced their murder rate dramatically. you have young men being killed at number that are just not, acceptable. that's not smart for a country that, that, wants to be a smart country. >> maybe we should be
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encouraging projects. like cafe reconcile all over this country. >> correct. >> and program. >> correct. >> that are bubbling up from the communities. >> correct. >> that have the correct potential to give hope. >> correct. >> let me give you a couple examples. it is true. well, let me start off with the hard stuff. it is not true that guns don't kill people. guns do kill people. people use guns to kill people. we need to speak the truth. it's not just guns. education is important. environment is important. lack of jobs is important. housing is important. work force training is important. >> the issue of the police and community relationship. excessive force on the part of police. the issue that caused nfl players to team. how do you resolve that, really, really difficult question. >> first, a really difficult
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question. the first and most important thing is, safety and security. but again as i said one of greater use is how do you balance safety with civil liberties. in the city of new orleans when i became mayor, as i said, the federal department of justice was coming into the city. we had too many, police involved shootings. we had to re-establish relationship between the police and community. if the community doesn't trust the police. they won't call them. they settle the differences. that turns into chaos. you have to go through the very aggressive process of retraining police officers. to know when to use force when not to. the use of force can never be the first thing. it has to be the last thing the police have to be part of community. from it. of it. working to it. if you are not doing that. then you are not in position to keep the community safe. >> now there are some people that think police ought to carry batons, beat people. shoot them whenever they want. >> awful. if that's what the issue of
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profiling was about. back to what you and i started off with. you've asked about president trump. the same rules allow to him as the young african-american kid on the street. judge him his behavior. don't judge by race, creed. party affiliation. if he is engaged in bad behavior. you use the power that the state gives you to protect, security. and civil liberties. >> onto people that want to take a short cut that are not concerned that want to put us in position of weakness. if you don't do it right you are going to cause more harm, more crime, not less. >> coming up next on the "axe files." you couldn't get someone to give you a crane to remove the statues. the resistance. was intense. ence, covering virtually every part of your business. so this won't happen.
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so here on top of this big column stood for what a century or more general robert e. lee. this is one of the great intersections in new orleans. you drove past it every day for years and didn't think, think anything of it. >> never thought about it. it never occurred to me. i knew who robert e. lee was. but it never really got in my, in my soul or psyche about how damaging that was to some of my friend. until -- >> one of your friend who was the one who raised it with you. >> winton -- >> 56-year-old.
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mayor. the public spaces are important. they say a lot about who they are, what they love. what they hate. and winton said, you really need to take that, that statue down. i said well why would i do that? he said have you ever thought of him from my perspective. you have had situations in your life people smacked you in the head. >> your father told you. putting yourself in someone else's shoes. >> yes. you know, right awe. my brain. i'm a politician was like, man, that's, come on. you are asking me for a really, really big thing. i did tell him. let me think about it. when you say you are going to think about it. you've really do. >> he had virtually no connection. >> no connection. >> no connection exempt he was an icon of the confederacy. the more i begin to research. i stumbled my way into the real history. real truth. its that, the cult of the lost cause was a -- movement that
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occurred well after the civil war ended. to basically put a foot down, and controvert what happened during the civil war and try to perpetuate the notion that the civil war was the great calls that was lost and the country was worse for it. i said, wait a minute. these are the folks who fought to destroy the united states, not to unify it. and then finally as a mayor of a major african-american city that i am rebuilding being able to go to the people and say are we going to continue this charade that some how this man is a person of reference that did something great for the country. it wasn't. i called the question. the city of new orleans has a continuous government. i as mayor at this point in time was continuing the work. we had the course correct. >> you removed this and three other, sort of icons of the, of the cult of the lost cause. around this city. but it was not easy. >> no. it was hard. awe all. but once, once, i started put might self in the shoes of winton and other people.
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this was so clearly wrong. and so clearly out of sync with the people of the united states, about new orleans. we are a great cull tie culturl mecca. there is no city in america. that have the kind of accumulation of this, nuclear american notion out of many we are one. our food, music, ethos. we are all in this together. to have icons like this standing in place of reference. that were things that were antithetical to anything new or leends is or was. once i knew it became clear what had to be done. >> yet, yet you couldn't find a contractor. you found a contractor. his car was fire bombed for taking on the assignment. he backed out. couldn't give somebody to lease you to a crane. >> resistance was intense. >> again, i got an education. what institutional racism really
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means. when bhiet people hear that they think it is some thing. actually it is a real thing. when people who have power. i had the mon african-americans that their entire lives. so in the speech. i write a couple of times. use a couple of different examples about put yourselfen the shoes of this, the 12-year-old, young african-american girl who is coming down the street looking at him. >> can you look into the eyes of this young girl and convince her that robert e. lee is there to encourage her? do you think that she feels inspired and hopeful by that story? do these monuments help her see her future with limitless potential? >> for the two years that i really thought about this. i talked to a lot of people. i've really did a lot of thinking, praying, research. it became really, really clear. that this was wrong.
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and that it needed to be corrected. and i really got to a pin the where i couldn't ex-palestinian to my grandchildren who were yet to be born, you know that i didn't -- that i didn't dupe what was right in front of me. we had to fight every step of the way. but i am immensely proud of it. i am more sure about it today than i was when i started. i think it was the right thing to do. >> you were out there, you were lieutenant governor at the time of katrina. you were in the boats. what was going through your mind as you were pulling people out of the water and seeing p ining on the water? >> it was surreal. it was, for a moment, we had in this country, a complete breakdown of all the government systems. it didn't exist anymore for a couple of days. and there was a dark time. there were some really hard things. we were citizens -- citizens were dead on the side of the street. that's emotionally hard to see. but even in the darkest time, what was most encouraging to me was that people started lifting
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each other up. that's how i know the country has a future. we've seen it here. in our darkest time, our darkest hour, people who would walk across the street from each other because they were afraid, ran to help everybody else. it was an incredible experience. but it was a dark time. >> there were -- i mean, the whole community took a titanic hit. but the brunt of it was felt in the lower ninth ward. and the sense that the -- the sense of isolation, even in terms of during the storm of getting relief to those areas, creatie iningee ind a feeling t a systemic issue, and we saw it again in puerto rico. >> it is true that the storm didn't discriminate. it hit everybody, and everybody got hurt. general honera, said when it e'
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hot, the hot are hotter. we saw all of the american citizens on the steps of the convention center and on the steps of the superdome. the immediate punch was at the mayor and governor because they didn't get them out quicker. the country left them behind. there are institutional failures that continue to exist in this country. income inequality, so they didn't have the ability to get themselves out of harm's way. you saw this replicated in puerto rico. we talk about puerto rico and isolation. you remember that year, that puerto rico got hit by maria, they had storms in houston and they had storms in florida. right now, puerto rico is the place that still doesn't have electricity. puerto rico continues to be forgotten. it's part of america. it's part of who we are. and the country has missed that. >> this area was really down on
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its luck after the storm. and there are -- there's all this activity, not just cafe reconcile, but other activity here. >> we're in a neighborhood that used to be the most aggressive pipeline to prison. and now, with job training, with cafe reconcile, you start to see this area come back. >> i think you're going to miss this job. >> i do miss it. i miss the construction. i'm a mechanic in a way. i like solving problems. i don't miss the relentlessness of the responsibility. >> you slept with a phone on you every day. >> every night i slept with a phone. there were nights i was woken up because there's a catastrophic event. i don't miss the relentlessness of the responsibility. i loved my job. it was a great job. but eight years of it was enough for me. coming up next -- >> you played che guevara.
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you played jesus. >> all downhill after that. >> president. president is a big role, man. -here comes the rain. [ horn honking ] [ engine revving ] what's that, girl? [ engine revving ] flo needs help?! [ engine revving ] take me to her! ♪ coming, flo! why aren't we taking roads?! flo. [ horn honking ] -oh. you made it. do you have change for a dollar? -this was the emergency? [ engine revving ] yes, i was busy! -24-hour roadside assistance. from america's number-one motorcycle insurer. -you know, i think you're my best friend. you don't have to say i'm your best friend. that's okay.
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>> i aggravated my mother when i was a kid because i wanted to be everything. i really wanted to be a professional actor. i started taking singing lessons and dancing lessons and music lessons. when i was 16, i got an equity card and went to a great school. i had a degree in theater. and you did that because politics is theater. in many ways it is. we're telling stories. >> you're holding the stage. >> i liked it because -- i liked it in its essence. i love the work that great actors and great singers do. and i've enjoyed it my entire life. i haven't been able to do much of it. >> you're free now, right? >> i'm free now. i'm looking for a gig. >> you played che guevara.
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>> i did. >> you played jesus. >> it's all downhill. >> president. president is a big role, man. mitch landrieu, it's good to be with you. >> thank you. for more of my conversation with mayor landrieu, you can g o to apple, stitcher or your favorite podcast app and subscribe to "the axe files." the following is a cnn special report. ♪ winston churchill famously said of russia, it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. prime minister churchill, meet vladimir putin. he is really very much of a leader.
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