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tv   Smerconish  CNN  July 15, 2023 12:00pm-1:00pm PDT

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and this is our honeymoon. natasha chen, cnn, los angeles. and then there's this. perhaps you didn't win the mega millions jackpot after last night's drawing. good news, no one did, which means you still have a shot. and now the jackpot has ballooned to an estimated $640 million. the next drawing is tuesday. there's another whopper being offered tonight. the power ball jackpot now estimated at $875 million. that's the third largest in power ball history. and no one has won the grand prize since april 19th. it was rolled over 36 times since then. so good luck. thank you so much for joining me today. i'm fredricka whitfield. see you back here tomorrow. smerconish starts right now. so when will trump be tried? i'm michael smerconish in philadelphia. we're in uncharted waters.
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for the first time a former president faces indictment, two of them, actually, with the real possibility of more on the horizon. but the presidential campaign is now well under way with the first debate occurring 38 days from now. and from that moment, until election day, november 5, 2024, the calendar is littered with campaign milestones, debates, caucuses, primaries, conventions, raising unique questions as to whether donald trump can be tried without conflicting with the election schedule. and the answer is no. trial in the state case brought by manhattan d.a. alvin bragg has been set, march 25, 2024 in manhattan. trial bought by special counsel jack smith was originally scheduled for next month but is yet to be determined. smith suggested december 11, b lawyers for trumked for postponement until all substantive motions have been presented.
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they said the court presides over a prosecution by a sitting president, against a rival, therefe a measured consideration and timeline that allows for a careful and complete review of the procedures that led to this indictment and the unprecedented legal issues presented herein defendants and the public.f the "the new york times" coverage said of the request, quote, if granted, it could have t effect of pushing mr. trump's trial into the final stages of the presidential campaign, in which he's now a republican front-runner, or even past the 2024 election. jack smith's office pushed back against the filing, writing, there's no basis in law or fact preceding such a determinant, and the defendants has provided none. no doubt trump wants to run out the clock, try to win the election and pardon himself. but he's not wrong in saying his case raises unique questions
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that need to be litigated pretrial, including the approval of the search warrant for mar-a-lago, the piercing of the attorney-client privilege and the presidential records act. many say treat him like anybody else, election be damned. but there's a long tradition at the doj of not wanting to act in a way that might be perceived as political. consider this, in the past two decades four attorneys general from both parties, democrat eric holder in 2012 and loretta lynch in 2016 and merrick garland just last year wrote very similar election year memos about the importance of keeping politics out of investigationand criminal charges, and all four have the same language, including this paragra, quote, simply put, politics must play no role in the decisions of the federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal char
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prosecutors may never select the ming of investigative steps or crimalharges for the purpose of affecting any election or for the purpose of giving an vaage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party. such a purpose is inconsistent with the department's mission, and with the principles of federal prosecution. the u.s. attorney's manual has similar language. in 2020, ag bill barr went a step further. he said no investigation may be opened of a declared candidate for president or vice president, a campaign or a staffer, without first clearing it with the ag and relevant u.s. attorneys. now, there's no specific doj guidance that applies to the timing of trial when a candidate is facing charges while appearing on the ballot, and, after all, trial dates are set by judges. still, you can see how sensitive a matter investigations and elections is for the doj, not to mention the court of public opinion. so when might trump be tried? the first republican debate is
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august 23rd, that's a little more than five weeks from now. not that he's likely to participate. the first ballots are scheduled to be cast in the gop iowa caucus january 15th, six months from now. there will then be primaries every month through june, then the gop convention in milwaukee, that's july 15th through 18th, democratic convention, chicago august 19 through 22nd, then comes the horse race to the election day, which concludes on november 5. and i say concludes because early voting starts way before that in seven states, as much as 45 days. 45 days before november 5, that's september 21. of course, if trump somehow fails to win the nomination, he's going to have plenty of time on his schedule after the july convention in milwaukee. right now he's got a commanding lead in all the gop polls, a lead that grew after his second indictment. and all of thiows more
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fraught if fulton county d.a. fani willis indites trump next month. the lawyers moved to dismiss the georgia case, including letting it proceed would be a violation of fundamental constitutional rights while he seeks his party's nomination for the president of the united states. a former president might be facing indictment in four different cases, two state, two federal, in the midst of his bid to reclaim the white house. if recent history is precedent, that status might move him closer to winning his party's nomination. but it will not ensure that any jury determines his fate before the american people do. i want to know what you think. go to my website at smerconish.com. answer this week's poll question, will donald trump face any trial before election day 2024? joining me now to discuss, cnn's
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senior legal analyst, eli honig, a former federal prosecutor. is there any such thing as too close to the election when it comes to setting an actual trial date? >> there is such thing as too close to an election, michael. there's actually a longstanding tradition, not necessarily in writing but tradition inside the justice department called the 60-day rule and the idea is you don't bring charges or take some sort of investigative step within 60 days of an election. to show you how fluid that is, some people understand that as a 90-day rule. so it's urban legend or informal practice within doj, but the reasons are exactly as you just read in the ag letters, doj can never do anything that either is intended to or appears to be intended to influence an election. they're in a very difficult spot now because, unavoidably, donald trump is very likely to be part of that election. >> and it's like a law school
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exam. what is an election? because six months from now is the first election and then there's a steady drumbeat of other elections all the way up until november. the point i was trying to make, if you look at the calendar between now and november of 2024, there's no time where you can try him that's not going to be fraught with political considerations. >> i agree with you. i think that's part of the complication here. donald trump makes all the law school hypotheticals come to life. but if we play this through in a practical sense, when are you going to try him? if donald trump has to stand trial, that's going to take a minimum of a month on any cases or pending cases. he has to physically be in the courtroom for that trial. this is not a civil case where you can skip out as he did in the e jean carroll case. so there is going to be every month from now until november either primaries, debates, conventions or actual ballots being cast and that's why doj is in such a bind. and by the way, i don't think the 60 or 90 day rule really
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applies because the concern is you can't do it too close to an election. if donald trump gets tried in, let's say, february of 2024, people are still going to remember that come november when ballots are being cast. it's still going to absolutely impact the election. >> you know that some are watching this and saying treat him like anybody else, election be damned. okay, let's burpursue that. if he were anyone else with these facts and the voluminous document discovery that has just been made, would this case get tried before november of 2024? >> no, it wouldn't. and i think that's a really important point, michael. if donald trump was just any old person charged with a classified documents case, here is the argument his lawyers made in briefs this week, they said we have been given 800,000 plus documents in discovery, we have extensive motions to make, we have a constitutional right to prep for trial. now, doj came back with what i think was an unconvincing
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response. they said, sure, we've given them over 800,000 documents, but we told them which 4,500 are the most important. trump team's response is going to be it's up for us to decide which documents we're going to use and they have an obligation to go through all 800,000. there's another point important. if we look at recent classified documents cases, donald trump's team cites two, one took three years to get to trial, one took a year and a half to get to trial. doj cited two others on shorter timeframes, but none of them remotely close to the six months that would give donald trump between now and december. so if this plays out as doj is arguing, you would have the most important documents case we've ever had and donald trump would be given the least amount of prep time anyone has ever been given. >> bottom line, it will not be indicative of special treatment, much to the contrary, if the case were to get to trial before election day. quick answer, if you can, how will fani willis fact that which
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you and i are discussing? >> well, she seems very, very likely to indict. if she does, that could factor into doj's calculation. there's a longstanding policy at doj that if conduct has been charged elsewhere, it doesn't mean you cannot charge it, but it is something you should consider in deciding whether it's necessary to bring a second charge that covers largely the same subject matter. >> and one wonders if that is then in turn putting pressure on jack smith to hustle if he's going to do anything relative to january 6th. >> lots of moving parts here. and, by the way, if jack smith charges first, would fani willis have to think about that? gee, do i need to pile on a state charge if he's been charged federally. >> you couldn't make it up. hey, stay here for a second. what do we have in terms of social media? i may need to lean on eli for a little response here. we're as likely to have a trial as to who left the cocaine in the white house as to trump
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facing a trial before the 2024 election. obviously kelly ann thinks there's not going to be a trial before 2024, november election day, and you agree with that. your bottom line in answering my poll question is this isn't going to happen? >> well, let me throw this, also, into the mix. let's not forget manhattan. they actually have a trial date. this is the hush money payoff case, new york county. they have a trial scheduled and trial dates move, but scheduled for late march of 2024. so that could go -- and look, as much as i think it's fraught for jack smith to try a case before 2024's election, it still could happen, michael. >> well, you're going to have to be more definitive when you go to smerconish.com. thank you. answer today's poll question. this is the poll question, will donald trump face any trial before election day 2024? go vote. ahead, can anything be done about the identity crisis among
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young american men? a recent "washington post" article on the topic was the number one story for several days earlier this week. its author joins me next, along with a frequent guest of mine who she quotes on the topic, professor scott galloway. wait! that's all for a first date? whoa. alright, c'mon. earn big with chase freedom unlimited with no annual fee. how do you cashback? i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 54, what's my price? you can get coverage for $9.95 a month.
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the most read piece at the "washington post" website for several days this week was not about our record heat, it wasn't about the president's nato trip or the election. it was an article by my next guest, christine emba called "men are lost" while admitting that, yes, men still dominate business and politics and many other spheres of american life, emba documents what she calls a widespread identity crisis. among her supporting statistics, men now receive only about 74 bachelor's degrees for every 100 awarded to women, with women becoming increasingly selective, more single young men now live with their parents than a romantic partner. men account for almost three of every four deaths of despair, either from suicide, alcohol
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abuse or overdose. the person who has owned this issue on this program and most other forms of media is professor g, professor scott galloway, as emba pu it quoting him, on his podcast and newsletter, the professor at new york university's staern school of has talked about this. the columnist for the "washington post," who wrote the recent book "rethinking sex, a provocation" and scott galloway" adrift: america in 100 charts". when we talked earlier, you thanked me for my willingness to discuss a controversial subject. so now i'm wondering whether christine's coverage and the enormous reaction means that the nation is ready to have this
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dialogue. >> this is a master class in how powerful journalism is. there's a lot of us out there and a lot of mothers and young men them selves and people such as yourselves who have felt something and have been talking about it, and richard reeves moved it forward with his landmark book. but this article has inspired more dialogue in emails and real serious conversation than anything that i've been exposed to over the last year. so christine and her good work speaks for itself, and let me just say over the last couple of years the conversation has gone from one that immediately inspires a gag reflex where people feel if you're advocating for men, somehow that's misogynistic, to something much more positive, and also we're
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beginning to crowd out the terrible, quite frankly, unpredictive voices that filled this void that was created because people felt the problem and were talking about it, but no one was addressing it. and then some terrible voices entered this void, in christine's work and other work is starting to crowd out some of those thinly veiled misogynistic voices. a long way of saying i agree with you and christine has done us all a real service. >> christine, what drew you to the subject matter, and speak to the enormity of the reaction. >> first of all, thank you so much for having me. and thank you, scott, for your kind words. i'll speak to the enormity of the reaction first. i have been overwhelmed by how quickly the piece has taken off and, you know, how many people -- it feels like people were sort of waiting for someone to finally say it so that they could begin to have the conversation that they had been worried about for months, for
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years. as scott was saying, people are worried about their sons, their brothers, and in some cases their husbands. i get a good amount of email, but i have neverthis much email from a single piece before. and, you know, we run our comments section usually for three days. and the comments were shut down early because there were 10,500 comments on this one piece, which i cannot think of another article that's had that sort of response. so it really does feel like people are experiencing this in their lives, they're seeing their male friends and loved ones struggle, look for direction and not know where to find it. and, you know, i'll say that i started thinking about this piece -- actually, you mentioned my book "rethinking sex" and that book was sort of an investigation of sexual and relationship culture after me too, trying to figure out whether sort of our changes in
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norms had worked for us, if they had delivered what they promised. and i talked to a lot of young women for that book, but i also spoke to young men, too. and it was from them that i found the most curious and saddening response. so many of them just seemed totally confused, the sands had shifted beneath them, as scott lays out frequently, the economy has shifted in a way that doesn't necessarily favor manual labor skills, where men used to dominate, women are succeeding more in college and elsewhere, which to be clear, is a great thing. but young men didn't know what they were supposed to be doing or almost what they were for. should i talk to women, maybe i shouldn't talk to women anymore because that's seen as toxic. so instead they were just retreating, they were staying in their rooms, instead of trying to ask a person out on a date, they were watching porn to feel like they were getting their power back, they would begin to look up to figures like, yeah,
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andrew tate, for instance, or jordan peterson. and they just didn't know what to do. >> scott, a part of this that you've addressed is the lack of sex, right? these guys are not having the type of relationships that young men of a different era would be having. >> look, we don't like to talk about it. we hear the word sex and our brain fires a bunch of different places. but the whole shooting match, the whole reason we have an economy, the whole reason we're focused on creating a more secure nation is so we can recognize the key to a rewarding life and that is the series of deep, meaningful relationships, and anchor to that -- and i'm not saying you have to have this to be happy, is a productive, loving relationship with a partner. and you can look at the most unstable, violent societies in the world and they all have one thing in common, they all have a disproportionate amount of young men who have no economic
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opportunity and also have no opportunity for relationships. and if we're going to have an honest conversation, we need to have an honest conversation. sex and companionship are huge motivators and guardrails for young men. they put on a shirt, blow dry their hair, get their act together, they get a job. so the attributes, the peanut butter and chocolate of behaviors between masculinity and femininity have a better world. most households prosper when there are risk aggressive, rambunctious, more prone to action attributes of masculinity in concert with more thoughtful and loving femininity. and when men aren't engaging in relationships with women and women can't find men they find, quite frankly, sexually attractive, we're in trouble. the greatest innovation in history wasn't the computer chip or the iphone, it was the middle
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class. and the thing that gave birth to the middle class was 7 million men returning from war who were given jobs and low interest loans and demonstrated the ability to be attractive to many women and we had the baby boom and the formation of the greatest entity of good in our history, the middle class. three men under 30 in the united states has not had sex in the last year and that is when they become bad citizens. it's no one's obligation to service them, but we need more economically and more emotionally viable men so that we can have more household formation. >> christine, you wrote a book on this a year ago. is he right? >> i mean, i do think there's something to that. you know, i think that one of the pushbacks that i've heard to this piece and to this conception of, you know, men being lost, men needing more
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care, is the idea that there isn't anything specific about men, that we should all just be good people, that there isn't a particular sort of set of masculine attributes or something called manhood that men should aspire to. so they say why are we focusing on them, we should focus on everyone. and i think that's -- it's a nice thing to think and i do believe that everyone is equal, but we have to think about, you know, what we see in real life realistically. there are attributes to being embodied as a man that are different than those that you see being embodied as a female, and actually being a good person means paying attention to those attributes, cultivating them where they're necessary and figuring out how to channel them into pro social roles. and we can be clear and say that
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there are many models for how to be a good man. there's not one kind of good man. but to actually aspire to be a good man is a good thing. and i think one of the places where sort of the progressive movement, especially, has sort of lost footing here is by constantly saying that masculinity is toxic, by constantly talking down to men and sort of suggesting that men are trash or men are scum, which is not aspirational. it makes them feel resentful and eventually drives them to seek role models who sympathize with them and gives them a path forward. it might not be a good path in the case of someone like andrew tate, but when it comes to looking for a model, if the choice is between nothing being offered or you're a bad person being offered, and, hey, you're great, men are great, they're definitely going to choose the latter. and we're seeing this in
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polling, actually, especially in gen-z and we see how this is going to become a political problem. right now fewer than 50% of gen-z men say that feminism has been a good thing for america. so we're seeing a resentment from lack of relationships, lack of support, lack of positive role models and it is going down the line. >> christine, thank you for writing the piece. scott, take 30 seconds and talk about solutions. give me a note on which to end. >> red shirt young men, start them at 6 and kindergarten, the prefrontal complex matures 2 to 24 months later. germans have vocational training and it's 5% in the united states. more freshmen seats so we can have more women and more young in terms of the great opportunity our elite universities offer. more third spaces so people can meet. national service so people can
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meet other people from different economic backgrounds, different sexual orientations and also different romantic partners. also, men like you and me, michael, getting involved in young men's lives. the single point of failure we can reverse engineer this to is when a young man no longer has a male role model. so where i would leave it, if we want better men, we need to be better men. get more involved in their lives. >> thank you both. that was excellent. i need to go home and watch the tape, because you offered so much that i don't want to miss a thing. thank you, christine, thank you, scott. good to see you both. social media reaction, quickly, what do we have from the world of twitter? why don't men spend the precious time they have on earth working to make the world a better place for all rather than obsessing about their delicate manhood and their masculinity? you're kicking sand in the face of some of the deep-seated issues that the men they were
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describing are dealing with. i get the impression you're not taking seriously the feeling of being adrift or how they feel they've been left behind. by the way, there's a whole nother conversation to be had on a different day about the political implications of what we just discussed and who exactly is filling this void. i don't think this is an issue limited to any one sector of men among us. to be continued. please make sure you're going to smerconish.com this hour and voting on this week's poll question. by the way, there's a poll question every day. register for the newsletter when you're there and you'll get it every day in your in box. will donald trump face any trial will election day 2024? still to come, everybody thinks that america's homeless population is out of control, but with two few beds to house them all, nobody seems to know how to solve the situation. okay, i'm going to step forward with a proposal in just a moment. and 3,500 miles from san francisco is an area of honduras
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last week i discussed a contentious decision from the court of a knappeals from the ninth circuit which limited a city's response to homelessness where there's not an available bed. this is one of the most important issues of our time, too often associated with resignation despite many good intentions. roughly 600,000 americans are homeless on any given night, perhaps 200,000 of them are in california. but just about every big city in the united states has a significant homeless population. while every story is different, there are common denominators, many are mentally ill, many had drug addicted, some both. some are neither mentally ill, nor drug abusers but cannot afford a place to live because they don't have a job or the cost of living is so high they can't afford shelter. the ninth circuit requirement
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that there be a bed before cities can remove homeless from public spaces presents a practical issues when cities have announced that they will shelter all the homeless, they become a magnet for more homeless. perhaps as a result, cities won't announce a public policy of housing every homeless person, and so we're left with a catch 22, where cities and states are locked in a relentless cycle of being forced to accept the unacceptable. by now it's clear that homelessness will never solve itself. so here is a proposal. one that requires national will and investment. every major city should offer shelter to those who live on the street. not a big home, not a manhattan hotel, just basic shelter, be it a tiny house, a converted apartment, dormitory-style living or a converted correctional facility or otherwise. but it comes with conditions. the formerly homeless person must accept drug counseling if they're addicted, they must accept mental health services if they're mentally ill, and they
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must work or look for a job if they're able-bodied. and if they don't do these things and they return to the street, despite the availability of shelter, they can and should be arrested where they will no longer be homeless. no one should be allowed to live in the public spaces of our cities. yes, it will be expensive, but still probably cheaper to provide supportive housing and treatment than to permit homelessness and all that goes with it, from medical emergencies to long hospitalizations, from violent crimes to lengthy incarcerations, and the decline of our downtowns. if just a few cities sign on, then each will bear a huge burden and other cities will be relative free riders. so this is only going to work if all our big cities and their states agree to join a compact. ultimately it might be cheaper and certainly it will be more humane to solve this problem now and together. so who will be first? i want to remind tou answer
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today's poll question at smerconish.com. will donald trump face any trial before election day 2024? up next, a recent investigation by the san francisco chronicle reveals why this one sanctuary city is proving attractive to foreign drug dealers. here is what mayor breed said answering a question about the city's spike in overdoses. >> unfortunately, a lot of people who come from a particular country, come from honduras, and a lot of the people who are dealing drugs happen to be of that ethnicity. recently my words were very hurtful.
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cars with bumper stickers promoting the baseball giants, even some lavish gates on mansions with the 49ers logo, but the relationship between this cluster of villages 3,500 miles southeast of the bay city is far more unfamiliarlial. the valley is a concentration of people fleeing poverty and a world with one of the highest murder rates, who migrate to san francisco where they ultimately sell drugs, according to an 18-month investigation by the chronicle. in san francisco since 2022, more than 200 honduran migrants have been charged with dealing drugs, roughly the same time period in which overdoses from fentanyl claimed more than 2,500 lives. 346 this year. that does not dealers who were previously convicted or never arrested. maponsible for dealing drugs in san francisco come from
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the same filies and have grown up together. dealers said that they struggled tout a living, others who sell drugs successfully told the chronicle they can make as much as $350,000 a ye or more if they help run a local operation, at least some of that money is then sent back to the villages where it's fueling a real estate boom. the sophisticated and wealthy drug dealing network from honduras has taken advantage of san francisco's sanctuary city status, befuddling local law enforcement and contributing to the scourge of a city in decline. what to do about the honduran connection? that's a key issue as a major city election now looms in 2024. joining me now is the chronicle's lead writer and coauthor of this piece, megan cassidy. we showed that photograph of the honduran gate, the 49er gate. how prevalent is san francisco, what would i say, insignia or iconography, and why? >> it's very prevalent in this
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area. particularly in one village that we went to a few times. when my partner, and i were there, it became a sighting, there's a warriors t-shirt, there's a 49ers gate, there were every once in a while a few other logos from the denver broncos or university of utah, but san francisco was, by far, the most prevalent. >> so is it an acknowledgment of sorts that they're involved? it seems rather braggadocios. >> it is an acknowledgment, and we know this because we spoke to some of the people who have built these houses and who own them. there is one that actually has the word "civic center" on it as well and that is an area where a lot of the open-air drug dealing
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takes place. >> earlier in the program i ran a clip of mayor london breed initially talking about, openly talking about the honduran connection, and then kind of taking her words back. what did you make of that? it seems to me like she was right the first time. >> yeah, you know, i talked to mayor breed for this story and i talked to some of her critics for this story. and from my understanding, she had a very limited amount of time to speak in that interview and didn't include all of the context that was needed. it's kind of been -- it's been acknowledged in this city for a few years now that a large concentration of the people who deal drugs here are from honduras, but it really has never been deeply explored before. and i think that her saying that was kind of an impetus for us to really try to explore this issue
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as well. >> look, it's a two-part writing and it's complicated and there's a lot going on. but certainly one of the takeaways is that they are exploiting, the hondurans are exploiting the sanctuary city status of san francisco. so often the united states get cast as the colonialists who are taking advantage. in this case it's like a reversal. that's what i took away. what do you make of my reaction? >> that, honestly, was not my takeaway. i saw this as so many issues combined and kind of just creating this perfect storm. when i talked to most of the dealers, we talked to 25 of them, most of the people just say i came here because my cousin was here or i came here because my sister was here, and a lot of the dealers are pretty young. and so the infrastructure is just there. it's set up.
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what we heard, though, from some of the older dealers, some of the veterans who had the time to think about this big picture, that is what they said, is that, yeah, in san francisco we have the sanctuary policies, in other places we may get picked up by i.c.e. and then go to jail for longer and maybe get deported, but we get out of jail after we go to jail for whatever amount of time. >> tell me if i'm wrong, but they operate with impunity, they operate with the knowledge there might be some punishment, but it's going to be short-term and not severe if they're caught dealing in san francisco. >> sure. i mean, that is true of any dealer in san francisco. we are -- san francisco is a really progressive city, they've enacted a lot of criminal justice reforms, and some of
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them do -- like bail reform, people do typically get out of jail while they await trial, and sometimes people do use that opportunity to commitm more crimes. many don't. many also go to diversion programs, but we have -- i think it's either 6% or 7% of the people charged with drug dealing crimes, get convicted for drug dealing crimes. the rest go to diversion programs or take a plea bargain or discharges are dismissed. >> well done. you and your coauthor did a terrific job. i encourage people to read it. thank you. >> thank you. social media reaction. quickly, what do we have on this story? without a buyer, this all comes to a screeching halt. yeah, i mean, i get it. but, unfortunately, there are a
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lot of buyers out there. push rewind and watch what i had to say about the homeless issue in the last segment. no doubt, they deserve treatment. but to look at the images of the steph curry jerseys and the giant bumper stickers, san francisco -- it's not that they love the san francisco 49ers, this is their gravy train, and they're brazen about it. still to come, more of your best and worst social media comments and we'll give you the final result of this week's poll question. please go now to smerconish.com, sign up for the newsletter and cast a ballot. is donald trump going to face any trial before election day 2024? calculates your car's value and gives you a real offer in seconds we'll come to you pay you on the spot then pick up your car that's it at carvana
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all right. there's the result of this week's poll question. interesting, decisive. will donald trump face any trial before election day 2024? let's call it two-thirds say yes of more than 28,000, at least as of now who have already voted. i'm in the minority. it might be manhattan. let's see some social media reaction. what do we have? real quick? why shouldn't all defendants be treated the same? eric swenson, here's the thing. you heard this. people say, many people say election be damned. treat him like anybody else. if it were anybody else, according to ellie, given the complexity of the federal action, that case wouldn't get to trial until beyond november of 2024. so if you hold trump accountable in a court of law before that time period, you're probably treating him differently in a worse way. that wouldn't be right either.
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you're live in the cnn newsroom. we beg