Our founding fathers are looking down at Biden with scorn right now. They're looking down on Biden and this administration with disbelief. We're gonna make America great again, we're gonna put America first, and we're gonna have a great country. [00:00:16] It's gonna be called the United States of America. >> Speaker 2: Comforting words from, I guess, a founding father. We're gonna call this new idea United States of America. Maybe he is a founding father cuz he's found a way to somehow siphon the thoughts [00:00:33] and ideas of founding fathers that are in the ground somewhere and turn in the dirt hundreds of years ago. Somehow, they're telling him how disappointed they are in this country, him, Donald Trump. So he's talking about how he's inventing the United States of America. He's also gonna do something as far as fentanyl overdoses and deaths. [00:00:48] And that problem we have too. I mean, since you're inventing a country, maybe you can find a way to deal with that too. >> Speaker 1: Crooked Joe Biden is allowing massive quantities of deadly fentanyl to be smuggled across our wide open border, where it's killing hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans each and every year. [00:01:06] Crooked Joe Biden, the worst president, and by the way, the most incompetent president in the history of our country, seems to not care at all, but I do. Biden's open borders radicalism fuels this crisis. I will end this crisis, and together, we will restore hope in America. [00:01:25] I will send federal law enforcement to round up the gang members and street crews, charge them with crimes, and get them behind bars or get them out of our country. I will ask Congress to ensure that drug dealers, kingpins, and human traffickers receive the death penalty. [00:01:43] >> Speaker 2: He's been on that for a while as well too. Death penalty, that's gonna change everything. He's talking about synthetic opioids and how he's gonna do the job. And look how horrible it is under Joe Biden. There's this small problem with that thought process. [00:01:58] There's facts that actually could back that up or dispute it. Let's go to some of those. Here's a table showing the U.S. drug overdose death from synthetic opioids, the thing that Donald Trump was just talking about. 2015, the drug overdose deaths from those was 9610. [00:02:15] We're gonna go from 2015 to 2021. It's gone from 9610 to 19,500, 28659, 31525, 36603. Those last few years, those rising years, I'm trying to remember, what year was Donald Trump elected? [00:02:32] 2016, he was out in 2020. Those kept rising. And to be fair, as of the last couple of years, it's still rising cuz it's an issue in this country. And it's weird that this is president who said he can do something about it, but didn't do anything about it when he was in office. Not to say he has some kind of magic wand, but he's acting like he does. [00:02:50] More details, though. The average annual growth rate of drug overdose deaths from synthetic opioids was 31%, while Donald Trump was president, 31% as that growth rate. Between 2019 and 20, the last year of Trump's presidency, the increase in those deaths from synthetic opioids was 55%. [00:03:08] And between 2020 and 2021, the first year of Biden's presidency, the increase in drug overdose deaths was 25%. Slowed down that rate, but then again, I would love to see the details as to why that happened. There's many factors that could change these things. [00:03:23] And again, I think we put a little bit too much weight on a president getting to office and suddenly there's not folks addicted to opioids or on fentanyl that street drugs aren't coming through and dealing with and getting the hands of so many different people. Cuz, by the way, we don't give a damn in general, we just like to say so [00:03:41] to get votes. Your thoughts man? >> Well, there are a range of responses that some people will make from legalizing drugs completely to what I think is a good approach, really investing at the community level in safe sites and [00:03:59] also community like rehabilitation centers, and investing in community infrastructure to help treat addiction rather than criminalize it. You are not going to cure someone of addiction by throwing them in jail for [00:04:15] a week or a couple of days or a month or however long. All you're going to do is introduce them to other people who allegedly break the law and make new friends because they're gonna come out, have a record, be stigmatized, probably have difficulty finding work, [00:04:33] finding a stable housing, and be in a situation where they're more likely to use after they return to society. So investing at the community level where you have health professionals testing their drugs to make sure there isn't fentanyl in there, caring for [00:04:50] them if they do overdose or something like that, and providing them with resources to help wean off a drug, get into rehab, kick their addiction, that's a much better and successful approach. As we've seen for decades, a war on drugs with a harsh criminal sentence for [00:05:08] using does not solve the problem, prohibition does not work. So what you need to do is invest in treatment rather than any sort of criminal penalties. >> Speaker 2: I had this conversation with Anna yesterday. It's always preventative versus punitive. [00:05:25] And you see Donald Trump talking about the punitive approach. Death penalty, you gotta go as far as possible. You have to go to the absolute fullest extent death penalty. Death penalty that's gonna keep people from wanting to do these types of crimes. It hasn't yet, cuz people get the death penalty every day on the streets when they're taking this stuff, many times they're like, [00:05:42] I don't care what else is there, or they're addicted to it to that degree that there's nothing else that their mind is looking for, it's an addiction. And until you actually figure that out and treat people as humans versus just pieces of garbage, you could think, maybe I have an approach to save people's lives versus using their lives to help mine and [00:05:59] act like I give a damn about any of this, cuz they really don't. If the people on the streets are the ones that are doing a lot of these drugs, how often do these politicians go out and actually talk and find out what it is that's going on? And these measures, these rehabilitation centers, they're not many aren't getting run in a way that's actually helpful. [00:06:17] What happens after they go into rehab? Get off the drugs are good for a month and get kicked right back out? Where do they go? Where do they go? Or how do they then get handed that next step? Many of these programs and services just don't do enough, because then if they do, too many of us will say, how dare you help that homeless person? [00:06:35] How dare you help that drug addict? I don't care about them. Well, you should care about them cuz that's part of the crime that you complain about. It's all connected. So when you just wanna punish people, there's gonna be someone else to get punished every time you get mad. If we try to prevent it, maybe we'll have fewer of these instances happening which [00:06:52] then leads to the offshoot or the things that happen afterwards because of it. For some reason, that simple thought process just doesn't stick. I know it could stick with politicians, but again, they don't care. Why would they commit money to trying to stop these things? They'd get voted out of office. [00:07:07] [MUSIC]