Aug 20, 2024
Why Demands For Harris To Stop Calling Trump A Felon Are INSANE
Vice President Kamala Harris is taking heat from leftists for describing Former President Donald Trump as a convicted felon.
- 9 minutes
And before that
I was a courtroom prosecutor.
In those roles, I took on perpetrators
of all kinds predators who abused women,
fraudsters who ripped off consumers,
cheaters who broke the rules
[00:00:15]
for their own gain.
So hear me when I say
I know Donald Trump's type.
That strong message is being
criticized pretty aggressively now,
[00:00:30]
because of the fact that Kamala Harris has
decided to frame herself as a prosecutor
who goes after perpetrators
and criminals like Donald Trump and
apparently using words like perpetrator.
Felon has ruffled some feathers
among individuals on the left.
[00:00:51]
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And so there are think pieces out there
now that I thought were fascinating
[00:01:08]
and I wanted to share with you all.
So let's start with Abdallah Fayyad over
at Vox, who writes that it's not clear
that this line of attack is effective.
And there are real downsides
to propagating these simplistic story
of good versus evil
in the context of prosecutors and felons.
[00:01:26]
The term felon is a label
that stigmatizes more than it describes,
and does a real disservice to efforts
to reform a broken justice system.
So there's more.
You also have Carroll Bogert, who is
the president of the Marshall Project,
[00:01:45]
a nonprofit that pushes for soft on
crime BS that I'm not in favor of.
But anyway, they.
She also penned an op ed
over at The Washington Post arguing that
the new edition of the Associated Press's
influential stylebook
coincidentally released
the day before Trump's conviction.
[00:02:03]
States clearly do not use felon,
convict or ex-con as nouns.
Instead, the Stylebook advises
journalists, when possible, to use person
first language to describe someone
who is incarcerated or someone in prison.
[00:02:19]
A person first language
is a concept borrowed
from the disability rights movement.
Now, when someone has a disability,
it's usually through no fault of their own
or because they suffered a terrible,
tragic incident or injury.
[00:02:36]
And so equating criminals,
felons, convicted felons with people
who have disabilities, I think is strange.
But let me continue.
She also writes, by calling Trump a felon,
we risk rehabilitating a word that has
[00:02:52]
fallen out of favor for good reason.
Trump is a person convicted of felonies.
So are millions of other Americans.
How we describe him affects them too.
Meaning how we describe a convicted felon.
Donald Trump impacts other convicted
felons who have also committed crimes that
[00:03:12]
they were convicted of in a court of law.
Okay, so what should we call them?
What is the what is the suggestion here?
What's a better way of referring to people
who committed crimes, stood trial
and were convicted of said crimes?
[00:03:27]
Well, Akela Lacy, who is a reporter
with The Intercept, argues the following.
Democrats are really leaning
into the convicted felon thing,
despite pressure from criminal justice
reformers to dispense with that kind
of language and acknowledge that justice
impacted people are also voters.
[00:03:47]
So don't call them felons.
- Call them justice impacted people.
- Well, I suppose they were.
So a couple of things here, as usual.
Politics and policy.
On the politics, if you're a left winger
and you are trying to get everyone to say
[00:04:04]
justice impacted person instead of felon.
A you will utterly fail.
B you will look ridiculous and
and you can catch all sorts of feelings
and you can hate me for it.
And you probably will.
Okay, but I'm just telling you
what's reality.
[00:04:19]
If you want to test it out in the real
world, let's test it out in a barbecue.
Do a poll on it. Okay.
And you will see what we're telling you.
If you go around saying
justice impacted person.
You sound like an alien.
You sound like a person
who just landed from a different planet.
[00:04:35]
We use the word felon here.
Now, that doesn't mean
you have to hate felons.
Like when I hear someone's a felon,
I don't go, oh my God.
It depends.
I mean, there's an enormous range
of felons who.
Did the guy do something stupid
when he was young and he's passed it?
[00:04:51]
Great. No problem.
Look, when I moved, I used movers
that were convicted ex-cons.
Right?
Or ex-cons that were,
from a range of penalties.
I'm past it. I'm okay.
Right.
But so it doesn't have
to have that stigma.
[00:05:06]
In fact, this is a broader issue in terms
of the politics of of of this, the left
wing seems like they're constantly
changing words, thinking this one will
have less stigma, this one will have less.
No, no, make the concept have
less stigma rather than the word.
[00:05:23]
Okay, so I. Disagree I disagree entirely.
Okay.
There is value in society
stigmatizing certain behaviors.
It's just true.
When you live in a society
that enables bad behavior
[00:05:41]
and either glosses over or sanitizes
or provides cover for bad behavior,
well then those who are tempted
to engage in bad behavior
will engage in bad behavior.
So I'll give you a specific example.
If you go to Portugal, for instance,
there are certain areas of the United
[00:05:57]
States that attempted to model their drug
decriminalization policies after
Portugal's because Portugal was a success,
it actually lowered addiction rates.
And so we were of the mind that if we
do the same thing, it will work.
But there was a cultural difference
in Portugal.
[00:06:15]
While it is true that they decriminalized
these drugs, hard drugs, things like that,
they also kept the stigma associated
with those drugs within their culture,
whereas we for some reason rejected
that notion and instead pretended as if,
[00:06:34]
no, no, no, this is totally fine
and let's engage in harm reduction.
And all we've noticed is that
our addiction rates have gone up,
drug overdose deaths have have shot up.
And so that cultural component
is important.
Like, I'm not saying that if someone has
committed a crime, they've been convicted.
[00:06:53]
They serve time that that should
destroy the rest of their lives.
I actually think it is important to have
laws on the books that allow people
to serve their time And then it's done.
They should be allowed
to come back into society.
They shouldn't be discriminated
against in the job market.
[00:07:09]
They should be able to be
productive members of society.
So I agree with dispensing of that stigma.
But the idea that we
should sanitize felons?
No, I'm not interested in that.
And again, I see a value
in the cultural stigma and stigma
[00:07:26]
associated with committing crimes.
Yeah, I'll say two more things.
One is, look, for me, for whatever reason,
felon has never had any power as a word.
Like when somebody says,
oh, somebody's a convicted felon,
I don't know, what were they convicted of?
Maybe it's because I'm rational,
because that's such a giant range
[00:07:45]
from like, oh, wire fraud.
Like meaning like they wrote
a bad check to rape and murder.
I'm like, doesn't it depend
what the felony is?
Right.
So it's never had much power with me.
I understand that it's
illuminating for some people.
That's why the Democrats
keep using it over and over again.
[00:08:00]
So I think the answer is
some somewhere in the middle.
But I know what the answer isn't
calling them justice impacted people?
Because you sound.
I'm sorry,
but I wish you didn't sound ridiculous.
But you do.
- And make them sound like the victims.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- And what if, by the way.
[00:08:17]
The victim.
Is. But, look, they're they're at least
the criminal justice reformers
are being consistent
for the first time that I've seen.
- Congratulations.
- Because before January 6th, rioters.
And, you know, let's not refer to them
as rioters or convicted felons.
[00:08:32]
You know,
they're just justice impacted people.
Yeah.
And but before they were totally
hypocritical on that,
they'd be like, oh yeah, put away Trump.
He's a criminal and a felon, etc.
And then everybody else
is an angel right now.
At least they're being consistent
and say, don't call Trump that either.
So I appreciate that from the movement.
[00:08:48]
But finally, look, when you look at the
politics of this, back in 2020 when people
were saying Kamala is a cop, that was
a negative for her in the primaries.
Now the more people say Kamala is a cop,
the better it is for her
in the general election.
- So you.
- Know why?
[00:09:04]
Because of some of the policies in the
large, democratically controlled cities
that have have made life a lot harder
for working class people,
whether it's retail workers
who have been assaulted by smash and grab,
people by robbers and things like that,
whether it be working class people
[00:09:23]
who had their catalytic converters
stolen over and over again
and didn't have the $2,000 to replace it.
So if we're going to have a conversation
about making people's lives better,
providing cover for these crimes,
and then sanitizing said crimes,
and then doing these weird like PR stunts
where we decide to use like,
[00:09:41]
these soft labels for criminals
ain't the way to go, if you ask me.
Yeah.
And so but again, leftists, if you say,
hey, we want to call Kamala Harris a cop
and say that she's been very unfair
to justice impacted people.
Please keep saying that,
because that will definitely make it
more likely that she's going to win.
[00:09:57]
That's just the reality.
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