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] Hey, don't scroll away, come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to tweet you power our honest reporting. You do it at Titcomb team and we love you for it. 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. Thanks for watching. If you become a member, you get to watch all this ad free. Except for, of course, this ad still hit the join button below.