Ben Leuschner on Police Morale and Congressman Byron Donalds on Dysfunction in Washington
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The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to Broken Potholes with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. If you noticed a small difference in the opener today, it's because Chuck and I are fans of Joe Rogan.

So we're cutting Neil Young out. He canceled himself. He's canceled himself here, too. Folks, welcome. I want to thank our first guest in the studio today, someone I'm very excited to talk to, Ben Leshner. He is the president of the Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association, which I don't want to sound disparaging at all, is the middle management for the police force, right? The guys who are overseeing what happens day to day, men and women, police.

Out there making it happen on the streets. Right. The supervisors. And doing a darn good job of it, despite what anyone might say in the press. And facing a lot of really, really new and significant challenges or at least vastly more difficult challenges than in recent years.

Very much so. So Sam and Chuck, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the ability to be able to speak to people. We always try to get the word out as much as we can about what's actually going on out there. So what's kind of nice about my position is since I'm a, we really call ourselves an association, not a union, but we try to educate our members. We try to educate leadership. We try to educate the public. And this is one of the great ways we do it.

But, yeah, you're absolutely right. Right now we are in a staffing crisis, as you know. We're losing 17 officers per month. That's our average net loss over the last year. And that's net loss. That's against the ones we're adding on. Let me stop you. Is that due to just saying they're up for retirement and saying I'm done or just saying I'm done with this period, I'm going to go open a coffee shop? It's both.

Okay. What's kind of scary right now is what we're seeing more and more of, which we didn't see before, is we are seeing people leave before they are even pension eligible. That's unusual. But what that's telling us is they're willing to walk away from a lot of money. So although obviously we always advocate for our wages and benefits,

What I keep telling people right now, it's not about the money. That's not why people are leaving. The climate. It's the climate. It's the environment. It's definitely not the weather here in Arizona. We want to be clear about that. Give our audience an example of some of the elements of the environment that are causing these good women and men to just say, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. It doesn't matter if I have a pension at the end. I'm just done. What are the elements of this environment that are causing this?

It's not one thing. It's that old expression, it's death by a thousand cuts. And we compare it to a bucket. You have a bucket when you start this job, and once that bucket gets filled, it could be one last minor thing, and that's what we're seeing, where people just say, I can't do it anymore. And the conversations I've had repeatedly with our members is that the mental health

of themselves and their family is more important than this place. And that's what people have a hard time understanding is the day-to-day job. And, you know, I brought, you know, we get a duty log every day. The duty log goes out to everybody, including city council gets it. So it's not secret information. It's just kind of a... It's actually public record if anyone wanted to get it. Very, very public. The media gets it. So, but it's not reported. Right.

Of course not. It's not. Unless there's something they can report negatively. Right. If there's video that they can somehow turn into something sensational. Even if it's cut and chopped into little pieces that don't tell the story. Right. So, for example, I just pulled up the last couple of days and I pulled up this last weekend. And right here we've got it documented that seven different incidents of our officers being assaulted on routine calls. So seven assaults on officers.

That's routine. And people don't understand the context of the job. It's like they see the one incident that goes viral somewhere, but what they don't understand is it's routine to be assaulted. Now, luckily, luckily, we're not normally, you know, shot.

Right. I think most people would view an assault as simply being shot, and it's more than that. Can you give some examples of some of the assaults they deal with? Are they spit on? Are they swung at? What are some of the examples that are on there? It's the entire range, but basically, typically an assault is going to be like a punch, pushing them, knocking them over, slapping them, spitting on their face.

Those are the kind of assaults that we typically document on police officers. You know, 60,000 police officers are assaulted. According to the FBI's UCR data, every single year, 30% of those are injured. So that's, you know, math is what, 18,000 police officers are injured every year in this country. On average, 240 officers are shot every year in this country that aren't killed. So...

You know, that's the context that people forget about. You know, we say it all the time. It's a dangerous job. It's a dangerous job. It is a dangerous job. You're not an electrician going to work. Yeah. Any job you're required to walk with a gun generally puts you on the dangerous side. So I take it you have a family. I do. How does this weigh on them? When these officers go out and, you know, they put on the uniform, they get their gun out of the safe. Right.

How does this affect the family? I mean, imagine with these 17 people, the family element has a large part of it to do with this as well. It's not an island, right? Right. It's the cliche expression, but, you know, but it's true, which is our family is more important than our jobs.

And when we have the support of our family, we can keep doing our job. But we've seen that time and time again. I mean, my wife, I don't know how many times she's wanted me to quit. And I'm not even on the street right now. It's just dealing with the environment. And one of the secrets— You still have to walk out of the house with a gun. One of the secrets to successful policing, frankly, and to our military too, is that a lot of it is staffed by legacy families. Right.

career families where generation after generation is serving in that role is brought up in it and I'm talking to police officers here who are third generation officers telling their kids do anything else go go to the fire department you'd never hear a cop say that 10 years ago yeah it's true I have a young son and and I've he wanted to be a police officer like me and I've I've uh

convinced him not to. And he still does. But what I've at least got him to agree to is do not work for one of the large cities, because the large cities is what we're really talking about here. The suburban cities, although they're under attack, too, they're not feeling the same retention and recruitment issues that large cities like Phoenix are. A lot of it comes down to support. I mean, just a few years ago here in Phoenix, while I wasn't a huge fan of Greg Stanton,

When we had incidents where people were calling into city council and coming in, he would give them a hearing. He'd give them 15 or 30 minutes. But then he cut it off and let's move on because you're hearing a script repeated over and over with just different awful words thrown in at our officers. You got officers standing around those rooms. That is just debilitating for morale. Well, it's human nature to not want to have people dislike you.

I mean, so you're not only dealing with physical assaults. It's just the things people say and the vileness that comes. And anybody who says, you know, that words don't affect them, that's a lie. And so, you know, you go to that and then, you know, how did these great men and women – and I'm going to call them great men and women because they're doing something that's so valuable for an orderly society –

How do they burn off the steam before they get home and see their family? I mean, I imagine you get home, you have anxiety. You're probably a little grumpy because some idiot just spit at you or took a swing at you for you just simply saying, hey, your taillight's out or you shouldn't be doing this on the corner. What do you find? What are the coping mechanisms? And does the department provide therapists and things for these folks? Yeah.

In the old days, which wasn't too long ago, we vent just like normal people do. We have our locker room talk. That's how we burn off that steam. We have, you know, and unfortunately it's gone public every now and then, we have gallows humor. It's a well-studied psychological phenomenon. It's nothing new in the world. That's how you cope with these things that most people don't.

When you see things that you normally don't want to see, you know, decapitated bodies, the violence done to children, yeah, you do have to blow that off, and you use gallows humor. It sounds cold when you hear it, but at the same time, that's because we're humans. But then now, because of the environment we're in,

Any incident like that that's caught, and now with the body-worn cameras we all carry, and sometimes they're accidentally running, and we just recently had a case. And it was used against us by, I believe, more by activists than the general public because I think they understand. Of course. We had officers venting. They thought they were off the record. They weren't in front of the public, and they were caught on body-worn camera venting about everything, right? And they got in trouble, and they were disciplined.

And because of that incident, I don't know of any other job out there where you know, if you guys have an open mic. Look, we have vented at the end of shows. And if Jeremy and the producers booth wanted to get us, he probably could. Right. You say things when you're with your friends that you wouldn't say in public. It's a way to dispel that emotion. I'm going to submit to you a lot of these activists who are complaining. They're paid. They're paid. They're paid. I just...

I don't believe this is a mass infusion of people saying I have this complaint. They are actually canvassed. They're brought forward. Well, it's a it's a it's a gig. It's one of the big differences that I've seen from the political side in recent years is that in the past, when there were things that came up with the police department, it really was a community led thing.

But now you have these organizations. They are paid. They work their year round. This is their job is to agitate against policing and against the police. And I've come to believe it's simply about budget budgeting and money that this they're looking at you guys and seeing the biggest pot of cash in cities and they want a big chunk of it.

It could be. I'm not asking you to answer that. He's not going to answer that. That's more of a statement on my part. It's just what I've seen. What percentage of the officers in your association are married and have families?

Oh, vast majority. Yeah. 80% plus, you think? Well, we've never counted it, but obviously I can tell you, I've been doing this for 32 years. Trust me, mass majority are married and have families. Who handles the pressure more, the single cops or those who go home to a family? I guess different types of stresses. You go home, they're all concerned. If you're alone, you're alone, right? Right.

Family support obviously helps. This is my guess. My guess is if you're single and you don't have a good friendship monitoring system, you're not going to do as well. But we do obviously offer internal support to our members. The department's been doing a really good job as far as the psychological services that are available for the mental stress. Should the city provide more funding for more of that type of

It's available now. So it's there now. It's there now. That's not the problem. I always try to speak to the problem. And it's basically the lack of support that we get from leadership and also how the media attacks us in a very biased manner. It makes for sensational news, which often means it's not very accurate news. Right. Folks, Broken Potholes will be coming right back with more from Ben Leshner, Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association.

For Chuck Warren, Sam Stone, Broken Potholes, coming back. Welcome to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. We are coming back with Ben Leshner from the Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association. Ben, thank you again for joining us. I know Chuck and I have talked before on this program quite a bit about what we're seeing going on in our major cities with our police departments, and we're concerned. We're worried about what the future looks like when law and order breaks down. And one thing that I've talked about before –

And if you can speak to this, it's not the wealthy neighborhoods that suffer. They've got gates. They've got guards.

They've got a lot of things helping protect them. It's the poor neighborhoods. Well, it's the great Lori Lightfoot comment last year. She said when the stores are being looted, she goes, well, they need more security. OK, so big public corporations can provide security. Who gets hurt? It's the small corner minority neighborhood mom and pop shop. I mean, it's a ridiculous statement.

Yeah, it's nuts. No, I mean, you're not going to go in my gated community here. I mean, we're fine. Yeah. I don't have any fear, you know, but it's the poor people in certain parts of Phoenix that...

You know, they're worried about their kids walking home. I mean, it's just such a ridiculous statement. And we saw how fast the defund police became hit on his tail because you had, for example, Minneapolis majority of black residents that I don't want you to defund the police. What the hell are you talking about? No. And it's the same here in Phoenix, isn't it, Ben? When you go around, you talk to the people in these communities, whether it's in the black community, the Hispanic community. When you go and talk to the families, the mothers, the grandmas,

the preachers, the pastors, they want nothing to do with this defund the police craziness. No, no, absolutely not. And that's what's so it's such a disconnect because, like I said, I've been doing this job a long time and I've worked Southside. I've worked Maryville. Those neighborhoods appreciate us just as much, trust me, as North Phoenix. And I've worked North Phoenix, too. And

But what's really happening right now is our crime rate is going up. We're back up to over 200 homicides a year, which we haven't seen since, I believe, 2007. So it's creeping back up. Our violent crime rate is back up. That's primarily going to be shown in those neighborhoods that have lower poverty. And, you know, the data is the data. The lower poverty areas right now are Maryville, South Phoenix, places like that.

But honestly, it creeps up into other parts of Phoenix. So even though people may think this will never affect me, I'm over here in this nice, you know, North Phoenix neighborhood. No, it does affect you. Just this week, two days ago, three days ago, we had a young 18-year-old female walking downtown Phoenix, central in Washington, who, because of mental issues of a homeless man, he just decides to attack her and put her in a chokehold. Yeah.

Luckily, there was a good Samaritan walking by because there weren't any cops around. We don't have enough cops to have them around. And he had to pull that guy off and use some physical force on him just to make him stop. Thank God he was there. Right. And so it's an issue, right? Because we're revitalizing downtown. We're trying to bring ASU into the fold, everything, which is great for the vibrancy of downtown. But guess what happens if there's no public safety or if more incidents like that occur?

Well, we're hollowing out our downtowns just like they are across the country, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York. Nobody wants to be there anymore. Right. And if I could, I just want to bring up a very important stat that some people just completely overlook. Our priority one response time, so that's the emergency calls. You're calling 911 saying someone's breaking into my house. That median, not average, median time is now seven minutes and 12 seconds. It was always under five.

And that's a long two minutes. That's a long time to wait. And just compare, the last time I checked with Glendale PD about two weeks ago, theirs is running three to four minutes. So Phoenix's 911, you know, answer the call, that's a long time. And here's the other part that's a little concerning because this affects our dispatch centers too. Our 911 operators are leaving Phoenix.

And our average hold times now for 911 calls, the median is 15 seconds. That's a long time to be on hold. And remember, that's just a nice average. But if you're talking about peak hours, you know, Friday night, Saturday night, calls are coming in. You might wait for a minute or two. Or if you're talking about someone having a heart attack. Why are the dispatch center people leaving? It's the same phenomenon of not having that feeling of support.

Really? The stress is incredible down there. And they're also receiving all these calls. And they're great people. They really are. Dispatchers are phenomenal. And they feel kind of like mothers to the police officers that they dispatch. And they see it, right? There's not enough officers. Somebody can't get a backup. Right.

It's stressful. And one of the things, Chuck, that's going on is that anytime there's anything related to policing or law enforcement that comes up on the budget, it becomes a hot button issue and we're not getting the funding for it. You're not getting the improvements that they need. I've been down to that 911 call center. It is not a nice place to work. I mean, it's a bad environment, frankly. Yeah. And they're not getting the support.

It's just crazy. Right. And most, I think you caught on to what I was saying because most people don't realize this. When you call 911 for a medical emergency, let's say you're having a heart attack or you've just been involved in a car accident with injuries and you want the fire department, there is no fire department 911. No. It all goes through the police dispatch 911. Right. So if you're holding for 911 because our officers and the dispatchers are short-staffed, you're going to hold. Right.

And then once you get through to 911, police, and they say, okay, it's a medical call, then you get transferred over to the fire department's 911 center. So this affects everything public safety in the city of Phoenix, everything, including medical emergencies. That's incredible. I mean, why not dispatchers? But I just never would have assumed that. And two minutes is an eternity.

It's a very long time. I mean, there's sometimes Sam's talking for 30 seconds and I'm done. I can't imagine two minutes. I mean, that is just incredible. How does a day generally start for a police officer? So they punch in. What happens? What do people need to understand about what the typical day looks like for somebody on the street? Sure. So

Typically, you start with a briefing. Let's just say shift two, which is the afternoon shift. Which we've all seen in the movies. There's a briefing. You come in. You've got to be a little bit early just to get ready for briefing. You've got to be in full uniform, everything ready to go because sometimes briefing now is skipped because there's so many calls waiting, you don't get briefings anymore. They just tell you, hit the street.

Then in briefing right now, you look around, there's not as many people there as you thought would be. You don't have staffing. But then the officers hit the street. And they're basically trying to relieve day shift so that they can go home. But now what we're seeing more and more, day shift is being held over, right? So it's turning into this mandatory overtime because we just don't have the numbers. And then based on shift two, you're going call to call to call. That's what you're doing.

The sun drops and people go crazy. Yes. And reports. You're taking a lot of reports, which you have to hold until the end of the night. And the lack of officers, and I think generally some of the stuff that's going on in the culture right now, you can see it in all sorts of areas that this respect for law and order is breaking down from everything from the way people drive to the way they're interacting with each other. How many officers are we short right now in the city of Phoenix?

We have just under 2,700 sworn now. At our max, we were at almost 3,400. That was in 2008. So we probably need to be at 3,800, 3,900 with just population growth. If we kept up with 1990, the year I came on, just percentage-wise, we would now have 3,500 officers if we just kept with the population growth. Good grief. I just cannot believe that at all.

Yeah, Ben, we're going to bring you back for the next segment here. We really appreciate you joining us on Broken Potholes. I hope folks are listening and tuning into this program because I think this is stuff they need to hear. Thank you. Folks, for Chuck Warren, Sam Stone, Broken Potholes will be coming right back. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. In the studio with us today, Ben Leshner from the Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association. Ben, again, thank you for joining us.

Ben, I have the most important question of the day. What is your favorite cop movie and what's your favorite cop TV show? Good one. Good one. I've been deep here at Broken Hot Holes. I'm really old school here, so this is going to date me a lot. You're not going to say Maddox, are you? I really enjoyed Hill Street Blues. It was the first real gritty one, though.

That, for me, was gritty back then. Yeah, that was really – it's the first time we saw someone's bottom on TV. Yeah, it was pretty gritty there. And how about – I don't think that's why Ben was tuning in. How about your favorite cop movie? Oh, cop movie. Quite honestly, most cops don't like cop movies. Yeah.

I bet. I bet. Because it's so unrealistic. So the other guy with Will Ferrell's not real or lethal weapon with Danny Glover. Honestly, my favorite cop movies are the comedies. So it probably is the other guy. Yeah. Whether it's Police Academy or something like that. They gave him a wooden gun. Have you ever had to give a wooden gun to somebody in your force? I don't think that's allowed anymore. Yeah.

You know, but that brings up a thing. When I grew up, and I think all of us grew up, cops were our friends. Well, you wanted to be a cop or a firefighter or a baseball player. Oh, every kid, you know, you looked up to the police. That was part of what was ingrained in us. Right. And I got to say that

Moving away from that and people might have called it indoctrination, but moving away from that is hurting society because most of the time when someone interacts with a cop, it's not in a great situation for them. They are in distress or they just were pulled over or whatever it is. And you need something to balance that. How did COVID when it hit? Did domestic violence increase? How did it affect the mental welfare of the police force as well? Did they see more things that they hadn't seen in the past?

I mean, besides the fact they're trying to do mandatory vaccines and some don't want it, I don't want to get into that because of all the prying ears here. But what did we see? What type of crime increased during COVID that people are unaware of? Domestic violence.

We had a lot more domestic violence. Typically, quite honestly, on like a daily basis, we get over like 120 domestic violence calls every single day. - Oh my goodness. - And then what wasn't reported as much was obviously all of the child abuse issues, child neglect issues, because normally that's reported through the schools to us. - And they weren't going to school. - They weren't going to school initially. Now obviously that has changed again, but those are the things that we saw initially.

Property crimes of houses went down because people were home. Go figure, right? Makes a difference of your home, right? Exactly. And one thing I do want to point out about property crimes, though, is they are reported to be down. Anecdotally, what we hear from people is they're up.

Well, if you put stores. They're just not calling. Well, if you're waiting forever for a cop to show up for a property crime, which is a low-level call for us at this point because we're obviously focused on violent crime, you're going to just stop calling. Well, I'll give you a perfect example. So I have a home up in Utah, Salt Lake City, and we had a wave of property crimes. And come to find out it was three or four people from the west side who were stealing things.

For drugs, they go pawn it or whatever the case may be. And, you know, you would come, they would take. It's funny in our neighborhood, which it's a nice neighborhood. A lot of people were hit. I had five dogs. And so it's just we were never hit. Right. But people would say they would call and they just say, yeah, we'll take the statement. But there's just nothing we can do about it. And it didn't stop.

until the neighborhoods hired private security, which again is the problem because they could afford it and they found the people and arrest them. It stopped because they hired private security going all night. Right, right.

But that's because they could pay for it. Because they could pay for it. And that's what these activists don't realize. They're hurting the communities they supposedly want to help. Right. It's a big lie. Right. Absolutely it is. Yeah, this is terrible. And it doesn't represent the residents of those neighborhoods. No, not at all.

They do not represent those neighborhoods. No, no, no, not in the least. I mean, it is really a travesty what is going on with these activist organizations. They're getting people killed. I mean, that's you don't need to say that, Ben. I will say that. But they are getting people killed.

And they're putting officers in a position where they're desperate to get out of this and do anything else because they're not supported. Right. And I'm not going to speak for you. We only have a minute left. But we had a situation very recently where an officer was shot. And thank God he survived and got out of the hospital. But.

There's a very significant chance that he was shot because he didn't pull his weapon because he was afraid of the investigation that automatically follows. That's going to happen more and more. That culture has to change.

Yeah. That's the million dollar question, right? I don't want to leave this Debbie Downer, right, as far as telling. But it obviously will get worse before it gets better. But I am an optimist in the long run. More people will wake up. More people will come to support us. And quite honestly, we'll have a change in leadership that actually comes out and openly supports us. Fantastic. Ben Leshner with PPSLA. Thank you so much for joining us in the studio this morning. We really appreciate having you. Thank you. Broken Potholes. We'll be right back.

The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. If you noticed a little bit of a difference today, it's because Chuck and I are Joe Rogan fans and we're going to let Neil Young cancel himself on our program too.

On the line with us right now, Congressman Donald from Southwest Florida District 19. Florida, one of the great combat states in all politics right now. Congressman Donald, you have a fascinating history. You grew up in Brooklyn, New York, proud son of a hardworking and loving single mother. Your mom was dedicated her time to

instilling in you the greatness that greatness requires sacrifice and that has driven you both as a family man and in Congress graduate of Florida State University This is this is a really interesting time in politics and I thank you congressman for joining us here, especially with everything going on Well, it's my pleasure to be with you guys. Well, thanks having me on so a congressman

Sorry, I'm also in the tunnels. I'm also in the cannon tunnels right now. No worries. So you're hearing a bunch of stuff in the background. No, you're good. Let me ask you this question. Since you're in the tunnel, we'll ask this question. You were in the Florida legislature, and then you were elected to Congress. What is the difference between being a legislature and being a congressman? It seems like Congress now is sort of isolating itself from everybody else in the world and their peers and their colleagues. What's the difference? What's the difference between serving in the two?

I mean, in the legislature, in a state legislature, you handle everything from education, insurance, police funding, criminal courts, civil courts. I mean, everything that really citizens touch happens at the state level.

The stuff that happens up here in D.C., I mean, D.C. is trying to do everything for every American, but that's really not its job. Our job is much more about coining money, protecting borders. Obviously, you have the United States military, the FBI, CIA, our intelligence apparatuses around the world, stuff that the American people really don't see or touch every single day.

That's what we do up here. The unfortunate thing is that you got members who want to be a part of the everyday life of the American people. But that's what state governments are for. And that's actually what local governments in some respects are for, not the federal. And I think that what's happened up here is you just have a complete difference in philosophy between Republicans and Democrats. This is not even a thing where it's like, oh, well, we can find a middle ground and work together.

When you have a philosophical disagreement with somebody, there is no middle ground.

That's what's going on up here. That's absolutely right. And people I always love when people say, why can't they just negotiate something? Well, and I was example. OK, well, how do you negotiate pro-life? How do you negotiate capital punishment? You either believe it or you don't. So where's the middle ground on that? And I think I think it's a bit of a ridiculous statement from people who say that there's negotiation on those points. Yeah. And I want to ask Congressman, obviously, Joe Biden came into office promising bipartisanship, promising to reach out to people on the Republican side.

Is that actually happening? I mean, what are you seeing there? Are they in is the administration engaging with you? No.

The administration does not engage with Republicans at all. Maybe in the Senate, if there's something that's super tight. You know, I think the administration, when it was like the infrastructure bill, they dealt with Republicans that wanted to negotiate a deal on spending, you know, billions on infrastructure. But the reality is there's no sense of unity or bipartisanship.

that goes on here on Capitol Hill. It's what Joe Biden wants, and frankly, what Bernie Sanders wants, and that's what they've been pushing. And even at times where we're like, hey, let's try to work out, hey, don't do that, here's why. Like I said, when it comes to principles, and when it comes to philosophy, there's no agreement. So there's no agreement on the philosophy of massive government spending. How are you going to negotiate that? You're either for it or you're not.

Well, and that – so one of the things that I think people don't understand about government is bipartisanship doesn't start on the House floor. It doesn't start on the Senate floor. It starts behind the scenes in the way you interact with each other. And I think it seems like at least – and maybe you can speak to this. It's very different than in the past when the two parties would interact with each other extensively off the floor and build relationships that you could work with.

Well, look, I'll tell you right now, the Republican members and Democrat members, unless they've been around a long time, you know, we don't talk. And I think, you know, COVID has made it worse because now, you know, the committee meetings are virtual and, you know, they're hybrid. Most

Most of the members stay in their office. We're on the floor. Nancy Pelosi still has this ridiculous mask mandate on the House floor. So even though most of the members are vaccinated and virtually all the members have had COVID, we have to wear these masks, you know, even though there's nobody in the buildings at all. There's no engagement. Are they insisting on N95s? Are they still doing the farce with cloth and paper masks? She insists, but she can't make you do it.

But she insists on it, and I think now they're giving N95s to all the offices. Like, now what they're doing is, like, you know, the American people can't get, you know, they can't get COVID tests at home, but they're sending boxes of this stuff to me.

people to use. It doesn't make any sense for us to be getting boxes of them here. No. Before you, we had our guest today, the president of the Phoenix Police Sergeant and Lieutenant Association. And we talked for 30 minutes just the narrative of what a day of a cop looks like, why they're losing 17 officers a month who are just...

quitting without getting their pensions just because they can't handle it anymore. We were talking about, based on population growth, the city of Phoenix is probably 800,000 police officers short just to meet needs, that the average 911 reply time now is seven and a half minutes, where it used to be below five minutes.

What can Republicans in Congress do to show? I know this is a local issue. It's a city issue. You dealt with stuff like this in legislature, but it's more of a city issue in a lot of ways. But what can Congress do? What can Republicans do to show our support for law enforcement?

I think the biggest thing up here is you have to use the bully pulpit. For so long, you've had Democrat members of Congress who are constantly saying, we've got to have police reform, we've got to have police reform, yada, yada, yada.

instead of being supportive of the men and women that do the job every single day, a lot of it is rhetoric up here in D.C. I think the thing for people to understand is there's no bill. Up here, we passed these bills, and everybody says, oh, look, we solved it. But the reality is that all you did is said that we would give a local jurisdiction more money if they would do this.

or we would take money from them if they wouldn't do that. That's what DC does. But we do have a responsibility with our rhetoric and what we say. And I think Republicans have to show support for law enforcement. I will tell you, Republicans have in a large way. And when we take back the majority...

you know, it's about also, number one, having that support for them, but also, number two, not allowing silly bills to go through which undermine police departments and police officers across the country. Congressman, one of the things that we're facing here in Phoenix is a DOJ investigation by their civil rights division of our police department, which frankly is an absolutely ridiculous investigation. Phoenix actually has adopted most of the reforms that these folks think they were coming to bring us.

Is there anything after we take the majority that Congress and the Senate can do to rein in some of this overreach by the federal government into local policing?

That part is going to be very difficult. And the reality is, is that when, you know, the president appoints somebody to be, you know, the attorney general, that person is in a lot of respects independent, even sometimes of Congress. I mean, we approve their budgets, but at the same time, it's going to be hard pressed for us to like, you know, hold them accountable.

start pulling money out of the Department of Justice. Probably the most we could do is we would have hearings on oversight about what they're doing and actually make the Attorney General explain himself to Congress about what he's doing with the people's money. But the Department of Justice, by its design, is even supposed to be somewhat independent of the executive, even though the head is appointed by the president. I don't really think you're going to get much reform there until you have a new president.

What has been your biggest surprise being a member of Congress about it, about the institution? How much time we actually waste. And there's no urgency in D.C. to do anything until you hit a fiscal cliff or until there's some political issue that happened in the United States. There's a lot of urgency to get on CNN. Yeah.

Listen, I'm telling you, and that's the problem. And so I think it's a lot of it is news cycle driven when there's urgency as opposed to, you know, the body working. The last part is, and I think I was at a breakfast this morning and, you know, one of the one of the ladies at the breakfast said, you know, it's very interesting. You know, she's like, I just want to hear more about how the sausage is made.

And I had to tell her, I was like, there's no sausage making here. It's like it's like a pack of prepackaged bologna that comes out. And so, like, it's such a driven process out of the speaker's office. Like literally bills just pop out of her office and they go run through a committee and they're on the House floor. That's how Nancy Pelosi runs this place. The best part is she have committees working. Yeah. The best part is she doesn't even seem to know what's in those bills until after they've been passed.

Oh, no. She knows. She doesn't want to tell anybody else about it. You know what I mean? I mean, but that's the reality is like how Congress is supposed to work is that the members are supposed to be in committee debating these ideas, crafting out ideas, a real back and forth so you can actually get to good policy that works for the country. What's

What's happening now is this stuff is prepackaged stuff that just drops out of her office. There's no debate. There's no dissent. It's either an up or down vote. And she has a real strong grasp on her conference. We're with Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida District 19, which basically encompasses Naples, Florida, one of the great places in the world and a much warmer place to be in the winter than growing up in Brooklyn, New York. If you were the speaker,

What are the top two or three things you said, we're going to get these two or three things done this session, which will help America and help the men and women in our society and their families?

Oh, number one is we actually would actually go back to the regular order in the budget process. There's nothing that's just more destructive than when you don't allow for a budget to actually be managed in an appropriate way. Our job is to appropriate dollars, but we don't do that. You know, we play in the margins. We play around the edges. And so that's number one. Number two is, oh,

I'm looking for a place. Number two is, is that we have to, um, we got to secure the border and Congress has to get serious about that. One of the things that's really happened is that the administration loosely follows the asylum process. And so because they loosely follow the asylum process, um,

That's why you're allowing all these people to come into the country. They're applying for asylum, and the administration just keeps giving out asylum notices to appear. No, we've got to change that. I think it's got to be where there's a quota system on how many asylum applications we allow a year. And if there's an area of the world where obviously there's something, a genocide or whatever the case might be that's occurring, then Congress can approve that.

But just to give the administration open authority when it comes to asylum applications, that's what's wrong with the border. And then there's so many other things to fix as well. We have to do with the visa process, so on and so forth. The last part?

We need congressional term limits. It's time for a lot of members to go home. A lot of them. How would you how would you would you do that? Like, like a stagger it like every, you know, the third every two years, third every two years for the term limit sort of stagger it. So you do have some. I mean, I know we all give a bad rap to seniority, but some seniority is good, you know, trying to find out where the bathrooms are and so forth. So would you stagger it? Would that be the best way to do that?

I think it's possible. I think staggering it probably makes the most logistical sense. You know what I mean? I think the one thing people don't want to see is that you have a whole new Congress come in and you have members trying to jockey for who's going to be in charge and nobody even knows if anybody has the skills to lead. Like, I don't think you want that either.

No, I'm serious, because that's what would happen. I think what you've got to do is you've got to stagger the terms. Like in the Florida legislature when I was there, term limits happened. They were staggered when they first went in, and then it just kind of flowed from there naturally. Should we go to four-year election cycles or keep the current two-year in the House?

Four years seem to be— No, you've got to keep two in the House. You've got to keep two in the House. Members of Congress are supposed to be closely tied to the people. Do I like having to run every two years? Not really, but it's not about what I like. It's about what the people who sent me here like, and there's nothing that would keep me further away from them than if I was simply—

If I could just not that I didn't have to stand in front of them every four years, you know, but I'm also a guy. I think, you know, I think the Senate should go back, you know, to being appointed by state legislators. That's me. Congressman, real quick. We only have a minute before we go to break. But what about going to something like the British system where you're only allowed to campaign for a set period of time ahead of your election? Because, quite frankly, I think we're hurting ourselves by never ending a campaign cycle. It's just one after another.

Well, I think that goes off of campaign finance because we never close our campaign finance accounts. So because the accounts are never closed, that's what perpetuates constant campaigning. That's a very good point. Great point. Congressman Byron Donald from Florida, going to continue with us on our podcast-only segment here. Congressman, we really appreciate you joining us on Broken Potholes.

We appreciate you listening. Tune in next week and make sure you catch the rest of this interview. Apple Substack, Spotify, all the podcast channels. Broken Potholes coming back. Thank you for joining us on the podcast only segment of Broken Potholes with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Continuing our interview from the radio and thank you, Congressman. We have Congressman Byron Donald from Florida District 19, Southwest Florida.

We were just talking about campaign finance, endless elections, but there's something else going on in the world right now that involves military action in a place that most people have no idea probably where it is on the map, but is incredibly important for all of us. Congressman, what do we do about Ukraine and Russia putting 100,000 soldiers on the border?

Well, look, I think that this is a very, very important situation. There hasn't been a country that's been invaded in Europe since, you know, World War II. So I think it's important people understand the context of what we're seeing. If Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, it's

It's going to change overnight geopolitics and, frankly, our national security stance, not just in Europe but around the world. Because if Ukraine is invaded, it's just going to give the Chinese all the room they need to invade Taiwan. And people will say, well, why do you care about Ukraine? Because Ukraine is the opening act for a shift of the way the world is going to work. And why should that matter for America? We get all of our computer chips from Taiwan.

If the Chinese take over Taiwan and they control basically all of our computer chips, do you think the Chinese are going to be benevolent aggressors against the United States? Absolutely not. What they're going to do is continue to tighten their grip on the globe, which is really their intention.

So that's what makes Ukraine very, very important. I think what we need to do is obviously, one, provide the Ukrainians all the support they need. But I think NATO has to act, and I think NATO has to respond to this threat right now. They cannot do sanctions after the fact, which I think is what the White House is talking about, because that's just insane and it's ridiculous. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe.

They're the largest country. They have some of the most vast amounts of natural deposits and natural resources. The Chinese right now have actually put in a bid for one of the deposits of lithium, which is like a $2 trillion lithium deposit.

Now, people say, like, why is lithium important? Lithium goes into semiconductors, which goes into microchips. Lithium goes, obviously, into batteries for just about everything from a Duracell all the way up to an electric battery for a car. So these deposits are of major economic importance going forward. We should be doing everything we can to protect Ukraine because protecting Ukraine also protects Taiwan. And the last point I'll make on it is,

if Ukraine falls, and obviously we're not trying to commit American troops to this matter, but if Ukraine falls, this is going to lead, in my view, to a wider conflict down the line where more American lives could be lost in a future conflict. A lot of these conflicts are avoided with strength, and really what happened here is that when Afghanistan fell because of weakness from Joe Biden, it opened up the door for all this other stuff. And weakness does not

Weakness and appeasement only lead to conflict. Strength is what stops conflict from happening before they start. And Congressman, the mixed messages from the Biden administration have just been horrific and have given Putin the room to operate. Whereas if you came out and just said, look, if you forces go in, so does the U.S. Air Force. Russia's not going anywhere at that point.

Yeah, I agree with you. And I think what the administration did by having non-essential personnel evacuate our embassy and leave, that was completely the wrong signal. People don't realize we still have an embassy in Russia. We didn't evacuate non-essential personnel out of Russia and out of Moscow. So if we didn't do it there, why did we do it in Ukraine? It sends the wrong message. And I think that the president's wrong on this. But what else is wrong? He's wrong on so much.

Well, what's interesting about these scenarios, too, I mean, Germany is a perfect example, is I think America needs to start getting back to a little bit more self-sufficiency. So you talk about chips in Taiwan, right? We need to bring that manufacturing back here. Germany's playing footsie on this issue because their energy needs, because they've taken down all their nuclear weapons.

plants. So now they're getting natural gas from Russia, right? So they're playing footsies, they'll get cut off. So now the Biden administration is trying to rush natural gas supplies to Europe. And there has to come to a point as a country, and I'm a big believer in free markets. I think it keeps inflation lower, you find the best price, but there are certain industries that

that we as a country, especially a country our size, need to be self-sufficient. And that's energy. That's these key sectors like microchips. It's food. It's energy. I mean, look, we have an excess of energy to share the world. And for two years ago, where we were self-sufficient in this, we're now not anymore. And it's insane. And it's environmentalist laws and requirements holding us back. But don't they keep telling us we're one world?

You know, is pollution somewhere else worse than pollution here? No, not according to the wind.

The Chinese allow people, kids to mine cobalt with their bare hands in Africa. This is what the Chinese are doing. Look, here's the deal. We were, I thought I took off my colleagues yesterday about this very point. The people on the political left who are all in on this Green New Deal have are literally handing the globe to the Russians and the Chinese. And I will tell you this. The Russians and the Chinese do not care about your Green New Deal.

What they care about is dominating the globe. And so, yeah, they'll sell us electric batteries while they mine lithium, while they mine rare earth minerals, while they mine cobalt, while they pump for oil. And they don't care about the environmental standards of the United States. And they don't care about the environmental standards of Germany or France. Look, the reality is that the Germans have put themselves in a bad spot because they chased this whole climate neutral agenda. Now they literally are under the thumb of the Russians.

I don't know which one is worse, but we can solve climate issues if that's what you want to do. But you can't subjugate yourself to an adversary who simply does not care about your plans, your philosophies, your ideals. All you're going to do is make matters worse, not better. Congressman, I've heard it said that the Russians, the Chinese, these folks are actually putting money into these environmentalist groups to drive these policies, which are hurting us. Is there evidence of that that you've seen or is that still just kind of something we think is happening? We don't know.

I'm not seeing evidence of that, but it makes total sense to me. If I make an investment which allows my adversaries to basically make dumb decisions and bring them to have to do business with me on my terms, I'll make that investment every single day. That's not about geopolitics. That's business. You know what I mean? Like, that's the simple stuff. If I could put some money down and you'll come begging me to do business on my terms, I'm all for it. I'll do that business every single day.

We're with Congressman Byron McDonald, Florida District 19. That's in Naples, Florida. As we get ready to wrap up here, I just want people to get to know a little bit more about you. You grew up apparently with a single mother in New York. Explain a little bit your background, how you ended up in Florida.

So, I mean, I'm just a city kid, man. Nothing crazy. I was a city kid. I love sports. My mom valued education. She was a tough lady. And so, you know, if your mom's tough on you, you have a choice. You can either get out of her house or do what she tells you to do. You know, and I did what she told me. And after high school, I went to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, HBCU. I was there for three years, and I transferred to Florida State, finished up my work at Florida State.

And I was apolitical. Like, I was never in politics. My family's not really into politics. I mean, they pay attention now because of me, but, you know, they're not really into politics. I wasn't into politics. It wasn't really until 30 that I started getting into politics, and that was really because of my career and observing the financial collapse, you know? So, like, kind of how I got into this was I didn't really like cable news. I didn't really feel I was getting the information I needed by watching, you know,

30 seconds sound bites or whatever. So I started reading books on political philosophy. You know, like I read John Locke. I've read some Montesquieu. I read The Law by Frederick Bostriak. Great book for anybody trying to like get a primer on the purpose of law. Like forget Republican-Democrat politics, like the purpose of law in the country. So I think that's kind of how I got started. That's how I got here. And it's fantastic. Did your mom go? Mia loves a friend.

And I remember going to her swearing in and watching her immigrant parents with tears in their eyes watch when she got sworn in. Was your mother able to join you in D.C. when you were sworn in? Yeah, she came. She wasn't going to miss that. She absolutely came. She was loving every minute of it. What a great moment for her.

What a fantastic moment. The only thing that was crazy was she came under, like, COVID protocols. It was dumb. Like, you know, Nancy was like, she was like, oh, we can't allow people to be on the floor. And I'm like, people get sworn in once in their life. If you want to have your COVID protocols, fine. But at least let family members come and be a part of, like, a, you know, historic moment in a person's life and a family's life. Can't we just clear the Democrats out and have fun without them at that point? I mean, for crying out loud.

Well, I'll tell you a quick story. Here's how silly it was. So they made this rule where they would only allow a certain amount of people down on the floor at a period of time, right? But it was so unorganized that basically everybody was on the floor. And then they cleared us off the floor into the speaker's lobby, which is like kind of a narrow lobby off – a narrow hallway off the floor so that they can disinfect the floor.

So they moved us all into a smaller area, and we're standing there for 15 minutes spreading COVID all over the place so we can go back onto the House floor. It was so unorganized and chaotic. She was like, fine, whatever, let's just swear everybody in. I'm like, this is the stuff. You have people, frankly, who are just not that bright trying to micromanage everything as opposed to letting people make decisions for themselves. Well, that just sounds like the perfect story that explains Washington, D.C.,

Well, and Congressman – It certainly does. You're a pretty bright guy. This is one of the things that I was kind of stunned at when I first started getting involved in politics –

It doesn't take a lot of brains to get elected. I mean, there's a lot of people around. Well, the history of the world is run by those who show up. Yes. That's just a fact. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us today, and we'll hope you'll join us in the future. Where do people find you on social media? Where do people find you on social media to follow you? Everything's at Byron Donald's. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Getter.

Gosh, what else am I on? I think that's it for now. We're going to add more stuff. We'll add more. We'll add more. Everything's at Byron Donald. All right. Byron Donald, congressman from Florida, thanks a million. Hope to have you on soon. All right. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it. All right, guys. I've got to run. Talk to you guys later. Bye-bye. You too. Chuck, another great interview. Obviously, an amazing guy has gone a long way in his career, but I love that he got into it because he was fed up with what he was getting fed in the news. So he called me when he was running.

And I just, I asked him, you know, what was your plan? He goes, man, I'm just going to knock doors. I think that's what he did. He just went and knocked doors. And he won, I think it was a five-way primary.

It's Naples, Florida, so it's a pretty safe area to be a Republican in. But, you know, he just did the old-fashioned shoe leather and knuckles on the door. And he's a great guy. Amazing how well that works, isn't it? It always works. That's the thing about it. Folks, thanks for joining us. We hope you have a great weekend, and we'll be back next week. Absolutely.

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