Frank Montano and Rev. Jarrett Maupin on Racism in America
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Welcome to Broken Potholes. I'm your host Sam Stone. Chuck Warren out of the studio today. Unbelievable the luck this man has, the life he lives. He's in Florida for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Lombardi Trophy Party. The lucky dog. But with us in studio here today we have some fantastic guests for you guys. We're going to have a little bit different show. This folks...

Probably going to get us in trouble. May get us censored on Twitter. Facebook may block and ban us. This is the white, black, and brown episode of Broken Potholes. So with me on the line today, people would not expect this, longtime friend, guy I have an enormous liking and respect for, the Reverend Jarrett Maupin, one of Phoenix's leading progressive

Democrat activists for the black community has stood for Phoenix's African-American community for decades. Also in studio with me, Frank Montano. Frank was born in Mexicali. He unfortunately lost his dad when he was only seven years old. His mom sent him to live with family in the U.S. When Frank got out of high school, he joined the Navy, became a Navy SEAL.

He has just finished his career. Very, very thankful to have him in the studio with us. And Jarrett, on the line, thank you guys so much. Thank you for having us. But before we get going, I did want to talk about one thing that's in the news today. Because for those of you who don't know, I am Jewish. Member of the tribe. Got another member in here, too. Also our friend Adam Stevens. He may chime in from time to time on this one. But folks, I got to talk about what's been going on over in Israel.

And I'm really glad to see a ceasefire. I don't believe violence is the answer to solve this or virtually any other problem, but every nation has a right to protect itself. And what I don't understand about the national narrative of this, real simple, if the people of Oakland were launching rockets into San Francisco in the name of an ideology that says you need to kill GLBTQ people and force everyone else to worship the way you do,

San Francisco would carpet bomb Oakland out of existence. It would be a smoking crater. And the next day they'd send in some bulldozers, some cement trucks. We'd turn it into a parking lot for all the extra cars they can't find space for. I mean, that's that's absolutely what would happen. It is unconscionable that the American left continues to defend Hamas. That is a terrorist organization. When you when you look at.

The children who are tragically killed in these attacks understand Hamas is hiding behind them. They're using them as human shields. They build their bunkers and their command centers underneath hospitals. They use the billions of dollars in aid that the Palestine receives to build tunnels into Israel to attack them. No nation would have the patience that Israel does in this situation. None. It's absolutely ludicrous.

Well, I have to agree, Sam. And one of the things we saw over the last few days was the strategic bombing and dismantling of a building that had formerly housed the Associated Press and other media outlets.

And people kind of went crazy over Israel's targeting. But again, to your point, you have to understand that Hamas had embedded itself over the last 24 to 36 months in that space. And to make it plain, as the mainstream media sometimes does, there was a

almost 48 hours advance warning that they were going to target that site. And then they did. And did almost a surgical job of just isolating the damage on

on that particular site. But you're right, rockets are not the answer to frustrations with what's really a complex situation of gentrification development in that part of the world. But it's unacceptable. Children are dying, civilians are being used as a shield. It's not a human rights campaign. It's a really act of terrorism. Yeah, absolutely. There was a great cartoon I saw yesterday, actually,

showed a Hamas fighter and an Israeli soldier facing off, pointing guns at each other. There is a child in a stroller behind the Israeli soldier. Meanwhile, the Hamas terrorist is using that stroller and the child in it for cover. And that is a really simple analogy for the way the two operate. Israel, as you noted, when they're going to attack, they destroy a building. They actually make sure people have a chance to get out of there first. Now,

I have a really hard time believing the AP and some of these others did not know who they were officing with. Oh, absolutely. I mean, so understand when they start covering these things, they're covering it from a really slanted pro-Palestinian viewpoint that has evolved into essentially a pro-terrorist viewpoint. You hit it. There's tons of issues here. There's tons of issues. But to me.

And Frank, you've been all over the world. You've seen terrible things done to good people all over this world. You've defended those good people. You've defended us. The biggest difference in this to me is that if both sides, if Israel laid down its guns today, they would be destroyed tomorrow. If the Palestinians laid down their guns today,

tomorrow they would achieve everything the world claims that they're fighting for. They would have a state of their own. All they have to do to achieve that is embrace nonviolence, and the world would ensure that they get their state. Does anyone disagree with that? Well, I think the proof is in the quality of life that Palestinians are living who reside within Israel. They get infrastructure, medical services, education for themselves.

for their kids uh... and and that to me is what gives the best hope for a two-state solution i don't think it's true that israel doesn't want a palestinian state i think they just want peace uh... with their neighbor and it's really disturbing and i'll i'll uh... uh...

wait for some other commentary but the but to give you an idea of the follow-up in our large cities with major jewish populations our own home city of phoenix uh... l_a_ uh... certainly new york parts of florida and chicago we're seeing police on the streets like never before protecting synagogues and schools and businesses and in predominantly jewish areas because

the threat and the narrative coming out of there is so dangerous that there's potential for violence even here. So we have to do more. You haven't seen violence around the world. Yep. Yep. Frank. The one thing I can add to this is that it's really hard to play armchair quarterback, right? Because I can't comment on this because I have not been on the ground and seen the actual footprint of what's happening. It's really hard for me to

listen to or read or hear about what's happening from the news because I personally have seen stuff that happened where they reported a complete opposite you know like why do they do that I was there but

Being on the ground and grabbing a good sight picture of what's happening, that would be the best thing that I can. And there's good and bad on both sides. Absolutely. I do not hold Israel blameless. Absolutely not. There are numerous things they have done, including the colonization of some of the territories, that is absolutely inappropriate. But when people call it an apartheid.

That's silly. That's just silly. I mean, that is ridiculous. There is exactly and only one country in the Middle East that offers the exact same rights and citizenry. Everything that goes with citizenship applies equally to an Arab, to a Jew, to a Druze, to a Christian, to men and women of every faith, creed, and color in Israel. That is the only country in the Middle East that you can say that about. Absolutely right. First time I went to Israel...

I never realized because I was so used to hearing and listening to the media. But you go there and you have a synagogue and you have a mosque literally across the street. But, you know, if you go to the Palestinian side, there's no churches. There's just mosques. But on the Israel side, we got churches, synagogues, mosques, all in one. This is, you know, look, Israel is a modern country.

democratic country that treats all of its citizens equally under the law. That is the single defining characteristic of a fully modernized country is that citizens have a set bill of rights and they're all treated equally under the law. You cannot say that about any other part of the Middle East.

Now you're right. And there's no other part of the Middle East where you will have members of a religious or ethnic minority serving in government, serving in the judicial system, serving in the military, having full and equal rights, like to your point. And the only thing I'll add to it is everyone talks about Israel's right to defend itself. But where no one ever explicitly says is Israel has the right to exercise that right.

Yes. That's the part where it's always, yes, you have the right. They exercise that right with pretty, pretty significant restraint, quite frankly. Yes. You know, so folks, I don't want to make this whole episode about that. Obviously, this is something that I've been I care about. I have been there. I have been on the ground and have seen it. I would encourage you, if you have not take the trip, take the time. We're post-COVID now, mostly, sort of.

You might still have to wear a mask. Doesn't sound like fun on an international flight, but okay. So we got just a couple of minutes before break. But one of the things we brought together this quartet of people on the air today because we all come from some very different backgrounds and very different views. We all come from different perspectives, but we can be friends. We can put aside those views and focus on the things that we agree upon. We can disagree without hate.

or rancor or name calling, it doesn't make anyone evil to have differing views. And we're going to explore that quite a bit. We're going to talk about social justice. We're going to talk about, and Jarrett, I know you're involved in this, critical race theory. Absolutely. And intersectionality. We're going to touch some of the most controversial topics in America coming up in our next segment here. And folks, as we do it, I want you to understand that

We're all here to come, all of us in this country, everyone. Our mandate is to come together to form a more perfect union. It's not perfect. It never was. We can simply make it better every single day, every single year. We can focus on that or we can focus on our differences and the things that divide us and tear us apart. Right? Absolutely. Jarrett?

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. You know, that's something that I really believe in, our quest to build a more perfect union and what that requires. And it's going to require some debate. And we're going to get to that when Broken Potholes comes back. It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start.

Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from GoDaddy.com today. Rocking in the free world with broken potholes. The white, black, and brown episode. We're going to get in trouble for this one, I think, especially this segment coming up. Because we've got a lot of conflict going on in the country today. A lot of anger. A lot of hate.

a lot of misunderstanding of each other. And a lot of that has to do with race. And a lot of it has to do with politicians, frankly, on both sides of the aisle, who have been using these issues for their own electoral advantage and for their own financial advantage and are tearing this country up in the process. And it is just absolutely ludicrous to see us in many ways throwing out

The work of the original civil rights movement from the 60s and the things that made that movement transcendent. Looking at a person and seeing not their color, but their character. Looking at someone and not assuming that we should feel a certain way about them because of that color. And Jarrett, I know you've been doing a lot of work related to critical race theory, CRT.

So tell me about, first, from your point of view, tell us what CRT, critical race theory, is. Well, I think it's a close examination, right, of inequities that exist in our society that may be systemic or institutional in nature and how we address that. Some

body once described it as a power movement for blacks. I was just asked the other day by an NPR folks, but how do you define what this power movement is for the black community? And so the difference between, and there has to be a difference between what we traditionally see as a white power movement versus a black power movement is this. If we have a power movement in the black community, we have to say that we, uh, uh,

demand no more and expect no less in terms of rights and opportunity than what white citizens are enjoying in America. To me, that's the critical part of it. We see others who sort of use this opportunity, this window, to advance the agenda of things like

uh... the sixteen nineteen project from brainwash our kids into into thinking that that uh... everyone including uh... abraham lincoln were bubble maker racism and and historical oppressive of like people everything from that to defunding the police which is the the nightmare of every black grandmother in the inner city uh... you can see that hijacking what you talk about that where we where you have a civil rights movement that's made great strides

and it needed now more than ever facing off affordable housing crisis in the family stability and again rebuilding up our public schools uh... and uh... that no one's really discussed that yet but we're we're reaching that that point i'm glad we're talking about it now in this program uh... to to do a deep dive on that you know black lives matter the movement

a lot of people don't know, started right actually in the city of Phoenix. There's a meeting in the Eastlake neighborhood, Eastlake Park neighborhood. I was there with Opal Tometi, one of the heads of Black Lives Matter, and Patrice Cullors and others as we sat around and actually developed this idea and thought. And somehow it went from

from more aggressively affirming or outlining the demands and challenges of the Civil Rights Act to a rejection of the ideology of Christianity as a nuclear family, a nonviolent commitment. An example is demonstrated by Dr. King. Something happened, and I think that something had a lot to do with George Soros and the Ford Foundation, but we'd need a whole other program to talk about that.

And actually, that sounds like a great idea. So, you know, that is a future program we're going to be talking about. You know, Frank, you fought for this country for years. You put your life on the line for this country. And I am certain you've experienced your own issues with this country that make you question some of it. I can honestly say that in the profession that I was in for 30 years, not once people looked at my color.

We didn't care. We don't care if you're purple, yellow, pink. As long as you get the job done and you get it done right, that's what counts. There really is no place on earth that is, frankly, is true to Dr. King's axiom that we should judge people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin, as our military is there. I mean, you're judged on how you perform, period. That's it. There's no affirmative action in the military. It's based solely on your actions and how you perform.

how you do your job really is. And, and what is, because I know one of the things I think that is very difficult in the country today is you have a very small portion of our population that has taken on the uniform that has taken on those obligations. And so a lot of people don't understand our military culture from the outside. I never served. Jarrett never served. So we don't have the, the experience of,

the understanding of how that works that you do. But when you're part of the military, I mean, your friends are whoever you like hanging out with. There are no barriers there. Absolutely not. It doesn't matter. Right. All you care about, you volunteered multiple times to get to the Navy SEALs, right? How many different times did you have to volunteer to move forward to get into the SEALs? I think...

Three or four times I submitted paperwork until finally I was just like, okay. It's a huge commitment. It's a huge honor. But what drove you to do that? It all comes back from, there was a gentleman named George Anger who he ran the camp, which is

in Naval Special Warfare Desert Training Facility, which they call it Camp Billy Macon in Nylund, California, which is eight miles from where I grew up. But he lived in the same town, Calipatria. And he helped out with the swim team. And he literally lived on the same street I did.

And I just became friends with him and he wasn't the coach, but he would help out and just slowly started building a friendship. And one day, plus his daughter, stepdaughter. But there are a lot of positions in the military that are not nearly as demanding, obviously, or where you can still advance. You can still have a very good career. You can serve this country very honorably and well.

that don't entail the sacrifices that a Navy SEAL has to make, right? No. I mean, first and foremost, everyone in the military volunteers. Right. No one is forced to do like, hey, you're going to join. No. What drove you, though, to that height specifically? George Anger put that – he was the one that planted that seed. And he goes, you should do what I do. And I'm like, what do you do? And then he explained it to me. And I'm like, oh. And that was – God. And when you're in the SEALs, the people you're with, they're the best of the best. Yes. Right? Right.

So you have absolute faith in your brothers. You have. On those SEAL teams. Yeah, we trust each other with our lives. And never once is race an issue. Never once. Not on the life of my children, not once. America, we need to take a lesson from our military. We need to focus on what we can accomplish when we put aside race, when we stop caring about race and start focusing on justice from the perspective of

what a person works to achieve. That's my point of view.

Jarrett, I know we just have about 30 seconds before we go to break, but I want to get your take on that, and then we're coming right back. Well, I'll tell you what I think, and I always go back to the great Senator Barry Goldwater and his commentary on LGBTQ, which could be applied to race. You know, when asked what he thought about soldiers who were gay, his remark was, well, can they shoot straight? And that's my question. Red, yellow, black, brown, or white, you know,

Do they know the enemy? Can they shoot straight? You know, that's the basics of foreign policy, and we all get it. We're all Americans, and we get it. We've got some straight shooters here, broken potholes, coming back in just a moment. It's the new year, and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain.

This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from GoDaddy.com today.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host Sam Stone. On the line with us, the Reverend Jarrett Maupin Jr. In studio, former Navy SEAL Frank Montano and Adam Stevens, good friend of ours and a fellow member of the tribe. But I do want to, real quick, Frank, you made a comment right when we went to break that I want our listeners to hear.

Oh, the do your job regardless of the color. Yeah, I mean. Do your job, pull your weight, and do it right. Our job, in my job, everything was based on performance. That's it. Isn't that our job in society? It should be. Some people don't look at it that way, but just do your job. Do the right thing when nobody's watching. Jarrett, I think that's a good segue to talk about some of the things that you're seeing going on in our communities right now.

With with these issues around race, with the defund the police movement, with this sort of acceptance of lawlessness that is is creeping in. And what what is that doing to us?

minority communities in this country well i'll touch on two things do your job pull your weight i agree with that and especially when we have a level playing field and the rules are are equal and opportunities equal now there are some challenges we know in there but nothing absolutely extreme that we that we can't overcome i use defunding the police as an example where that has come from it's it's

is the extreme left of left. These people are on the other side of Bernie Sanders and AOC. It's not the mainstream ideology of the black community. What the black community has been saying all over the country, and Sam, you know this even locally,

We've been pushing our police departments to engage our historic black colleges and universities because we have tens of thousands of criminal justice studies majors that are coming out of these universities who are desperate for jobs in this economy, not only to teach and to administrate, but to work on the front lines as experts.

as first responders, as police officers. And we have yet, because there's still not one major police department in the nation that has set up a partnership with our historic black colleges and universities. I'm glad you bring that up, because I'm actually, now I'm going to go talk to our police department about that. Because that's critical. And folks, if you're listening...

Phoenix is hiring our police department. If you think our police department is racist, then you come in and change it. Put on that uniform. Serve the people of Phoenix. Serve your community. Because I will tell you this, and Frank, you have seen this around the world. Lawlessness has a impact on wealthy communities. But wealthy communities find ways to protect themselves.

Lawlessness destroys low-income communities. Oh, absolutely. And that's true not just here in the United States, but you've seen that all over. Yeah, wealthy communities, especially in other countries, when something's happening, they leave. They just pick up their family and they leave.

But when you don't have the luxury and the money to do that, you're going to sit there and you're going to, you know, face it head on. You're going to bear the brunt. Absolutely. And it's going to be awful because there are real criminals, real people in this world who have no issue with hurting other people. No, I absolutely agree there. As my mom said,

and monsters do exist. They walk on two feet and they speak just like you and I do. We're the human race. We are monsters. We know that. We're flawed creatures. But at the same time, in the same breath, we try to do the right thing, you know? But it's just, it's super hard. But from my experience being around people or being around countries that are lawless-

There's nothing there's no 9-1-1. No one's going to show up to help you. You know, right. You're going to figure it out. Well, and that's where in Jarrett, you can talk about this, too. Again, a little bit more when we come back. We got about a minute and a half before we go to break. But the impact on African-American communities, whether it's here in Phoenix, whether it's Chicago, which is kind of the most famous example, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, D.C.,

The impact from the pullback of police, from the reduction in police, is that many of those residents are in the same situation that those folks are in overseas. If an officer is 10 or 20 minutes away in a critical situation because we don't have enough police...

What happens? You're on your own. Even a drug dealer or a gang leader wants 911, the police to show up when they're called. And that's just one of the realities. We saw it with the rioting and the protesting and the marches that went on this year, too, when we touched on the status of riots in the streets of our city. And no one's happy with that. Again, not to be cliche, but to go back to, you know, the...

of the 60s and 70s in the movement. Not burn, baby, burn, but earn, baby, earn, learn, baby, learn. That's how we address this. And we are adapting that language today. It's been a real war on the left to maintain violence. But believe it or not, Jared, I have to cut you off real quick. Folks, believe it or not, we have had numerous drug dealers call 911 to report being ripped off of their drugs. Broken potholes coming 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 the black, brown, and white episode. How about the American episode? Isn't that the American episode, though? It's all of us. That's right, Frank. Darn straight, man.

You know, we were talking about this when we go. I get it. I'm working at the city of Phoenix. I get a daily report from our police department. Highlights kind of the more unusual, the more traumatic, sometimes the more awful, sometimes things that our police department has dealt with the day before.

But I got to tell you, folks, the once or twice, you know, it's like every other month we get one of those reports of a criminal calling because they have been robbed by another criminal and want their either their stolen property or their drugs or whatever. They want the police to come and return that to them. Those are literally my my favorite stories in our police report because no one ever said criminals are smart. I mean, you really don't.

Folks, if you're out there doing the dirty, come on, have a little common sense. We're going to arrest you when we get there, as they should. But anyway, this has been a really good conversation. I want to continue it because I think there's not enough of a really open, honest, racial conversation. If we're going to have all this racial tension, then we need to stop yelling at each other in soundbites and tweets.

And actually have these type of conversations from different points of view and engage on this issue. And there are serious issues in this country. But one thing I want to talk about, Jarrett, and I'm going to ask you and Frank to both weigh in on this, because you both have experience and have seen how people live in other parts of the world and experience.

You know, one of the things, the narratives that's come up today is that America's is our past is uniquely racist. We're a unique. Our history is is one of a unique one of exploitation of other people. And that's entirely not true. And if you've been to other countries and if you haven't been to other countries and you think the U.S. is the most racist country on Earth, I got some news for you, folks. Yeah.

I know a lot of people like to point at Europe as a great racial mixing pot. Guess what, folks? It is far more racial tension and conflict in those countries than we have here. Go to an English soccer game. Oh, thank you, Adam. I lived in Germany for three years, and it's, yeah, you're right.

It can be rough. It exists all over the world. There are racist people in this world. That's a fact. Absolutely. I think it's innate to everyone. Someone's like, no, it's not. It is. It goes back to the time when we were living in caves. You automatically assess someone. Can I beat this person or do I need to run? That actually touches on one of the things that's been part of the discussion that I think has been used poorly but is an important discussion to have is

And that's implicit bias. Because I had someone put this to me in a way that made total sense to me. And implicit bias is the idea that we all have certain biases built into our psyche based on our relationships in this world. And the easiest one to understand is that we are all generally biased towards our family. We're biased towards our neighbors, the people we know, our friends.

We like them. That's a bias. You know, we view them more positively than we do strangers and people we don't know. And that's an implicit bias. And those things do exist. But the way they're being used is very different than understanding that. It's being used to say that those type of personal associations are somehow negative. I think we just have to be aware of them when we're interacting with each other, right?

I expect to care more about my family than I do about strangers. I care more about my friends than I do about strangers. That's human.

Well, I think one of the challenges we're facing, we'll use the issue of affordable housing as an example. And there's, yes, there's been historical racism and inequalities built into that, and we are keenly aware. Sam, I know you are especially of the intricacies of that. But the fact of the matter is we can waste a decade talking about redlining, talking about things that don't exist anymore.

uh... or we can get moving in the president using are correct civil rights laws and legislation and policy to fix the problems of that better affecting us today and that's where that's where a lot of leadership is losing the momentum and the opportunity to unify our are our community there's there's really

uh... no one against achieving any of the sort of civil rights is what that i put poplar uh... you know it's it's it's mostly rhetorical and i'm sorry to say as a as a as a democrat and as a someone who comes to that but in a lot of our in our inner inner city communities but we have predominantly democrat uh... city council you see the struggle i think i will pick up the next i used to be a good example

it has a you know getting you think it can be college camp democrats on campus people they have it you know unresolved uh... uh... settlement of families on police brutality i use housing as an example uh... some of the most expensive subsidized housing that we've seen being developed in our community happening there why you know you would think all its wherever republican dog you know they're going to be holding back

welfare dollars. And, you know, that's not what's hurting black families. What's hurting black families politically is, you know, the old boss politics, greed and grifters. You and I have talked about this quite a bit in the past, and you have an idea I want to get to in just a second about helping African-American and poor communities develop equity.

Because that's one of the big things that's really held them back when you talk about subsidized housing There's no opportunity for them to do or to grow into what a lot of other Americans do which is develop equity through our homes and develop generational wealth and security through our homes when you're in subsidized housing that's taken away from you and you touch on another issue which is that it's a boss hog game if you're in the system

you get to be a hog. And I don't mean the people who are living in those houses. I mean the ones who are building it and contracting for it because they're always the same folks. And the costs have gone totally out of control. And the result is that we don't have anywhere near the capacity we need, even though we put fairly significant resources into it. If you're spending $300,000 or more

per door to build an apartment building to provide subsidized housing when a private developer can build that same building for a cost of about $115,000 a door. You're basically reducing by two-thirds the amount of affordable and subsidized housing that are available to our residents.

Right. Well, I agree with that. And I'll take your example further. You might have a private developer that could do it for one hundred thousand. One of the conversations I've had with a lot of Republican leaders and smart Democrats in our area, too, is using that government money and working with people like the Army Corps of Engineers, getting it done even cheaper. Again, it's racism is not the problem.

is not at the root of housing inequality. Politics is, and at base, the worst part about that is it's largely the politics of where the demographics are adherent to. And that has to, you know, talk about where we need radical BLM action is within the party structure so we can get some damn housing. But I think a point that was mentioned earlier by Frank

is if you build a system in a community where it's based on your ability, it's based on your willingness to actually step up and make a difference. And here in Arizona, specifically where we are, that we haven't touched base yet, other than just mentioning where Frank was born, is that over one third of our state's population is either first, second or third generation Americans.

And the question is, you know, what are we doing with that community? Like we're talking about struggles within the black community. But it's, you know, when you have, I think, role models, whether it's, you know, Reverend Maupin or someone like Frank Montano to say there is a way to actually step up. There is a way to rise. Yeah. You know, it's something that that I have talked about before. And I think I think people don't really fully understand this is the.

deleterious effects of dependency. And I was talking about this with a friend actually yesterday, because a lot of people don't know that in the recession, 2008, 2009, I basically lost everything. And I ended up very poor. I moved from a very nice two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath townhouse in the foothills in Tucson into a 375-square-foot dump.

In the less nice, significantly less nice parts of Tucson. And after that, I have been very cautious about my money. I have always been very cautious. So I live cheap. And I've lived in some places that people would not imagine, if they know me, if they're listening to me, that I have lived. Including an apartment complex that was a lot of Section 8 housing, a big, giant apartment complex, very poor.

And I had two neighbors and I always use this example because they're really avatars for the population that I met and got to know while I was there. One family was poor but working, working poor. They were all striving. The mom had a job. The dad had a job. The kids, as soon as they were old enough, had jobs. And they were really focused on moving themselves up and forward.

And they had a very strong family. Now, they were poor. They didn't have any money. I'm pretty sure the dad was here illegally. And then one night he made a big mistake. He got in an argument with his cousin after they had been sitting outside drinking all afternoon. He hopped in his car. He got pulled over. He ended up getting, you know, actually, you know, I think trying to run from the police and ended up going to jail for a solid period of time. And that family pulled together. You watch them struggle. I mean, fight to make it through that time.

And they succeeded. They got through it. And they were happy. I mean, not the whole time. Everyone has their ups and downs, but they were very, you know, they understood the value of each other. They valued each other. They understood the value of work. Then I had another family that lived also, you know, that was actually the family that lived below me in that apartment. The family that lived next door to me was on Section 8 housing and government assistance. And, you know, same mom, dad, couple of kids. And they had no hope.

I mean, really, you know, when something went wrong, the family that was working could always say to themselves, I'm going to be able to make another buck. I'll get through this. And when they ran out of money, they could go scrounge and fight and do this. When the family that was on, you know, on all these government programs, because these government programs don't even allow you really to go out and make any additional money. They don't give you an out. They're a trap.

When they got into the end of the month and that time came, that family would be tearing themselves apart. And they had no hope. This was the third generation in that family that had been in the same position. They had no hope. And I think that's more, that's what we have to give to America to solve our problems. We have to give every single person hope, which is why, Jared, you and I have talked about this. We only have a couple of minutes left, but

I'm a big believer in workfare, not welfare. I think we should give them good, solid payments, but ask for work, even if it's just sweeping streets like they do in Norway. You know, I mean, there's a lot of countries around the world that

understand the value and pride of work. And I think that's what...

makes all the difference in the world when you go into these projects. And I know what you're talking about, Sam. You have people five and six generations living in City of Phoenix public housing. When the grandma dies or the mama dies, they feel like they inherit the apartment largely because they do. And it's awful to see, you know, intelligent and potential-filled people living, you know, 50, 60, 70,

70 years in government subsidized housing. And you wonder, they've got a lot of cars, cable TV services, Internet service, all things going on there. Not that they should be punished or have things taken away from them, but you can just tell they've been crippled because they can only afford those small things. And that's soul-crushing. That is soul-crushing, folks. Yeah.

We're going to have to continue this conversation. This has been a great one. I thank you, Frank, Jarrett, Adam. Thank you. Broken Potholes coming back next week.