Speaker 1: You know, in the past, we used to look to
our president for inspiring words to get us through tough
times like we're going through now. Our current president, well,
they offer thoughts and prayers and truth social posts. Well,
today I do want to take a moment to talk
about the shootings that happened over this weekend, both at
Brown University and in Australia during the Hanukkah celebration at
Bondi Beach. Welcome back to The Michael Cohen Show on
our continued journey to a million subscribers, and thanks to you,
we blew already past that half million mark on our
journey to that one million number. So please hit subscribe, watch, comment,
and share, because this level of insanity, it's got to stop.
So I want to begin just by showing you Trump's
response to the shootings this weekend. But in order to
do that, I want to set the stage of truly
how unhinged he and his administration are. When he posted
on Truth's social this morning about the death of Rob Reiner,
let me show you what he wrote in it. He writes,
A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner,
a tortured and struggling. The ones very talented movie director
and comedy star has passed away together with his wife Michelle,
reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive,
unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known
as Trump derangement syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS. He
was known to have driven people crazy by his raging
obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia
reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals
and expectations of greatness and with the golden Age of
America upon us perhaps like never before. May Rob and
Michelle rest in peace. Now let me be crystal clear,
he has no knowledge about what's going on in the investigation.
In fact, there are reports that, unfortunately, it appears that
it might have been the son who killed his parents,
nothing to do with Trump'd arrangement syndrome. In comparison, I
want to show you what a president should say. Let
me show you what former President Obama said about the
same Rob Reiner passing. In it, he writes, Michelle and
I are heartbroken by the tragic passing of Rob Reiner
and his beloved wife Michelle. Rob's achievements in film and
television gave us some of our most cherished stories on screen,
But beneath all of the stories he produced was a
deep belief in the goodness of people and a lifelong
commitment to putting that belief into action. Together, he and
his wife live lives defined by purpose. They will be
remembered for the values they championed and the countless people
they inspired. We send our deepest condolences to all who
love them. I'm not really sure that there are words
within which to say that can demonstrate or elucidate the
distinction between the two social media posts. Nevertheless, Trump never
been afraid to speak ill of a celebrity after that
individual's passing, and Trump also not afraid to speak ill
of victims of gun violence either. At the Christmas White
House reception, Trump claimed things happen when talking about the
shooting at Brown University.
Speaker 2: Play the clip and at Brown University great school, great,
really one of the greatest schools anywhere in the world.
Things can happen. So to the nine injured, get well fast,
and to the families of those two that are no
longer with us. I pay my deepest regards and respects
from the United States of America. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: It's very you know, as I write it, my sub
stec of today. The politics of hollow platitudes, thoughts, and
prayers have become America's ritual of surrender, comforting the powerful,
silencing accountability, and ensuring the next memorial is already being planned.
My friends, America doesn't have a gun problem. We have
a cowardice problem. We dress it up in constitutional rhetoric,
we wrap it in flags, and we anesthetize ourselves with
ritualistic grief. But at its core, its core, this is
a failure of nerve and leadership. We know exactly what's happening,
we know why it's happening, and year after year, body
after body, we choose not to stop it. On Saturday,
shortly after the shooting, Trump posted that a suspect was
in but then literally talk about jumping to it. Fifteen
minutes later said that he was wrong. Let me show
you what they wrote in it. He writes, I had
been briefed on the shooting that took place at Brown
University in Rhode Island. The FBI is on the scene,
the suspect is in custody, God blessed the victims and
the families of the victims. He goes on to then, right,
the Brown University police reversed their previous statement, the suspect
is not in custody. Again, why put out a statement
before you actually have facts? What's about a cash Patel
didn't get notification from the FBI that the investigation isn't
going exactly as planned. Now, to make matters even worse,
the person of interest that they arrested yesterday turned out
to be the wrong person altogether. And unsurprisingly for this administration,
for Trump, for the FBI, they just messed up. And
now the foe about that twenty four year old suspect
from Wisconsin. It's been spread all over the internet. A
reporter went on and asked the Rhode Island Police chief
what evidence led them to arrest that individual. Listen to
what he says about the FBI play the clip.
Speaker 3: Specifically said in his tweet that it was a tip
from Providence police that led you all to Hampton, And
can you confirm it that's true? And what exactly was
the evidence that led into this person?
Speaker 4: At first?
Speaker 5: Yes, it was a there was a tip that came in,
just like we were taking any other tips, and that
one came in specifically identifying a person of interest, which
was this individual, and so we architect this got on
it just like they got another, but this specific one.
It was actually picked up by the FBI and they
followed through it and they ended up coming and located
this individual of interest. And at that point we did
our thorough investigation examine, ended up drafting some searcher formats,
came up with some evidence, but those that evidence was
examined and we didn't have enough obviously to be able
to prosecute anybody, and so the person was released.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, actually question Look, let me be crystal clear
about something. The comments that came out of the White House,
especially during the Christmas party. And I want to be clear.
I've been to that Christmas party. It's fun and I'm
not being sarcastic. Place smells like pine needles and or
there's the marine band playing. It is truly an experience.
But as that party carried on behind guarded gates and
wreathlined corridors, President in the first Lady, they offered the
most predictable response in American political life. Yeah, thoughts and prayers,
Thoughts and prayers, Thoughts and prayers for the students senselessly
murdered at Brown University, Thoughts and prayers for the Jewish
families in Australia who gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate
the start of Hanukkah It's the festival of Light, only
to watch as the second day came transformed that celebration
into a memorial after the anti Semitic violence shattered what
should have just been a week of joy. These thoughts
in prayers. It's the laziest phrase in American lexicon. It
costs nothing to say, it risks nothing, and you know what,
it changes absolutely nothing as well. Meanwhile, the Rhode Island
Attorney General then addressed the fact that the suspect was
being released as he should be.
Speaker 6: Play the clip that work continues and it will continue tomorrow.
Our prosecutors were there six in total. Our victim services
folks were at the hospital. But this is what these
investigations look like.
Speaker 4: I've been around long enough to know that sometimes you
head in one direction and then you have to regroup
and go in another. And that's exactly what has happened
over the last twenty four hours or so. Collectively, the
team developed leads in a number of areas. One was
chased to ground. It led to us detaining a person
of interest. So those words and how we choose those
words when we're talking about an investigation matter, and what
it means here is that certainly there was some degree
of evidence that pointed to this individual, but that evidence
needed to be corroborated and confirmed, and over the last
twenty four hours leading into just very very recently, that
evidence now points in a different direction. So what that
means is that this person of interest needs to be
it should be released. I think what is really unfortunate
that this person's name was leaked to the public. It's
hard to put that back in the bottom. Okay, so
we're going to proceed very carefully here.
Speaker 1: There is look absolutely just a shit show. There is
no way to put it back into the bottle. Now.
Like I said, thoughts and prayers that're pointless, they're meaningless
at this time. But I did want to end on
a clip. Oh boy, I want to end on a
clip to show you just how deranged MAGA is. On
Fox News, they literally try to claim that Rhode Island's
restrictive gun laws are the reason that the shooting happened.
Play the clip.
Speaker 5: As rare at this moment in our country's history that
we get a politician not take that bait.
Speaker 7: Yes, because I mean, he betrayed how he feels. He
is living in an incredibly restrictive state in terms of
gun control and gun legislation. And it's very interesting because
in those states you tend to have the more horrific outcomes, again,
because people can't defend themselves whenever, we don't.
Speaker 1: Really what just took place in Washington, d C. A
district that actually has some of the most strict gun
laws in the entire country. Let me be clear, as
I also write in my substact, the politics of hollow platitudes,
that's out right now. So far this year United States
has experienced more more than four hundred mass shootings, seventy
seventy plus at schools alone, seventy classrooms turned into crime scenes,
seventy reminders that in America, active shooter drills are treated
like fire drills, and children are expected to adapt to
the possibility of execution as part of their education. And
still from these idiots, nothing, nothing, We're told that this
is the price of freedom. We're fed the same recycled
bullshit talking points. We're instructed to worship the Second Amendment
without context, without limits, and without regard for the bodies
piling up beneath it. So yeah, we mourn loudly, briefly, performatively,
and then they legislate quietly, which is to say, not
at all. I want to turn around and give you
just a quick snapshot of what's happening in Australia, who
already had some of the toughest gun laws on the planet,
and yet after the Bondi Beach massacre, they're leaders. They
didn't hide behind platitudes. They didn't say now it's not
the time right to talk about it. They didn't pretend
that the problem was too complex or politically inconvenient. They
did what adults entrusted with power are supposed to do.
They reassessed reality and they're acting on it. Mind you,
they've done this before thirty years ago, all right, after
a lone gunman slaughtered thirty five people at Port author
in Tasmania using a semi automatic weapon, Australia responded with
speed that should embarrass every American lawmaker, because within two
weeks Trump's famous two weeks two weeks they enacted sweeping
gun reforms, bands buybacks, national registration, strict licensing. Opposition. Yeah,
they screamed, the gun lobby, they protested, and the government
they listened, politely, gave them the two fingers salute and
they did it anyway. And the results they actually speak
louder than any NRA press release or donation, because between
July twenty twenty three and June of twenty twenty four,
Australia recorded literally thirty one gun related murders. Thirty one.
That's a homicide rate of zero point zero nine per
one hundred thousand people. In America, we wouldn't even call
that statistic. We call it around error and it goes on.
But that's that's what adults do, adults who care about
future generations as we do. And that's why help me
to get to a million. Let's make our voices so loud,
so angry, so heard that nobody can ignore us, not
on this issue and not on any issue. And as always,
thanks for listening. Hey everyone, First of all, thanks for watching.
I mean we're going to be posting daily episodes with
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