June 28, 2025 • 34 mins
Newt talks with Gianno Caldwell, a political analyst for Fox News, about his new book, "The Day My Brother Was Murdered: My Journey Through America's Violent Crime Crisis." They discuss the tragic loss of Gianno’s 18-year-old brother Christian, who was an innocent victim of gun violence in Chicago. Their conversation explores the broader issue of urban violence, recounting eight other murders that occurred on the same night, highlighting the human tragedy and offering insights for creating safer communities. Caldwell, a political analyst and founder of the Caldwell Institute, discusses the impact of soft-on-crime policies and the role of progressive prosecutors funded by George Soros in exacerbating crime rates. He advocates for stronger law enforcement, community cooperation with police, and the importance of family and faith in addressing the root causes of violence. The Caldwell Institute aims to support victims' families and promote public safety reforms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of the News World on June twenty fourth,
twenty twenty two. Jihna Caldwell's life was forever changed when
he lost his eighteen year old brother, Christian, an innocent bystander,
to senseless gun violence on the streets of his hometown
of Chicago. Christian was a young man with a bright
and promising future, and one of over one hundred and
(00:27):
fifty people murdered across the United States on that day alone.
Think of it. In his new book, The Day My
Brother Was Murdered, My Journey through America's Violent Crime Crisis,
Gianna describes his deeply personal experience with urban violence. He
dives deep into the heart of America's big cities, telling
the stories of eight other murders that occurred on the
(00:48):
same night his brother died, shedding light on the tangible
human tragedy while providing readers with valuable lessons, insights, and
a roadmap for creating safer communities. To talk about his
new book, I'm really pleased to welcome my guests and
good friend, Gianno Caldwell. He has a political analyst for
Fox News Channel, the founder of Caldwell Institute, a bipartisan
(01:11):
firm in Washington, d C. Providing strategic advice and counseling. Jhona,
Welcome and thank you for joining me on News World.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's an honor to be with you.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Speaker, as always, describe your brother Christian, what kind of
person was he?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Well, my brother Christian, he was eighteen years old. He
was innocent when he was murdered. This is a kid,
it's sixteen years old, begging me to take him on
a college tour because he wanted to focus on what
was next. So we went to UCLA or we did
a tour there, and you know, we talked with other
schools as well. But this is somebody who was focusing
on his future. This was somebody who enjoyed sports, friends,
(02:03):
he joked a lot, just an overall good kid. Is
such a tragedy of what happened, but I will hold
with me, dear, the memories that we had, and we
had many of them.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
How did you hear that he'd been killed?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Our sister calls me on the morning of June twenty
fourth and she says that Christian has been killed, and
I said, well, how do you know that? What are
you talking about? Where did this happen? Where's his information
coming from? And she said someone called her and told her,
and then we sent someone to the scene and they
talked to the police and said he had been sent
to a hospital. So we had a little bit of
(02:39):
hope that he was still living at that point, but
when we got to the hospital and my family, they
wouldn't give them any information. So I ended up reaching
out to some elected officials I knew in the area
who made some calls and they confirmed that he was
at the hospital, and they also confirmed the ed passed away.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
And what did the police tell you about the killing himself?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, the police told me that he was not the target.
There was an individual and this is one of the
theories of the case. The police has giving me the
same theory, and I've talked to someone else who told
me about this when I initially heard apparently what happened
was there was a fight between two guys that took
place six months prior and one of the guys got
beat up really badly and it was on tape. Somebody
(03:22):
recorded it and they put it on social media. So
the guy who got beat up really badly wanted to
kill the guy who put it on social media, so
six months prior they tried to kill him. This guy
runs away to California, comes back thinking the coast is clear,
and they saw him out. My brother happened to be
standing next to him, along with some other folks, and
(03:44):
they shot everyone. But my brother was the only one
who happened to die that day.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I almost hate to ask this, what was your feeling,
What was your reaction personally when you learned all this?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, you know what, when my sister and I just
didn't believe it. I couldn't believe. He come from a
very faith based family. We believe in the power of prayer,
and it's something that I grew up with. So I'm
saying to myself, there's no way that my brother could
be dead. Maybe he's injured and he'll recover. I told
my sister, let's pray right now. And there's a scripture
(04:19):
that says he shall live and not die and declare
the works of the Lord. And you know, that's what
we did. But it was too Lady was already gone.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
As I understand it. I mean, he's standing there and
a black ass uf pulls up. Several people get out
with guns and just start faring into the crowd.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
That's correct, and the individual that they wanted, they shot
him a bunch of times. He still lived. My brother
was shot maybe once or twice, and then there was
a young lady that was shot. And this individual that
they wanted is just honestly miraculous that he survived. He
had to have multiple surgeries that day, and then weeks
after he had to have multiple surgeries. But my brother
(04:59):
is it's just hard to fathom. It's been three years
since it's happened, nude three years, and it's still hard
to think about. The Only thing that really gives me
a sense of purpose in his murder is me having
started at the Caldwell Institute for Public Safety, which our
focus has been George Source funded and back district attorneys
(05:21):
across the country, and now we've expanded out to gubernatorial races,
mayoral races, because I know for a fact that the
reason that my brother was murdered and people across the
country you mentioned on that day, is because of soft
on crime policies in many of these large cities. We've
seen it time and time again. Soft on crime isn't
(05:43):
just a policy as an ideology in which the criminal
knows that there's not going to be any punishment for
what they do. We see it in New York City,
We've seen it in Chicago. We've seen it in Los
Angeles where we got involved in the George gascon race. There.
Supported Nathan Hackman, who's now the district attorney, did advise
all kinds of stuff to ensure that Nathan Hogman would
(06:03):
win that election. Because it's one district attorney at the time.
We got to pull him down, and we got to
bring those local municipalities back into good conscious, good governance
and law and order.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Johanno, one of the things you do is you talk
about eight other murders who to day your brother was killed.
Can you describe briefly those aid?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yes, I talk about people like James, who's my first chapter,
Army veteran who had ETSD. Couldn't sleep at night, so
you would often go to a park to a walk
in a park at two am. On one particular night,
June twenty fourth, that day, he goes to the park
as a bunch of kids out there, teenagers, some even
(06:44):
younger than teenage, and he says, hey, what are you
kids doing out here this late? You should go home.
It's two a m. They end up killing him with
a traffic home. Terrible set of circumstances. I talk about
someone named Catherine, who was a mother, grandmother, sixty five
years old, chemical engineer, white woman out of Texas, who
(07:06):
was going home from work when gunfire broke out on
the freeway. It was a drug deal that went bad.
The guy who was selling the drugs was trying to
rip off the guy that was buying them. They were
trying to rip each other off. They jump in the cars,
they run out on a highway. She's coming home and
they end up killing her baby. Cecilia six months old,
who was murdered miles away from my brother on the
(07:27):
same day, June twenty fourth. Of course, this baby, six
months old was murdered next to her baby brother in
a car seat in Chicago. You know, we often talked
about being at the wrong place, wrong time in some
of these cities, but honestly, thinking about Chicago, you can
be in your bed and a bullet comes through your window.
It's no safety and security there.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I think for people to understand the scale of what
you are responding to, beyond the immediate personal anguish of
your brother. In twenty twenty two, Chicago alone had six
hundred and thirty homicides and twenty six hundred shootings. It
seems to me you really got drawn into dealing with
(08:11):
and exposing the scale of the problem on a nationwide basis.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Thank you for that. These consequences of policymaking in these
freckless politicians who like Brandon Johnson in the City of Chicago,
who supports many of these criminal activities, and by doing so,
saying things like, don't demonize these kids. Well, if these
are the kids they're shooting people, then why wouldn't you
(08:38):
demonize them. You know, at some point they're not children.
They're acting as adults. They're murdering people, and this is
the reality that we live in. If they're fourteen or ten,
they should go to jail if you're going to pick
up a gun and kill someone. But we have to
focus on tougher centizent, punishing those who commit these crimes,
ensure the assault on crime policies are not a logo
(09:00):
on the books. We need to talk about fathers at
a home because a lot of this stuff can be
stopped if we focused on the family structure. That means
in what I really appreciate about you, Speaker, because you've
done this with Bill Clinton, when you put together the
ninety six welfare reformat, making people go to work or
get educated. Those are extraordinarily valuable components and tools that
(09:23):
bring a person to the point where they can have
the independence that do things on their own. It gives
you confidence, it gives you a sense of worth, a
sense of pride, and that's largely missing in many of
these areas.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I was really surprised as you did your research because
I've always thought of murder as the one thing we
really focus on clearing. Your work indicated that only fifty
nine percent of the homicides in twenty twenty one, only
fifty nine percent were solved. That forty one percent, almost
half of all homicides go unsolved, which has to make
(09:55):
the criminals more confident that they can do it and
get away with.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
It, exactly right, and especially in places like Chicago. And
when you look at these numbers even deeper, and when
they break them down by race even less way, less
of the African American numbers are actually solved. And that's
in part because of this no snitching policy that's been
in place for many, many years. In the African American community,
(10:19):
where you don't talk to the police and inform them
on a crime that took place. So what does that do?
That leads to many cases being unsolved, unresolved, That leads
to many families never seeing justice for their own loved
ones because no one's willing to talk. And that's another
thing that I talk about in this book The Day
my Brother was murdered. My journey through America's violent crime
(10:41):
crisis is we must work with the police as a community.
For many African Americans, that is necessitous because at the
end of the day, it used to be and where
I was growing up, if you told, then something may
happen to your family. But if the gang found out
who did crime, they would turn the person into the
(11:01):
police or they would handle let themselves. Now, if you tell,
you don't tell, you're in the same set of circumstances,
something could happen to your family. So I'd rather be
a person who's willing to work with the police and
get their protection and their guidance and to solve the
crime than to allow there to be a set of
circumstances where this person who killed your family member goes
out and kills several others. And that's what happens in
(11:21):
many of these areas is the shooter, one particular person
is committing a lot of these farms. We saw that
in New York. I remember when the New York Post
came out with a story on a lot of the
crime that was being committed was by like two or
three hundred people in the city. The majority of the
crime that was insane. But that ends up being the
reality in many cases that you have people who do
it over and over again because they've gotten away with it.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
How much of the difficulty in some neighborhoods comes because
people are just frightened that if they do testify, that
they and their family will then be targeted by the
very same forces of violence.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I think that does play a part, and that's why
I think is in some of these jurisdictions. We know
that the Democrats went out and took us wing to
defund the police, etc. When the police really need more
funding than many of these locations. But I also think
they need funding for witness protection. That's important. That's an
area in which we don't often talk about and why
(12:19):
people like Mayor Er Goddams was talking about raising taxes
for migrants to take care of them. He should be
ensuring that the tax base he already has is being
rightly spent on the folks who are Americans and who
need to help protection from the police. They need to
make sure that these budgets are where they should be
and they treat the police fairly, because these are the
(12:39):
people we rely on for our safety and security.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
One of the things you reported is that the Department
of Justice indicated there had been a fifty five percent
increase in violent crime over four years, with an amazing
seventy five percent spike in twenty twenty two. And then
you went on the US Government of Justice in September
of twenty four reported and overall fifty five percent increase
and instances of reported rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, And
(13:22):
the estimate was that only forty percent of violent crimes
are reported to the police. Why would people not report
a violent crime?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, in some cases, I know, in some cases people
think is not going to matter. As an example, in Chicago,
they need two thousand new police detectives to handle the
current murder workload. So those murders that are happening in
the city, they need to be able to solve them.
They don't have enough police for that, and in some
cases they may not come, and that's the unfortunate reality.
(13:52):
Police now in some cases they don't want to be demonized.
They don't want to make a quick decision to save
a life that may cost them their job, cost them
their reputation. That's an issue in and of itself. We
have a nation where people have been unfortunately scarred. They've
seen what happened in twenty twenty with George Floyd, and
that was an issue. Police departments are overwhelmed and we
(14:14):
continue to see that upticking crime in twenty twenty two,
which is rather interesting in a way because you know,
we had already surpassed the ryots and all those different things,
But then that was a policy issue. As an example,
in Illinois, there's something called the Safety Act Safe t Act,
and what it does is it ins cash bail in
(14:34):
the state of Illinois. But there's other policies that it
impacts even more directly. As an example, they have these
ankle monitor braces that you've seen people wear. They're on
house arrests. That's what is usually for well in Illinois,
they sometimes put murderers on house arrests as they await trial. Well,
with the Safety Act, now you can go out and
(14:56):
murder the person who may be the witness of the
crime because the police are not allowed to come to
your house for seventy two hours. So it used to be,
you know, the monitor goes off, the police call are
you home, and then they may stop by to verify
that you are home. In this case, seventy two hours,
you got a full runway to go do whatever you want.
Police cannot respond, and then in seventy two hours they
(15:18):
can finally respond, So you've already done all the dirty
work at that point.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Why do they have this seventy two hour rule?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
That's a really good question, Newton. I'm gonna tell you
I went out for Fox to Chicago because when you
look at the list of things this covers, threddning a
public official. That's something that's been decriminalized in a way.
Many of the things that were in that law. People
did not believe it. You know, I say, hey, you know,
what do you think of the new Safety Actor that
Democrats are proposing. You tell them, you go down the list.
(15:49):
They say, there's no way that this can be true.
Absolutely no way people who vote for Democrats, and our
Democrats said there's absolutely no way. And then people found
out that it was absolutely true, it was accurate, and
they passed it. They ended up passing it. JB. Prisker
put money behind it, the billionaire governor of Illinois, who's
so far left now he's a progressive, is what it
(16:10):
seems to me. And how did it pass? I mean,
you got an electorate is still voting for these kind
of people. That's how it passed.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It's kind of amazing to me. It's almost as though
the modern left is pro criminal that the adopt a
series of procedures and a series of rules, all of
which are to the advantage of the criminal and to
the disadvantage of the victim or the innocent citizen. You
(16:40):
cite Chicago, which is your hometown, you get the same
pattern in New York or in California. In Philadelphia, as
you know and have written about, the district Attorney Larry
Krasner is just insanely soft on crime. And a lot
of these folks were supported by George Soros, who in
one election alone put up a million dollars to help
(17:04):
Krasner win. And yet Krasner's clearly openly in favor of
the criminals and against the police and against the victims.
I mean, how do you explain all that.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I'll tell you it's not that they seem that they're
pro criminal. They are pro criminal. That's the reality of it.
They have been pro criminal for a long time. And
you know, they went under the guys of criminal justice reform.
It was a noble, noble effort writing some wrongs, but
what it ended up becoming is justice for the criminal.
And that's where we are as a country right now.
(17:35):
Because people they saw a moment with George Floyd and
they thought it was a welcome Matt to say, listen,
we're going to be in favor of the criminal because
we think that our voters would like it. In some
of these major cities, they did like it until they didn't.
You think about California. Remember just last year there was
the repeal of Prop forty seven. Now, Gavin Newsom and
(17:58):
for people who don't know about this proposition in twenty fourteen,
it was a ballid initiative which lowered the penalties for
crime criminal activity, So you get less time for this,
less time for that. Do you criminalize this or that?
Et cetera. So folks know that crime exploded in California
after George Floyd, especially in places like Los Angeles, and
(18:21):
they wanted something done about it, and they thought their
proposition was one in which wasn't helpful. For that time.
Gavin Newsom was against repealing it. He said, Oh, this
is going to hurt our black communities. What how dare
you even say something like that Black communities are being
hurt because of crime, so you need to put those
folks in jail one percent. So that's the Martyn left today.
(18:43):
They don't want to repeal it. The voters did, Thank
god that they did, because it's such a shame that
they allowed it to go on for as long as
it did.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I mean, you point out, for example that in Chicago alone,
the progressive prosecutor Kim Fox dropped more than twenty five
foul and phoning cases.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, including rape and murder.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I mean just basically said that these folks you're free, Yeah,
sending a signal course to other people that they can
get away with rape and murder.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You had mentioned that during Gascon's term in San Francisco,
property crime increased by forty nine percent and sixty percent
of the arrest made by the San Francisco Police Department
were just dropped by Gascon in his office as if
they'd never happened. I mean, how can people put up
with them?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Well, George Gascone is I think a really good example
that you just referenced because he helped author that proposition
was lowered the penalties statewide, So that was a big
part of his formula. And he's also someone the George
Soros backed supported for not only some of the roles
that he did in San Francisco, but he also ran
for District attorney in Los Angeles County. So he's a
(19:54):
really interesting fellow. And thank god he's no longer in office.
And I'll tell you for a lot of the people
they seen, And you know, I'm African American. I think
many people know that about now. But there has been
some wrongs in the African American community for sure. But
you don't right them by saying we're going to give
criminals a free pass because many of these criminals happen
(20:16):
to be black. If I'm just going to be plain
about it, that's been the case. Many of the victims
happen to be black. The perpetrators oftentimes happen to be
black as well. They do this thing to pander to
African Americans and some Hispanic and then some liberal I guess,
well meaning whites who think that black folks the only
way to help them is allow criminals to get off
(20:38):
the hook, which is asinine. To be clear, that's part
of the reason that they've done it. But I think
people are in some cases waking up to this. I
wouldn't say the same for some of the good folks
in New York who willing to put a socialist in
offices mayor. I don't understand how something like that happens,
but I guess if you're in pain and you're suffering
(20:59):
under the weight of the financial burden of being a
New York or maybe you're willing to do whatever you
can try to take some of that burden and pressure
off of you. Maybe that was a part of the
calculus for some of those voters, even though it was
a very low turnout race, this idea that you can
cure all ills in the black community if you just
let criminals off the hook, and it's just totally wrong.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
You make a point good. You can't really explain the
rise of the progressive, pro criminal, anti victim district attorneys.
Without looking at George Soros's role, Were you surprised by
the scale and scope of what Soros has done?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
You know what I'm gonna tell you, I'm very surprised.
And honestly, what he did was it was an evil
genius idea. Instead of going nationally and putting all his
money in nationally, he go locality, local, put in He
funded over seventy five soft one crime prosecutors candidates that
(21:59):
ran for office, many of them got in, and he
only put in a little money to do it. And
then it created a trend across the country. One city
did it, the other one adapted, and that's how they
played it. And then I find out through the work
of Elon Musk Indulged how much his nonprofits have been
receiving in federal funding. So now the question becomes, you know,
(22:20):
obviously you can't use federal money for politics per se,
but many of them do. Like we see these protests
et cetera that they hire, and I talk about that
in the book Today My Brother was Murdered, My Journey
through America's Violent Crime Crisis. Many of these protesters are
bought and paid for it through sores, and he uses
money through his charities to get them in these particular places,
(22:41):
like these ice protests they did in Los Angeles, these
riots and the looting that they did. Much of this
stuff is paid for by your sores. But we were
really surprised to find out that they were receiving all
this money from my very own federal government through USAID.
Now that was the real shocker, I think for a
lot of people. So he may not even be using
(23:02):
it all money to do a lot of this stuff.
He's using our money, which is the biggest lap in
the face for many Americans.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So in that sense, what President Trump has done in
cutting off the flow of that money to basically anti
victim pro criminal das is a significant step in the
right direction.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And there's others too. You got people like Stacy Abrams.
What was it, a billion dollars that her charity was
going to receive and it was over for a month.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
It's impossible for me to believe that she could possibly
spend that kind of money intelligently. Well, I was stunned.
It was kind of like Christmas, let me give you
a gigantic gift. Good luck. Yes, on the shift gears
(23:58):
because I think one of the most provided how could
Eve comments in your book you say the greatest violent
threat to Black Americans is other Black Americans. I mean
that's a very provocative point. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Well, just like I mentioned the numbers in terms of
us dying at the hands of each other one hundred percent.
I've been a conservative for two decades, well over twenty years.
I think I might be coming up on twenty five
years and now at this point. And the people who
really were opposed to me being a conservative, we're black people.
People who disparaged me for being a conservative, more likely
(24:36):
than not African Americans and folks when it comes to
the work that I'm trying to do, once they find
out that there's a Republican association to it, that's when
a demonize or attempt to demonize our work when we're
just simply trying to save lives. We're trying to turn
the country around, put it back on track, and the
law and order posture. We want to make sure that
there's safety and security for everyone. But more than likely
(24:59):
they're a post to it. And the reality is many
on the left, whether they be white, black, or indifferent.
It can be something that's the greatest thing you ever
the cure for cancer. They find out Trump is a
part of it, then all of a sudden they're against it.
And it's reprehensible at this point that we cannot just
be a free thinking society at people, no matter what
color you are. People make their own decisions. So long
(25:20):
as doesn't impact me in a negative way, it's fine.
But certainly a lot of us are dying at the
hands of each other, and that has become, I think
a sticking point in many of these communities, and that's
why many of us just leave these communities.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
You make a very important point. The poverty by itself
doesn't explain the violence, but that there are much deeper
breakdowns in family, education, and opportunity. What can be done
to break that cycle?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I think we need to get back to family and
the homes is where I think a society that has
been largely lost. I think that's part of the reason
that Donald Trump's win was so decisive, because people wanted
to go back to some form of normalcy and they
thought he was the only same person to run. You know,
between him and Kamala Harris, this was the only same
(26:09):
person that you can vote for at that particular time.
But we got to get back to the core root
of family and education nude. I think that's the most
important thing. We got to get back to that. We
got to get back to the value of hard work.
That's why I support work requirements on welfare, and I
appreciate what it appears to be. Congress has that same
mentality and mindset. And you know, hopefully we'll see that
(26:31):
in a big, beautiful bill. That is the hope. But
if we can get back to our roots a family.
Faith is also important, extremely important. I interview a guy
in a book who runs a network or charter schools,
and these are underprivileged students that he has in his
particular schools, and he says that it doesn't matter what
(26:52):
the religion is, whatever it is. You can be Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian,
whatever the case may be. He said, if a kid
has some sense of faith in their life. I believe
he said, it was like a seventy five percent chance
that that kid was going to do well in life
if he had that core of faith in his life.
(27:12):
And I believe that because that's why I grew up.
I grew up with that. I grew up knowing the
difference between right and wrong, knowing that God is here
to protect us and guide us and lead us the
Ten Commandments, which I think the governor Abbot of Texas
now is putting it him in every classroom now has
to display the Ten Commandments. If we can get back
to those foundational principles, I think we'll be a society
(27:34):
that can get back on track for sure.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
One of the steps that you've taken, you've been very
outspoken against the defund the police movement. What do you
think has been the real world impact of that movement.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I think a lot of cities recognize right away that
it was a disastrous decision to defund the police in
any capacity, and many of them decided to put the
funding prop the funding back up, et cetera. But it
was very problem and it impacted our officers in a
very deep way. I mean, our officers begin to believe
that as a society, we really actually don't care about
(28:08):
the police. And some of these cases we see police
officers get attacked. I think it was in Times Square
a migrant attacked one or two police officers and he
was out of jail the next day or a couple
of days later. These policies, the rhetoric from elected officials
do have consequences. The unfortunate reality is the morale in
(28:29):
many of these local municipalities, these local police districts has
gone way down, retirements have gone way up, and people
just don't want to deal with it anymore. And that's
not okay for us as a society to have our
officers feeling like that, because we depend on them, we
need them.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
I really think that your book is very impressive and
the range of things you cover, the need for a
serious continuing prison policy initiative. Once only yos of prison.
Once we would like to make sure when they come
out that they're prepared to re enter society and not
go back to prison. Talk for here about that whole
(29:08):
notion of how do we reduce what they call recidivism,
which is simply people getting out of being sent back
to prison.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, the recidivism rate is extraordinarily high. I know that
it was at one time seventy five percent. After five years,
people recidivising and going back into prison. Because oftentimes prisons
become a place where people get more educated on how
to commit more crime. Except for an example that I
utilize in the book doctor Bill Winston, who's a pastor
(29:38):
out of Chicago. He is actually my pastor to twenty
thousand member church. And what he does is he has
a program that goes into the jail. They teach them
financial literacy, job skilled readiness. They bring corporations into the
jail to recruit prisoners those who are about to get out.
(29:58):
So you want to ensure that they the skills that
are needed so that they do not recidivize when they
come out. If you got a job or a skill
or something, somebody's going to take you in, then you're
less likely to be in that set of circumstances. I
think programs like doctor Bill Winston is one that should
be expanded throughout the country. They did a wrong, they're
accepting their punishment obviously by being there, and they don't
(30:21):
have a choice but too. But now we can give
them skills that when they come out they're in a
better position to be effective citizens and taxpayers. And I
think that's what we really would want as a country.
We want to be able to give people an ability
to do right after being in a set of circumstances.
Like that.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
One of the reasons I wanted to share this conversation
with folks who listen to our podcasts is that after
the death of your brother Christian, you founded the Caldwell
Institute for Public Safety, which is a nonprofit dedicating to
ensure our justice system is the safety and security of
(31:02):
all law abiding citizens. Could you talk about that point
or two. I think it's a very important organizational effort
on your part and one that I have great admiration for.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Well. Thank you. People can go to Caldwell Institute dot
org and learn more about us there. So what happened
newd is I wanted to ensure that after what I
experienced with my brother working with the police. I worked
for Fox News, so I had all the press, but
many people don't. I put together manuals, and people that
are on our board of advisors did it the same.
(31:32):
We have former prosecutors, police chief legislators, etc. That are
on our advisory board and they put together e manual
how to work with police and prosecutors. I put together
emanual how to get pressed for your family members, how
to work with mental health services. Doctor Drew put together
a manual on that those resources can again be found
(31:53):
at our website calledwell Institute dot org. It was necessary.
I wanted to really help people because I didn't realize
that I was going to go through all these things
and have these particular sets of experiences, but certainly I did,
and I want people to have an easier time. Unfortunately,
I'm saying that to navigate this situation because it's incredibly difficult,
hard and emotional. So the institute started off as being
(32:17):
a place for that, as well as going after soft
on crime George Soro's funded prosecutors, and now we've expanded
our tent to get involved with the gubernatorial races, the
mayor or racist because public safety and crime is an
expansive area where it's not just about the das, it's
about the governors. It's about the legislatures. But the governors
(32:38):
have a great impact, the mayors have a great impact,
and the das have a great impact, especially if they're
actually applying the law and not utilizing politics. So this institute,
I think is extraordinarily important, is the only one that's
on the right because we don't really have these same
kind of issues that they have on the left. And
I just wanted to give a place for people to
be able to get what they need during their time
(32:59):
and need well.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
I think you're doing an amazing job. I really want
to thank you for joining us. It's a very personal story.
You've responded with great courage and great discipline. I appreciate
your sharing your story by your brother Christian. Your new book,
The Day My Brother was Murdered, My Journey through America's
Violent Crime Crisis is available now on Amazon and in
(33:20):
bookstores everywhere. I encourage everyone to get a copy. We
will list the Caldwell Institute for Public Safety on our
show page so people can come and see what you're doing.
I just want to thank you personally, Giano, for you
the commitment you've made as a citizen and for your friendship.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
No, thank you for your friendship. And we got who
were dates coming up here. They can go to call
and listen to dot org and see what city on
in the next.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Thank you to my guest Giana Caldwell. You can get
a link to buy his new book, The Day My
Brother was Murdered, My Journey through America's Violent Crime Crisis
on our show page at neutworld dot com. Newtild is
produced by Genglish three sixty and iHeart Media. Our executive
producer is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The
(34:06):
artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special
thanks to the team at Gingrish three sixty. If you've
been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of Newtsworld concerned from a three freeweekly
columns at ginglestree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich.
(34:30):
This is Newtsworld.
On this episode of the News World on June twenty fourth,
twenty twenty two. Jihna Caldwell's life was forever changed when
he lost his eighteen year old brother, Christian, an innocent bystander,
to senseless gun violence on the streets of his hometown
of Chicago. Christian was a young man with a bright
and promising future, and one of over one hundred and
(00:27):
fifty people murdered across the United States on that day alone.
Think of it. In his new book, The Day My
Brother Was Murdered, My Journey through America's Violent Crime Crisis,
Gianna describes his deeply personal experience with urban violence. He
dives deep into the heart of America's big cities, telling
the stories of eight other murders that occurred on the
(00:48):
same night his brother died, shedding light on the tangible
human tragedy while providing readers with valuable lessons, insights, and
a roadmap for creating safer communities. To talk about his
new book, I'm really pleased to welcome my guests and
good friend, Gianno Caldwell. He has a political analyst for
Fox News Channel, the founder of Caldwell Institute, a bipartisan
(01:11):
firm in Washington, d C. Providing strategic advice and counseling. Jhona,
Welcome and thank you for joining me on News World.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's an honor to be with you.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Speaker, as always, describe your brother Christian, what kind of
person was he?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Well, my brother Christian, he was eighteen years old. He
was innocent when he was murdered. This is a kid,
it's sixteen years old, begging me to take him on
a college tour because he wanted to focus on what
was next. So we went to UCLA or we did
a tour there, and you know, we talked with other
schools as well. But this is somebody who was focusing
on his future. This was somebody who enjoyed sports, friends,
(02:03):
he joked a lot, just an overall good kid. Is
such a tragedy of what happened, but I will hold
with me, dear, the memories that we had, and we
had many of them.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
How did you hear that he'd been killed?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Our sister calls me on the morning of June twenty
fourth and she says that Christian has been killed, and
I said, well, how do you know that? What are
you talking about? Where did this happen? Where's his information
coming from? And she said someone called her and told her,
and then we sent someone to the scene and they
talked to the police and said he had been sent
to a hospital. So we had a little bit of
(02:39):
hope that he was still living at that point, but
when we got to the hospital and my family, they
wouldn't give them any information. So I ended up reaching
out to some elected officials I knew in the area
who made some calls and they confirmed that he was
at the hospital, and they also confirmed the ed passed away.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
And what did the police tell you about the killing himself?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Well, the police told me that he was not the target.
There was an individual and this is one of the
theories of the case. The police has giving me the
same theory, and I've talked to someone else who told
me about this when I initially heard apparently what happened
was there was a fight between two guys that took
place six months prior and one of the guys got
beat up really badly and it was on tape. Somebody
(03:22):
recorded it and they put it on social media. So
the guy who got beat up really badly wanted to
kill the guy who put it on social media, so
six months prior they tried to kill him. This guy
runs away to California, comes back thinking the coast is clear,
and they saw him out. My brother happened to be
standing next to him, along with some other folks, and
(03:44):
they shot everyone. But my brother was the only one
who happened to die that day.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I almost hate to ask this, what was your feeling,
What was your reaction personally when you learned all this?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, you know what, when my sister and I just
didn't believe it. I couldn't believe. He come from a
very faith based family. We believe in the power of prayer,
and it's something that I grew up with. So I'm
saying to myself, there's no way that my brother could
be dead. Maybe he's injured and he'll recover. I told
my sister, let's pray right now. And there's a scripture
(04:19):
that says he shall live and not die and declare
the works of the Lord. And you know, that's what
we did. But it was too Lady was already gone.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
As I understand it. I mean, he's standing there and
a black ass uf pulls up. Several people get out
with guns and just start faring into the crowd.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
That's correct, and the individual that they wanted, they shot
him a bunch of times. He still lived. My brother
was shot maybe once or twice, and then there was
a young lady that was shot. And this individual that
they wanted is just honestly miraculous that he survived. He
had to have multiple surgeries that day, and then weeks
after he had to have multiple surgeries. But my brother
(04:59):
is it's just hard to fathom. It's been three years
since it's happened, nude three years, and it's still hard
to think about. The Only thing that really gives me
a sense of purpose in his murder is me having
started at the Caldwell Institute for Public Safety, which our
focus has been George Source funded and back district attorneys
(05:21):
across the country, and now we've expanded out to gubernatorial races,
mayoral races, because I know for a fact that the
reason that my brother was murdered and people across the
country you mentioned on that day, is because of soft
on crime policies in many of these large cities. We've
seen it time and time again. Soft on crime isn't
(05:43):
just a policy as an ideology in which the criminal
knows that there's not going to be any punishment for
what they do. We see it in New York City,
We've seen it in Chicago. We've seen it in Los
Angeles where we got involved in the George gascon race. There.
Supported Nathan Hackman, who's now the district attorney, did advise
all kinds of stuff to ensure that Nathan Hogman would
(06:03):
win that election. Because it's one district attorney at the time.
We got to pull him down, and we got to
bring those local municipalities back into good conscious, good governance
and law and order.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Johanno, one of the things you do is you talk
about eight other murders who to day your brother was killed.
Can you describe briefly those aid?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yes, I talk about people like James, who's my first chapter,
Army veteran who had ETSD. Couldn't sleep at night, so
you would often go to a park to a walk
in a park at two am. On one particular night,
June twenty fourth, that day, he goes to the park
as a bunch of kids out there, teenagers, some even
(06:44):
younger than teenage, and he says, hey, what are you
kids doing out here this late? You should go home.
It's two a m. They end up killing him with
a traffic home. Terrible set of circumstances. I talk about
someone named Catherine, who was a mother, grandmother, sixty five
years old, chemical engineer, white woman out of Texas, who
(07:06):
was going home from work when gunfire broke out on
the freeway. It was a drug deal that went bad.
The guy who was selling the drugs was trying to
rip off the guy that was buying them. They were
trying to rip each other off. They jump in the cars,
they run out on a highway. She's coming home and
they end up killing her baby. Cecilia six months old,
who was murdered miles away from my brother on the
(07:27):
same day, June twenty fourth. Of course, this baby, six
months old was murdered next to her baby brother in
a car seat in Chicago. You know, we often talked
about being at the wrong place, wrong time in some
of these cities, but honestly, thinking about Chicago, you can
be in your bed and a bullet comes through your window.
It's no safety and security there.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I think for people to understand the scale of what
you are responding to, beyond the immediate personal anguish of
your brother. In twenty twenty two, Chicago alone had six
hundred and thirty homicides and twenty six hundred shootings. It
seems to me you really got drawn into dealing with
(08:11):
and exposing the scale of the problem on a nationwide basis.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Thank you for that. These consequences of policymaking in these
freckless politicians who like Brandon Johnson in the City of Chicago,
who supports many of these criminal activities, and by doing so,
saying things like, don't demonize these kids. Well, if these
are the kids they're shooting people, then why wouldn't you
(08:38):
demonize them. You know, at some point they're not children.
They're acting as adults. They're murdering people, and this is
the reality that we live in. If they're fourteen or ten,
they should go to jail if you're going to pick
up a gun and kill someone. But we have to
focus on tougher centizent, punishing those who commit these crimes,
ensure the assault on crime policies are not a logo
(09:00):
on the books. We need to talk about fathers at
a home because a lot of this stuff can be
stopped if we focused on the family structure. That means
in what I really appreciate about you, Speaker, because you've
done this with Bill Clinton, when you put together the
ninety six welfare reformat, making people go to work or
get educated. Those are extraordinarily valuable components and tools that
(09:23):
bring a person to the point where they can have
the independence that do things on their own. It gives
you confidence, it gives you a sense of worth, a
sense of pride, and that's largely missing in many of
these areas.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I was really surprised as you did your research because
I've always thought of murder as the one thing we
really focus on clearing. Your work indicated that only fifty
nine percent of the homicides in twenty twenty one, only
fifty nine percent were solved. That forty one percent, almost
half of all homicides go unsolved, which has to make
(09:55):
the criminals more confident that they can do it and
get away with.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
It, exactly right, and especially in places like Chicago. And
when you look at these numbers even deeper, and when
they break them down by race even less way, less
of the African American numbers are actually solved. And that's
in part because of this no snitching policy that's been
in place for many, many years. In the African American community,
(10:19):
where you don't talk to the police and inform them
on a crime that took place. So what does that do?
That leads to many cases being unsolved, unresolved, That leads
to many families never seeing justice for their own loved
ones because no one's willing to talk. And that's another
thing that I talk about in this book The Day
my Brother was murdered. My journey through America's violent crime
(10:41):
crisis is we must work with the police as a community.
For many African Americans, that is necessitous because at the
end of the day, it used to be and where
I was growing up, if you told, then something may
happen to your family. But if the gang found out
who did crime, they would turn the person into the
(11:01):
police or they would handle let themselves. Now, if you tell,
you don't tell, you're in the same set of circumstances,
something could happen to your family. So I'd rather be
a person who's willing to work with the police and
get their protection and their guidance and to solve the
crime than to allow there to be a set of
circumstances where this person who killed your family member goes
out and kills several others. And that's what happens in
(11:21):
many of these areas is the shooter, one particular person
is committing a lot of these farms. We saw that
in New York. I remember when the New York Post
came out with a story on a lot of the
crime that was being committed was by like two or
three hundred people in the city. The majority of the
crime that was insane. But that ends up being the
reality in many cases that you have people who do
it over and over again because they've gotten away with it.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
How much of the difficulty in some neighborhoods comes because
people are just frightened that if they do testify, that
they and their family will then be targeted by the
very same forces of violence.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I think that does play a part, and that's why
I think is in some of these jurisdictions. We know
that the Democrats went out and took us wing to
defund the police, etc. When the police really need more
funding than many of these locations. But I also think
they need funding for witness protection. That's important. That's an
area in which we don't often talk about and why
(12:19):
people like Mayor Er Goddams was talking about raising taxes
for migrants to take care of them. He should be
ensuring that the tax base he already has is being
rightly spent on the folks who are Americans and who
need to help protection from the police. They need to
make sure that these budgets are where they should be
and they treat the police fairly, because these are the
(12:39):
people we rely on for our safety and security.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
One of the things you reported is that the Department
of Justice indicated there had been a fifty five percent
increase in violent crime over four years, with an amazing
seventy five percent spike in twenty twenty two. And then
you went on the US Government of Justice in September
of twenty four reported and overall fifty five percent increase
and instances of reported rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, And
(13:22):
the estimate was that only forty percent of violent crimes
are reported to the police. Why would people not report
a violent crime?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, in some cases, I know, in some cases people
think is not going to matter. As an example, in Chicago,
they need two thousand new police detectives to handle the
current murder workload. So those murders that are happening in
the city, they need to be able to solve them.
They don't have enough police for that, and in some
cases they may not come, and that's the unfortunate reality.
(13:52):
Police now in some cases they don't want to be demonized.
They don't want to make a quick decision to save
a life that may cost them their job, cost them
their reputation. That's an issue in and of itself. We
have a nation where people have been unfortunately scarred. They've
seen what happened in twenty twenty with George Floyd, and
that was an issue. Police departments are overwhelmed and we
(14:14):
continue to see that upticking crime in twenty twenty two,
which is rather interesting in a way because you know,
we had already surpassed the ryots and all those different things,
But then that was a policy issue. As an example,
in Illinois, there's something called the Safety Act Safe t Act,
and what it does is it ins cash bail in
(14:34):
the state of Illinois. But there's other policies that it
impacts even more directly. As an example, they have these
ankle monitor braces that you've seen people wear. They're on
house arrests. That's what is usually for well in Illinois,
they sometimes put murderers on house arrests as they await trial. Well,
with the Safety Act, now you can go out and
(14:56):
murder the person who may be the witness of the
crime because the police are not allowed to come to
your house for seventy two hours. So it used to be,
you know, the monitor goes off, the police call are
you home, and then they may stop by to verify
that you are home. In this case, seventy two hours,
you got a full runway to go do whatever you want.
Police cannot respond, and then in seventy two hours they
(15:18):
can finally respond, So you've already done all the dirty
work at that point.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Why do they have this seventy two hour rule?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
That's a really good question, Newton. I'm gonna tell you
I went out for Fox to Chicago because when you
look at the list of things this covers, threddning a
public official. That's something that's been decriminalized in a way.
Many of the things that were in that law. People
did not believe it. You know, I say, hey, you know,
what do you think of the new Safety Actor that
Democrats are proposing. You tell them, you go down the list.
(15:49):
They say, there's no way that this can be true.
Absolutely no way people who vote for Democrats, and our
Democrats said there's absolutely no way. And then people found
out that it was absolutely true, it was accurate, and
they passed it. They ended up passing it. JB. Prisker
put money behind it, the billionaire governor of Illinois, who's
so far left now he's a progressive, is what it
(16:10):
seems to me. And how did it pass? I mean,
you got an electorate is still voting for these kind
of people. That's how it passed.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It's kind of amazing to me. It's almost as though
the modern left is pro criminal that the adopt a
series of procedures and a series of rules, all of
which are to the advantage of the criminal and to
the disadvantage of the victim or the innocent citizen. You
(16:40):
cite Chicago, which is your hometown, you get the same
pattern in New York or in California. In Philadelphia, as
you know and have written about, the district Attorney Larry
Krasner is just insanely soft on crime. And a lot
of these folks were supported by George Soros, who in
one election alone put up a million dollars to help
(17:04):
Krasner win. And yet Krasner's clearly openly in favor of
the criminals and against the police and against the victims.
I mean, how do you explain all that.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I'll tell you it's not that they seem that they're
pro criminal. They are pro criminal. That's the reality of it.
They have been pro criminal for a long time. And
you know, they went under the guys of criminal justice reform.
It was a noble, noble effort writing some wrongs, but
what it ended up becoming is justice for the criminal.
And that's where we are as a country right now.
(17:35):
Because people they saw a moment with George Floyd and
they thought it was a welcome Matt to say, listen,
we're going to be in favor of the criminal because
we think that our voters would like it. In some
of these major cities, they did like it until they didn't.
You think about California. Remember just last year there was
the repeal of Prop forty seven. Now, Gavin Newsom and
(17:58):
for people who don't know about this proposition in twenty fourteen,
it was a ballid initiative which lowered the penalties for
crime criminal activity, So you get less time for this,
less time for that. Do you criminalize this or that?
Et cetera. So folks know that crime exploded in California
after George Floyd, especially in places like Los Angeles, and
(18:21):
they wanted something done about it, and they thought their
proposition was one in which wasn't helpful. For that time.
Gavin Newsom was against repealing it. He said, Oh, this
is going to hurt our black communities. What how dare
you even say something like that Black communities are being
hurt because of crime, so you need to put those
folks in jail one percent. So that's the Martyn left today.
(18:43):
They don't want to repeal it. The voters did, Thank
god that they did, because it's such a shame that
they allowed it to go on for as long as
it did.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I mean, you point out, for example that in Chicago alone,
the progressive prosecutor Kim Fox dropped more than twenty five
foul and phoning cases.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, including rape and murder.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I mean just basically said that these folks you're free, Yeah,
sending a signal course to other people that they can
get away with rape and murder.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You had mentioned that during Gascon's term in San Francisco,
property crime increased by forty nine percent and sixty percent
of the arrest made by the San Francisco Police Department
were just dropped by Gascon in his office as if
they'd never happened. I mean, how can people put up
with them?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Well, George Gascone is I think a really good example
that you just referenced because he helped author that proposition
was lowered the penalties statewide, So that was a big
part of his formula. And he's also someone the George
Soros backed supported for not only some of the roles
that he did in San Francisco, but he also ran
for District attorney in Los Angeles County. So he's a
(19:54):
really interesting fellow. And thank god he's no longer in office.
And I'll tell you for a lot of the people
they seen, And you know, I'm African American. I think
many people know that about now. But there has been
some wrongs in the African American community for sure. But
you don't right them by saying we're going to give
criminals a free pass because many of these criminals happen
(20:16):
to be black. If I'm just going to be plain
about it, that's been the case. Many of the victims
happen to be black. The perpetrators oftentimes happen to be
black as well. They do this thing to pander to
African Americans and some Hispanic and then some liberal I guess,
well meaning whites who think that black folks the only
way to help them is allow criminals to get off
(20:38):
the hook, which is asinine. To be clear, that's part
of the reason that they've done it. But I think
people are in some cases waking up to this. I
wouldn't say the same for some of the good folks
in New York who willing to put a socialist in
offices mayor. I don't understand how something like that happens,
but I guess if you're in pain and you're suffering
(20:59):
under the weight of the financial burden of being a
New York or maybe you're willing to do whatever you
can try to take some of that burden and pressure
off of you. Maybe that was a part of the
calculus for some of those voters, even though it was
a very low turnout race, this idea that you can
cure all ills in the black community if you just
let criminals off the hook, and it's just totally wrong.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
You make a point good. You can't really explain the
rise of the progressive, pro criminal, anti victim district attorneys.
Without looking at George Soros's role, Were you surprised by
the scale and scope of what Soros has done?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
You know what I'm gonna tell you, I'm very surprised.
And honestly, what he did was it was an evil
genius idea. Instead of going nationally and putting all his
money in nationally, he go locality, local, put in He
funded over seventy five soft one crime prosecutors candidates that
(21:59):
ran for office, many of them got in, and he
only put in a little money to do it. And
then it created a trend across the country. One city
did it, the other one adapted, and that's how they
played it. And then I find out through the work
of Elon Musk Indulged how much his nonprofits have been
receiving in federal funding. So now the question becomes, you know,
(22:20):
obviously you can't use federal money for politics per se,
but many of them do. Like we see these protests
et cetera that they hire, and I talk about that
in the book Today My Brother was Murdered, My Journey
through America's Violent Crime Crisis. Many of these protesters are
bought and paid for it through sores, and he uses
money through his charities to get them in these particular places,
(22:41):
like these ice protests they did in Los Angeles, these
riots and the looting that they did. Much of this
stuff is paid for by your sores. But we were
really surprised to find out that they were receiving all
this money from my very own federal government through USAID.
Now that was the real shocker, I think for a
lot of people. So he may not even be using
(23:02):
it all money to do a lot of this stuff.
He's using our money, which is the biggest lap in
the face for many Americans.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
So in that sense, what President Trump has done in
cutting off the flow of that money to basically anti
victim pro criminal das is a significant step in the
right direction.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And there's others too. You got people like Stacy Abrams.
What was it, a billion dollars that her charity was
going to receive and it was over for a month.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
It's impossible for me to believe that she could possibly
spend that kind of money intelligently. Well, I was stunned.
It was kind of like Christmas, let me give you
a gigantic gift. Good luck. Yes, on the shift gears
(23:58):
because I think one of the most provided how could
Eve comments in your book you say the greatest violent
threat to Black Americans is other Black Americans. I mean
that's a very provocative point. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Well, just like I mentioned the numbers in terms of
us dying at the hands of each other one hundred percent.
I've been a conservative for two decades, well over twenty years.
I think I might be coming up on twenty five
years and now at this point. And the people who
really were opposed to me being a conservative, we're black people.
People who disparaged me for being a conservative, more likely
(24:36):
than not African Americans and folks when it comes to
the work that I'm trying to do, once they find
out that there's a Republican association to it, that's when
a demonize or attempt to demonize our work when we're
just simply trying to save lives. We're trying to turn
the country around, put it back on track, and the
law and order posture. We want to make sure that
there's safety and security for everyone. But more than likely
(24:59):
they're a post to it. And the reality is many
on the left, whether they be white, black, or indifferent.
It can be something that's the greatest thing you ever
the cure for cancer. They find out Trump is a
part of it, then all of a sudden they're against it.
And it's reprehensible at this point that we cannot just
be a free thinking society at people, no matter what
color you are. People make their own decisions. So long
(25:20):
as doesn't impact me in a negative way, it's fine.
But certainly a lot of us are dying at the
hands of each other, and that has become, I think
a sticking point in many of these communities, and that's
why many of us just leave these communities.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
You make a very important point. The poverty by itself
doesn't explain the violence, but that there are much deeper
breakdowns in family, education, and opportunity. What can be done
to break that cycle?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I think we need to get back to family and
the homes is where I think a society that has
been largely lost. I think that's part of the reason
that Donald Trump's win was so decisive, because people wanted
to go back to some form of normalcy and they
thought he was the only same person to run. You know,
between him and Kamala Harris, this was the only same
(26:09):
person that you can vote for at that particular time.
But we got to get back to the core root
of family and education nude. I think that's the most
important thing. We got to get back to that. We
got to get back to the value of hard work.
That's why I support work requirements on welfare, and I
appreciate what it appears to be. Congress has that same
mentality and mindset. And you know, hopefully we'll see that
(26:31):
in a big, beautiful bill. That is the hope. But
if we can get back to our roots a family.
Faith is also important, extremely important. I interview a guy
in a book who runs a network or charter schools,
and these are underprivileged students that he has in his
particular schools, and he says that it doesn't matter what
(26:52):
the religion is, whatever it is. You can be Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian,
whatever the case may be. He said, if a kid
has some sense of faith in their life. I believe
he said, it was like a seventy five percent chance
that that kid was going to do well in life
if he had that core of faith in his life.
(27:12):
And I believe that because that's why I grew up.
I grew up with that. I grew up knowing the
difference between right and wrong, knowing that God is here
to protect us and guide us and lead us the
Ten Commandments, which I think the governor Abbot of Texas
now is putting it him in every classroom now has
to display the Ten Commandments. If we can get back
to those foundational principles, I think we'll be a society
(27:34):
that can get back on track for sure.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
One of the steps that you've taken, you've been very
outspoken against the defund the police movement. What do you
think has been the real world impact of that movement.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I think a lot of cities recognize right away that
it was a disastrous decision to defund the police in
any capacity, and many of them decided to put the
funding prop the funding back up, et cetera. But it
was very problem and it impacted our officers in a
very deep way. I mean, our officers begin to believe
that as a society, we really actually don't care about
(28:08):
the police. And some of these cases we see police
officers get attacked. I think it was in Times Square
a migrant attacked one or two police officers and he
was out of jail the next day or a couple
of days later. These policies, the rhetoric from elected officials
do have consequences. The unfortunate reality is the morale in
(28:29):
many of these local municipalities, these local police districts has
gone way down, retirements have gone way up, and people
just don't want to deal with it anymore. And that's
not okay for us as a society to have our
officers feeling like that, because we depend on them, we
need them.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
I really think that your book is very impressive and
the range of things you cover, the need for a
serious continuing prison policy initiative. Once only yos of prison.
Once we would like to make sure when they come
out that they're prepared to re enter society and not
go back to prison. Talk for here about that whole
(29:08):
notion of how do we reduce what they call recidivism,
which is simply people getting out of being sent back
to prison.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, the recidivism rate is extraordinarily high. I know that
it was at one time seventy five percent. After five years,
people recidivising and going back into prison. Because oftentimes prisons
become a place where people get more educated on how
to commit more crime. Except for an example that I
utilize in the book doctor Bill Winston, who's a pastor
(29:38):
out of Chicago. He is actually my pastor to twenty
thousand member church. And what he does is he has
a program that goes into the jail. They teach them
financial literacy, job skilled readiness. They bring corporations into the
jail to recruit prisoners those who are about to get out.
(29:58):
So you want to ensure that they the skills that
are needed so that they do not recidivize when they
come out. If you got a job or a skill
or something, somebody's going to take you in, then you're
less likely to be in that set of circumstances. I
think programs like doctor Bill Winston is one that should
be expanded throughout the country. They did a wrong, they're
accepting their punishment obviously by being there, and they don't
(30:21):
have a choice but too. But now we can give
them skills that when they come out they're in a
better position to be effective citizens and taxpayers. And I
think that's what we really would want as a country.
We want to be able to give people an ability
to do right after being in a set of circumstances.
Like that.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
One of the reasons I wanted to share this conversation
with folks who listen to our podcasts is that after
the death of your brother Christian, you founded the Caldwell
Institute for Public Safety, which is a nonprofit dedicating to
ensure our justice system is the safety and security of
(31:02):
all law abiding citizens. Could you talk about that point
or two. I think it's a very important organizational effort
on your part and one that I have great admiration for.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Well. Thank you. People can go to Caldwell Institute dot
org and learn more about us there. So what happened
newd is I wanted to ensure that after what I
experienced with my brother working with the police. I worked
for Fox News, so I had all the press, but
many people don't. I put together manuals, and people that
are on our board of advisors did it the same.
(31:32):
We have former prosecutors, police chief legislators, etc. That are
on our advisory board and they put together e manual
how to work with police and prosecutors. I put together
emanual how to get pressed for your family members, how
to work with mental health services. Doctor Drew put together
a manual on that those resources can again be found
(31:53):
at our website calledwell Institute dot org. It was necessary.
I wanted to really help people because I didn't realize
that I was going to go through all these things
and have these particular sets of experiences, but certainly I did,
and I want people to have an easier time. Unfortunately,
I'm saying that to navigate this situation because it's incredibly difficult,
hard and emotional. So the institute started off as being
(32:17):
a place for that, as well as going after soft
on crime George Soro's funded prosecutors, and now we've expanded
our tent to get involved with the gubernatorial races, the
mayor or racist because public safety and crime is an
expansive area where it's not just about the das, it's
about the governors. It's about the legislatures. But the governors
(32:38):
have a great impact, the mayors have a great impact,
and the das have a great impact, especially if they're
actually applying the law and not utilizing politics. So this institute,
I think is extraordinarily important, is the only one that's
on the right because we don't really have these same
kind of issues that they have on the left. And
I just wanted to give a place for people to
be able to get what they need during their time
(32:59):
and need well.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
I think you're doing an amazing job. I really want
to thank you for joining us. It's a very personal story.
You've responded with great courage and great discipline. I appreciate
your sharing your story by your brother Christian. Your new book,
The Day My Brother was Murdered, My Journey through America's
Violent Crime Crisis is available now on Amazon and in
(33:20):
bookstores everywhere. I encourage everyone to get a copy. We
will list the Caldwell Institute for Public Safety on our
show page so people can come and see what you're doing.
I just want to thank you personally, Giano, for you
the commitment you've made as a citizen and for your friendship.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
No, thank you for your friendship. And we got who
were dates coming up here. They can go to call
and listen to dot org and see what city on
in the next.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Thank you to my guest Giana Caldwell. You can get
a link to buy his new book, The Day My
Brother was Murdered, My Journey through America's Violent Crime Crisis
on our show page at neutworld dot com. Newtild is
produced by Genglish three sixty and iHeart Media. Our executive
producer is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The
(34:06):
artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special
thanks to the team at Gingrish three sixty. If you've
been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of Newtsworld concerned from a three freeweekly
columns at ginglestree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich.
(34:30):
This is Newtsworld.
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