August 29, 2024 • 32 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time, time, time, time, Luck and load. The
Michael Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Abortion is not.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
A big issue to the vast majority of Americans. That
is true of the pro abortion community, and it is
true of the pro life community.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Now.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
A number of people who are pro life are very
pro life. They do not want abortions, but it's not
the only thing they think about. Mike Pence made that
the only thing he talked about because he didn't have
a thought on any substantive issues that he could offer.
(01:11):
But he could be really, really, really against abortion. And
there were people who gravitated that. I like my pens
because if nothing else, he's really against abortion. Okay, what
about on the border or these six hundred and nineteen
(01:34):
other issues. Well, I don't really know. I just know
that first and foremost he's very much against abortion.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Okay, But.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
All right, Well, but but there are going to be
a lot of other things that are going to come up. Well,
I just know his heart's in the right place on abortion. Okay,
But we've got to we've got to be better than
the left.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
There are a lot of people that are against abortion
that actually have a brain that'll stand up for Trump
that are not afraid of being attacked, like that's not
the only issue out there.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
People get angry.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
A certain percentage of people get angry if you suggest
there is an issue other than abortion, because they want
you to know they're not just against abortion. They will
literally burn the entire Republican Party down over abortion. It's
all they care about. I have no time for it.
No time for it, because that's the mindset that leaves
(02:46):
us with politicians who will leave the border wide open
while telling us they oppose abortion. I can't live with that.
We are sophisticated people. We are leaders of the world.
We are in charge of the political system of the
government of the country that the entire world depends on
(03:11):
to be strong. So they have something to look at
as an example. And I'm not going to pander to
you to like me by sitting in the corner going well,
I too agree that being against abortion is.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
The only thing we ever ought to do, because I
don't believe that. But when you.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Focus solely on abortion, which by the way, there's two
groups of people a fringe on both sides, that that's
all they care about, Well, you really want to give
them the Super Bowl? Have them stand out in the street,
each of them with signs, screaming each other in the face,
and have the TVs the networks take a photo of
(03:59):
one screaming at the other, and they both get to
be the homepage of the station to arguing one for life,
one for abortion. They're so excited. Well, here's the problem.
When you drag our politicians on our side, When you
drag our leaders on our side down that trail where
(04:22):
that's what you want them to talk about all day,
every day, you elevate the issue of abortion, and you
help the Democrats win.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Michael, that's not true. Everybody's against abortion. Everybody. You know.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
We lose sixty eight percent of unmarried women, one percent
of whom have ever or will ever have an abortion.
But they want the right to have an abortion. And
the fact that you're taking away the right means they
will vote for the president who will leave the border
wide open, destroy our economy, and destroy our country.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
I'm not gonna let that happen. I'm gonna keep my
eye on the prize.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
For those of you who are excited about football season,
I'll use a football analogy. There's fifteen seconds left in
the game, and you're on the three yard line, and
the play that gets your offense you're down by four points.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
You gotta score a touchdown.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
The play that gets your offense down to the three,
let's make it to one yard line. On the play
that your guy catches a pass and he goes down
and he's tackled from behind and gets to the one.
We've got time for one, maybe two plays left. And
one of your players, as he's coming up on the
(05:49):
scene where the guy's just been tackled, he thinks another
player on the other team took a cheap shot.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So he runs up after all the play has and
he drills that guy.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
In front of God, the cameras, and the referees. The
ref never moves his head, puts his hand down on
his hip, flings the yellow flag up in the air.
Fifteen yards Instead of two plays or at least one,
depending on the time, from the one yard line, we're
(06:24):
going back to the sixteen.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Now. He may say, yeah, but that was a cheap shot. Yeah,
but we want to win.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
What he just did out of an abundance of love
for his teammate, is he just probably cost our team
the game. He certainly made it that much harder for
us to score, because now we're going back fifteen yards
and that's a problem. We need to be focused right
(06:57):
now on winning this election. Had a guy right to
me yesterday and he said, I'm not voting for Trump
anymore because I was for Trump because he's against abortion.
But he said he would not support a national ban
on abortion. I said, by all means, vote for Kamala,
(07:25):
so more abortions will be conducted. Just don't ever email
me again. And to ensure that you don't un blocking
you because you're an idiot. You're just a kind of idiot.
That is the reason we lose elections. Unless Donald Trump
agrees with you on one hundred percent of issues one
hundred percent of the time, you're not going to vote
(07:47):
for him, And that's why we lose elections. There it is,
there's a lot of people that won't admit to it.
There's a lot of people that need a little personal attention.
They don't want Trump to agree with them ninety nine
percent of the time on ninety nine percent of the issues.
(08:10):
They like the idea that if unless you're with me
on one hundred percent of issues one hundred percent of
the time, there are fewer Democrats, and there are Republicans.
There are a few people that want four more years
of the nonsense we've had than want four years of
what we had before through Trump. I don't doubt that
those numbers are very clear, but we got a lot
(08:32):
of people that He didn't say he's in favor of abortion.
He said he wants to leave it to the states,
and that's what the Supreme Court did. He doesn't want
to lose people's vote who say, well, I want it
to be legal in a state that wants to have it.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
He wants to win and still be true to his principles.
This guy over here says, no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Unless you're willing to do the thing that will cost
you the election, you lose my vote doing it big.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
On The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
It was on this day in two thousand and five
that Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the US Gulf Coast
from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. The death toll one
eight hundred and thirty six people.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
That's incredible.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
That is, if you had asked me the number before
I looked it up, I would have guessed ten percent
of that. Not that I didn't know it at the time.
Just time obscures things. I remember watching on TV. Now
(09:45):
twelve years later, Houston would be hit with Hurricane Harvey.
Our house would be flooded, my kids, my wife and kids.
I was in Baton Rouge at the time giving a
speech and I couldn't get back to them, and they
had to wade out in very, very dangerous, chest deep water.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
It was treacherous.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Have a photo of them being rescued, and we treasure
that photo.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
It's on the wall in our.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Dining room because we are reminded of how fast things
can be gone, and what matters is this precious life
and your precious family. When we got back to the
house after the water had finally receded. All of my
(10:36):
kids were born in Ethiopia, my wife is from India.
All of our things from our childhoods. We had built
these shelves down at floor level because we were fifty
eight feet above above sea level, above the bayou that
we lived up above. There was no chance we were
(10:56):
ever going to have a problem. And it came up
sixty one feet. So you do the math, and so
all of my children's Ethiopian documents, which can't be recreated handwritten,
they're not computerized. Gone all of their photos, all of
my wife's photos, all of my photos, which I don't
(11:16):
care about. And my wife was so my wife's not
an emotional person, but she was kind of biting her lips.
She's not a crier, and she said, this is really bad,
and this is really bad. We've lost some important things.
And my kids said, Mama, our home is where we
(11:38):
are and that can't be affected. And I'll tell you what, ma'am,
out of the mouth of babes the wisdom, because that's
what we've always taught them. What is important in life
cannot be purchased on the shelf of a store. And
at the moment they most needed to apply that they did.
(12:00):
Made me very proud. We identify Katrina with New Orleans,
and there are a lot of reasons for that, and
they're applicable to the current political campaign. But the devastation
went all the way to the Florida Panhandle. There were
lots and lots of people in Mississippi whose lives were
(12:24):
destroyed out of that and many of whose lives were taken.
But New Orleans became in two thousand and five as
the Democrats were preparing for the two thousand and eight campaign,
New Orleans became a way to bash Republicans. They had
lost to Bush in two thousand, they had lost to
Bush in four They needed something new, They needed to
(12:49):
tarnish the Republican brand. So you saw this sadness, you
saw the devastation, You saw the fai of the government
in New Orleans. What you have to do is you
have to make people who went from sad to angry mad.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
At George W. Bush.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yes, and that is exactly what they brilliantly did. It
wasn't George Bush's fault. Oh, he flew over. This is
like what they say about Trump today. He flew over
because when Brownie told him we can have all these people,
(13:40):
the president moves in a caravan. He did not want
to be a distraction. Of course, he would have stopped.
You ever seen him on the aircraft carrier with his
leather jacket on and the mission class. He would have
looked like a king coming in there to save these people.
That's a great visual. It would have been blown up
and put on the wall as Presidential library. He didn't
(14:01):
not stop because he didn't like black people.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
What kind of.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Nonsense was passed off in this country. That's the dumbest
thing ever. And who was passing off that nonsense, Well,
let's say Brian Williams, who in the middle of it
all was lying about his heroics hotel room.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
When you look out of your hotel room window in
the French Quarter and watch a man float by, face down,
when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Ace,
Indonesia and swore to yourself that you would never see
in your country. I beat that storm. I was there
before it arrived. I wrote it out with people who
(14:46):
later died in the super Dome.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Except that turned out to be a lie.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
None of what these people say is true.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Once you you realize they're all chronic, pathological liars, you
stop getting fooled.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Guess what, that's not a vaccine, Guess what.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Injecting this poison into your body is not going to
keep you from getting this virus that they have frightened
you of.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
It's all lies. The mask doesn't stop the spread.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
You can't fathom how microscopic the virus is and how
the aerosol of your speech spews it into the environment.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Because you can't see it.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
The mask doesn't matter, and there you are screaming it people,
Why why I'm not even if they can't breathe.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Stay six fan away. They made it all up. These
people are all lying.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
They're never stop lying, they never stop lying, and virtue signaling.
They use the poor black people to virtue signal.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
You don't like the poor black people, only we do.
Wait what yeah, Wolf Blitzer.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
You simply get chills every time you see these poor
individuals because Jack Jefferty just pointed out so tragically, so
many of these people, almost all of them, and that
we see are so poor, and they are so black.
And this is going to raise lots of questions for
people who are watching this story unfold.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
How many degrees of blackness are they? They're so poor
and so black. Does that mean if you were to
put the pantone colors, you'd have to move two pages
to the right because there's no cream in the coffee?
(16:54):
What exactly does this mean? Does this mean more African
and less creole, or does it mean there's so much.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
More poor or what exactly?
Speaker 3 (17:14):
I don't know that I have ever heard out of
the mouth of a member of the media a deeper
insight into his mindset. There are degrees of blackness and
them them over there. Bush has wronged the poorest and
(17:35):
the blackest among them.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I mean they don't have jobs. They're too poor and
black even for welfare. They're so poor and black? What
are you doing? What are you saying? Once he was
out there, he couldn't go back. Those people don't matter
(18:00):
to him. They're not human to him. He has no
connection to them. They are tools to use to They
are cudgels to bludgeon. George W. Bush and an al
Donald Trump show the Trump I knew when he ran
for president in twenty sixteen. This was not the Trump
(18:22):
most Americans know today. Trump was a pop culture phenomenon.
If you were a prominent black celebrity in this country,
you had Trump's cell phone, You'd been on Trump's helicopter,
You'd flown on his jets, You'd been to his parties.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
This was not the Trump of mar Lago. This was
the Trump of New York.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
This was the Trump of awards shows and TV shows
and movie cameos. This was the Trump, the charming Trump,
the pat on the back, the handwritten note. That's who
Trump was to these people, and he was beloved Whoopie
Goldberg loved him, Oprah loved him. People loved him. Major
(19:06):
influencers and celebrities loved him and was it selfish for them. Absolutely,
when your light is on and it's shining brightly, other
celebrities want to be around it because because it helps them.
But don't tell me that Trump is a monster. Don't
(19:30):
tell me how awful and terrible he is when I
watched him for the last fifty years be the toast
of Hollywood, media, music, New York.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Politics.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Don't tell me that because it's not true. You can
say Trump's a good guy he's always has been, or
you can say Trump's a bad guy and always has been.
But you can't tell me Trump's a monts for today.
When whoever is saying that, I can say, well, here's
you and him. Here's you flying on his plane. Here's
(20:10):
you saying he was great. Here's you Oprah saying you
wanted to be his vice presidential running mate. Here's you
we'll be talking about he's your favorite Republican. Here's you
Morning Joe and your mistress Mikah sitting on his lap
trying to make him her sugar daddy because she's got
a crush on him, and you're begging him to come
(20:30):
on the air. You people are frogs and hypocrites, not him.
He never changed. But what Trump is doing right now,
and this is what I want to highlight. What Trump
is doing is getting back to his roots from the
eighties and appealing to people on a very personal level,
(20:58):
a charismatic connection that he had gotten away from. Trump
had become a creature of Fox News and conservative talk.
But he's won that audience and they're not going anywhere.
They're going to be there tomorrow. He's got to go
(21:21):
back and he knows it because unlike George W. Bush
or Romney, or McCain or Bob Dole, Donald Trump connects.
He connects with women, with blacks, with young people, with athletes,
(21:42):
with artists. What made me think of this is today
is Michael Jackson's birthday. He would have been sixty six
years old. He's born on this day in Gary, Indiana.
And I want you to listen to Donald Trump talking here,
and he's not bluffing or blustering or making up some
(22:03):
This is true.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
What he's saying is true. And let this sink in
for a moment. What's your favorite kind of music. What
music do well. I think Elton John is great.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
I think the Stones are great, the Beatles.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
I love.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
Michael Jackson was actually a very good friend of mine.
I knew Michael Jackson very well. Lived in Trump Tower
for a long period of time. Would go down Tomorrowlago.
He actually got married, you know, Lisa Marie Presley, the
whole big deal at mari A Lago.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
They were in the tower, and I will tell you
he was up there one week with her and he
never came down.
Speaker 6 (22:28):
So I don't know what was going on, but they
got along. You know a lot of people say, oh,
they didn't. Really, they were up there for a week.
They never ever came And I say, where the hell
is Michael. I've noticed it.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
But the night before Lisa Marie Presley died, which she
died on a Sunday, was a Saturday night, and my
wife and I and Eddie Martini, the guy that got
me into radio, who's still a dear friend of mine,
and his wife Liz. The four of us were at
the table next to Trump. It's Saturday night and he's
having dinner with Lisa Marie Presley and Priscilla, and he's
(23:03):
got an iPad on which he programs the music, and
I had learned that from the last time we'd been there,
and the music was all Elvis, Michael Jackson, David Bowie
and Phantom of the Opera. That was He just kept
going back and forth and you could tell he was saying.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Oh, hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know what
that was that song? And that's who he is.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
I mean that that's the person he is when people
because a lot of people vote for who they like,
for not who they like, not policy, I'm hoping people
can see who he is as a person because for
better or worse, they're going to vote for that is on.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well done.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
So this is the Michael Verry Show. Eight years ago today,
the great Gene Wilder died. Fantastic actor, just wonderful. He
did it all.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
He was a stage actor, he was a screen actor,
he was a screenwriter, he was a director, he was
an author.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
He made us laugh. That's a skill.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
We were debating which scene to play to represent his
body of work, and we decided it had to be
Young Frankenstein.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Or Blazing Saddles.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
And you could recite your favorite Gene Wilder line or
your favorite Blazing Saddles line for that matter, on your
own right now and hopefully that puts a smile on
your face to do. But we chose the Waco kid
explaining why he retired, and we of course had to
censor it.
Speaker 8 (24:38):
Oh well, it got sell that every Prairie punk who
thought he could shoot a gun would ride into.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Town to try out the Waco kid.
Speaker 8 (24:46):
I must have killed more men, and Cecil B. Demill
got pretty gritty. I started to hear the word draw
in my sleep. And one day I was just walking
down the street and I heard a voice be me say,
reached for it, mister, And I spun around and there
I was, face to face with a six year old kid. Well,
(25:11):
I just threw my guns down walked away.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Little dud shot me in the apse.
Speaker 8 (25:19):
So I limped to the nearest saloon, crawl inside a
whiskey bottle, and I've been there ever since.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
You know, so much of what Blazing Saddles lampooned and
ridiculed was the discomfort people have over race. It's the
great problem in this country. I had somebody tell me
the other day that they were uncomfortable telling people they
(25:58):
were a listener to our show because they were just
really sick and tired of DEI being crammed down their throat,
to which I responded, if you can't like what you
like and say so publicly because you fear the politics
(26:18):
and policies of the left, then you've been censored, or worse,
you're censoring yourself.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
They've won. Well, I just really know.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Let me explain. The moment that you now censor yourself
is the moment they've won. This is like the people
who say I'm not going to vote. I'm so sick
of how bad things are in this country that I'm
not going to vote.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
The border's wide open? Men in the girls locker room.
Trump should be the president. Kamala Harris is horrible. I'm
so mad. I'm not gonna vote because they're gonna cheap.
So you do everything possible to ensure that they're gonna cheat.
I mean that they're gonna win so much so that
(27:20):
they don't even.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Need to cheat.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
We don't talk a lot about Texas as much as
I do on the morning show, and certainly not Houston,
which is in Harris County, But this one I had
to share with you. This is the chief equity Officer
Aralia Johnson of Harris County talking to the Harris County
Community Flood Resilience Task Force about the new definition of equity.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Folks, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
If you don't stand up to this and you don't
fight back, this gets worse. I know a lot of
you think, well, I'll just take my beat and get
it over with. No.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
No, no, no no no no no no no.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
They're not in complete control of our economy and our
schools and our government yet, but if you.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Keep letting them, they will be.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
You have got to fight back on this, no matter
that they call you nasty names.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
This is doctor Arelia Johnson.
Speaker 10 (28:21):
My pronouns is she hers, and I am the chief
Equity Officer for Harris County. The Commission of Court declared
racism and sexism as a public health crisis. We have
these huge aspirational goals as if we can under two
hundred and fifty years worth worth of institutionalization of disparity.
Sometimes our implicit biases are unconscious biases seep into interactions.
Speaker 9 (28:47):
Is not because we intend on being harmful.
Speaker 10 (28:50):
Sometimes we are completely unaware that we are being harmful.
And so this is something that we really have to
work on, and it has to be very intentional, unconscious
and so socially, the intelligent equity is locational or context specific,
which means that you have to recognize where you are,
your generational context, your historical context, your social context, your
(29:11):
political context, and recognize it and recognize it. Sometimes we
assume things to the detriment of progress. Right, So procedural
equity is going to be different because that's policies, that's practices, right.
Speaker 9 (29:22):
But if we can't get to those policies unless we're.
Speaker 10 (29:25):
Looking at the structures that are put into place, Like
racism is a structure, right, Sexism is a part of
the structure. Patriarchy and supremacy are part of these structures.
There are some ways where equity is now getting woven
into sort of like the some metrics. After talking to
doctor Peterson and some of our other department heads, like
(29:47):
pollution control, engineering, the toll road, and then looking at
a number of instruments and indicators, some of which have
come from the Justice forty initiative, been able to create
this tool called an Equity Action Tracker. There are some
other things that we're working on, an equity maturation model,
(30:08):
to determine where we are in the county as well
as an equity toolkit.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
What there do you have or have you found about
flood risk and Harrison County.
Speaker 10 (30:18):
That is a wonderful question, and to be honest with you, sir,
I do not have.
Speaker 9 (30:22):
Any data or flood control at this time.
Speaker 10 (30:25):
My office is two weeks old, My position is about
four months.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
In what ways is the Office of Human and Civil
Rights hoping equities show up in flood related things?
Speaker 10 (30:36):
I really don't know what my big overarching goals for
flood control is going to be.
Speaker 9 (30:42):
Yet we have this myth.
Speaker 10 (30:45):
That we need to bunk about what equity means, Like,
it's not this, It's not any of the miscommunication or
the misdirection that is happening in the media. I would
think one question that was asked to me some time
ago actually during the directro was how do we approach
sovereign citizens like you know, doctor Johnson. Do we just
kind of, you know, leave them to their own resources?
Speaker 9 (31:07):
And I was like, absolutely not.
Speaker 10 (31:08):
Just because they look at things from an ideologically different standpoint,
that does not mean that we do not we do
not reach out to them or provide them accessibility to opportunity.
How do we then and view these strategies that humanize
people that we wouldn't necessarily humanize. Our office is working
on equity focused centered trainings. Let me take a step
(31:33):
back first and foremost, we're doing an equity training needs assessment,
or we have some understanding about what foundational equity trainings
that we need to ve test and validate within the.
Speaker 9 (31:42):
Next thirty six months.
Speaker 10 (31:43):
Our goal is to really create this shared language, a
shared analytical framework, making sure we have institutionalized the equity definition,
the equity model as much as possible, that we are
shift through the way we look at things so where
equity is now a second nature that we are serving.
Speaker 9 (32:03):
In nineteen thousand, ye
It's that time, time, time, time, Luck and load. The
Michael Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Abortion is not.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
A big issue to the vast majority of Americans. That
is true of the pro abortion community, and it is
true of the pro life community.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Now.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
A number of people who are pro life are very
pro life. They do not want abortions, but it's not
the only thing they think about. Mike Pence made that
the only thing he talked about because he didn't have
a thought on any substantive issues that he could offer.
(01:11):
But he could be really, really, really against abortion. And
there were people who gravitated that. I like my pens
because if nothing else, he's really against abortion. Okay, what
about on the border or these six hundred and nineteen
(01:34):
other issues. Well, I don't really know. I just know
that first and foremost he's very much against abortion.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Okay, But.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
All right, Well, but but there are going to be
a lot of other things that are going to come up. Well,
I just know his heart's in the right place on abortion. Okay,
But we've got to we've got to be better than
the left.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
There are a lot of people that are against abortion
that actually have a brain that'll stand up for Trump
that are not afraid of being attacked, like that's not
the only issue out there.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
People get angry.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
A certain percentage of people get angry if you suggest
there is an issue other than abortion, because they want
you to know they're not just against abortion. They will
literally burn the entire Republican Party down over abortion. It's
all they care about. I have no time for it.
No time for it, because that's the mindset that leaves
(02:46):
us with politicians who will leave the border wide open
while telling us they oppose abortion. I can't live with that.
We are sophisticated people. We are leaders of the world.
We are in charge of the political system of the
government of the country that the entire world depends on
(03:11):
to be strong. So they have something to look at
as an example. And I'm not going to pander to
you to like me by sitting in the corner going well,
I too agree that being against abortion is.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
The only thing we ever ought to do, because I
don't believe that. But when you.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Focus solely on abortion, which by the way, there's two
groups of people a fringe on both sides, that that's
all they care about, Well, you really want to give
them the Super Bowl? Have them stand out in the street,
each of them with signs, screaming each other in the face,
and have the TVs the networks take a photo of
(03:59):
one screaming at the other, and they both get to
be the homepage of the station to arguing one for life,
one for abortion. They're so excited. Well, here's the problem.
When you drag our politicians on our side, When you
drag our leaders on our side down that trail where
(04:22):
that's what you want them to talk about all day,
every day, you elevate the issue of abortion, and you
help the Democrats win.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Michael, that's not true. Everybody's against abortion. Everybody. You know.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
We lose sixty eight percent of unmarried women, one percent
of whom have ever or will ever have an abortion.
But they want the right to have an abortion. And
the fact that you're taking away the right means they
will vote for the president who will leave the border
wide open, destroy our economy, and destroy our country.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
I'm not gonna let that happen. I'm gonna keep my
eye on the prize.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
For those of you who are excited about football season,
I'll use a football analogy. There's fifteen seconds left in
the game, and you're on the three yard line, and
the play that gets your offense you're down by four points.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
You gotta score a touchdown.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
The play that gets your offense down to the three,
let's make it to one yard line. On the play
that your guy catches a pass and he goes down
and he's tackled from behind and gets to the one.
We've got time for one, maybe two plays left. And
one of your players, as he's coming up on the
(05:49):
scene where the guy's just been tackled, he thinks another
player on the other team took a cheap shot.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So he runs up after all the play has and
he drills that guy.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
In front of God, the cameras, and the referees. The
ref never moves his head, puts his hand down on
his hip, flings the yellow flag up in the air.
Fifteen yards Instead of two plays or at least one,
depending on the time, from the one yard line, we're
(06:24):
going back to the sixteen.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Now. He may say, yeah, but that was a cheap shot. Yeah,
but we want to win.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
What he just did out of an abundance of love
for his teammate, is he just probably cost our team
the game. He certainly made it that much harder for
us to score, because now we're going back fifteen yards
and that's a problem. We need to be focused right
(06:57):
now on winning this election. Had a guy right to
me yesterday and he said, I'm not voting for Trump
anymore because I was for Trump because he's against abortion.
But he said he would not support a national ban
on abortion. I said, by all means, vote for Kamala,
(07:25):
so more abortions will be conducted. Just don't ever email
me again. And to ensure that you don't un blocking
you because you're an idiot. You're just a kind of idiot.
That is the reason we lose elections. Unless Donald Trump
agrees with you on one hundred percent of issues one
hundred percent of the time, you're not going to vote
(07:47):
for him, And that's why we lose elections. There it is,
there's a lot of people that won't admit to it.
There's a lot of people that need a little personal attention.
They don't want Trump to agree with them ninety nine
percent of the time on ninety nine percent of the issues.
(08:10):
They like the idea that if unless you're with me
on one hundred percent of issues one hundred percent of
the time, there are fewer Democrats, and there are Republicans.
There are a few people that want four more years
of the nonsense we've had than want four years of
what we had before through Trump. I don't doubt that
those numbers are very clear, but we got a lot
(08:32):
of people that He didn't say he's in favor of abortion.
He said he wants to leave it to the states,
and that's what the Supreme Court did. He doesn't want
to lose people's vote who say, well, I want it
to be legal in a state that wants to have it.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
He wants to win and still be true to his principles.
This guy over here says, no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Unless you're willing to do the thing that will cost
you the election, you lose my vote doing it big.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
On The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
It was on this day in two thousand and five
that Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the US Gulf Coast
from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. The death toll one
eight hundred and thirty six people.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
That's incredible.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
That is, if you had asked me the number before
I looked it up, I would have guessed ten percent
of that. Not that I didn't know it at the time.
Just time obscures things. I remember watching on TV. Now
(09:45):
twelve years later, Houston would be hit with Hurricane Harvey.
Our house would be flooded, my kids, my wife and kids.
I was in Baton Rouge at the time giving a
speech and I couldn't get back to them, and they
had to wade out in very, very dangerous, chest deep water.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
It was treacherous.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Have a photo of them being rescued, and we treasure
that photo.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
It's on the wall in our.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Dining room because we are reminded of how fast things
can be gone, and what matters is this precious life
and your precious family. When we got back to the
house after the water had finally receded. All of my
(10:36):
kids were born in Ethiopia, my wife is from India.
All of our things from our childhoods. We had built
these shelves down at floor level because we were fifty
eight feet above above sea level, above the bayou that
we lived up above. There was no chance we were
(10:56):
ever going to have a problem. And it came up
sixty one feet. So you do the math, and so
all of my children's Ethiopian documents, which can't be recreated handwritten,
they're not computerized. Gone all of their photos, all of
my wife's photos, all of my photos, which I don't
(11:16):
care about. And my wife was so my wife's not
an emotional person, but she was kind of biting her lips.
She's not a crier, and she said, this is really bad,
and this is really bad. We've lost some important things.
And my kids said, Mama, our home is where we
(11:38):
are and that can't be affected. And I'll tell you what, ma'am,
out of the mouth of babes the wisdom, because that's
what we've always taught them. What is important in life
cannot be purchased on the shelf of a store. And
at the moment they most needed to apply that they did.
(12:00):
Made me very proud. We identify Katrina with New Orleans,
and there are a lot of reasons for that, and
they're applicable to the current political campaign. But the devastation
went all the way to the Florida Panhandle. There were
lots and lots of people in Mississippi whose lives were
(12:24):
destroyed out of that and many of whose lives were taken.
But New Orleans became in two thousand and five as
the Democrats were preparing for the two thousand and eight campaign,
New Orleans became a way to bash Republicans. They had
lost to Bush in two thousand, they had lost to
Bush in four They needed something new, They needed to
(12:49):
tarnish the Republican brand. So you saw this sadness, you
saw the devastation, You saw the fai of the government
in New Orleans. What you have to do is you
have to make people who went from sad to angry mad.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
At George W. Bush.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yes, and that is exactly what they brilliantly did. It
wasn't George Bush's fault. Oh, he flew over. This is
like what they say about Trump today. He flew over
because when Brownie told him we can have all these people,
(13:40):
the president moves in a caravan. He did not want
to be a distraction. Of course, he would have stopped.
You ever seen him on the aircraft carrier with his
leather jacket on and the mission class. He would have
looked like a king coming in there to save these people.
That's a great visual. It would have been blown up
and put on the wall as Presidential library. He didn't
(14:01):
not stop because he didn't like black people.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
What kind of.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Nonsense was passed off in this country. That's the dumbest
thing ever. And who was passing off that nonsense, Well,
let's say Brian Williams, who in the middle of it
all was lying about his heroics hotel room.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
When you look out of your hotel room window in
the French Quarter and watch a man float by, face down,
when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Ace,
Indonesia and swore to yourself that you would never see
in your country. I beat that storm. I was there
before it arrived. I wrote it out with people who
(14:46):
later died in the super Dome.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Except that turned out to be a lie.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
None of what these people say is true.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Once you you realize they're all chronic, pathological liars, you
stop getting fooled.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Guess what, that's not a vaccine, Guess what.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Injecting this poison into your body is not going to
keep you from getting this virus that they have frightened
you of.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
It's all lies. The mask doesn't stop the spread.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
You can't fathom how microscopic the virus is and how
the aerosol of your speech spews it into the environment.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Because you can't see it.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
The mask doesn't matter, and there you are screaming it people,
Why why I'm not even if they can't breathe.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Stay six fan away. They made it all up. These
people are all lying.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
They're never stop lying, they never stop lying, and virtue signaling.
They use the poor black people to virtue signal.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
You don't like the poor black people, only we do.
Wait what yeah, Wolf Blitzer.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
You simply get chills every time you see these poor
individuals because Jack Jefferty just pointed out so tragically, so
many of these people, almost all of them, and that
we see are so poor, and they are so black.
And this is going to raise lots of questions for
people who are watching this story unfold.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
How many degrees of blackness are they? They're so poor
and so black. Does that mean if you were to
put the pantone colors, you'd have to move two pages
to the right because there's no cream in the coffee?
(16:54):
What exactly does this mean? Does this mean more African
and less creole, or does it mean there's so much.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
More poor or what exactly?
Speaker 3 (17:14):
I don't know that I have ever heard out of
the mouth of a member of the media a deeper
insight into his mindset. There are degrees of blackness and
them them over there. Bush has wronged the poorest and
(17:35):
the blackest among them.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I mean they don't have jobs. They're too poor and
black even for welfare. They're so poor and black? What
are you doing? What are you saying? Once he was
out there, he couldn't go back. Those people don't matter
(18:00):
to him. They're not human to him. He has no
connection to them. They are tools to use to They
are cudgels to bludgeon. George W. Bush and an al
Donald Trump show the Trump I knew when he ran
for president in twenty sixteen. This was not the Trump
(18:22):
most Americans know today. Trump was a pop culture phenomenon.
If you were a prominent black celebrity in this country,
you had Trump's cell phone, You'd been on Trump's helicopter,
You'd flown on his jets, You'd been to his parties.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
This was not the Trump of mar Lago. This was
the Trump of New York.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
This was the Trump of awards shows and TV shows
and movie cameos. This was the Trump, the charming Trump,
the pat on the back, the handwritten note. That's who
Trump was to these people, and he was beloved Whoopie
Goldberg loved him, Oprah loved him. People loved him. Major
(19:06):
influencers and celebrities loved him and was it selfish for them. Absolutely,
when your light is on and it's shining brightly, other
celebrities want to be around it because because it helps them.
But don't tell me that Trump is a monster. Don't
(19:30):
tell me how awful and terrible he is when I
watched him for the last fifty years be the toast
of Hollywood, media, music, New York.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Politics.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Don't tell me that because it's not true. You can
say Trump's a good guy he's always has been, or
you can say Trump's a bad guy and always has been.
But you can't tell me Trump's a monts for today.
When whoever is saying that, I can say, well, here's
you and him. Here's you flying on his plane. Here's
(20:10):
you saying he was great. Here's you Oprah saying you
wanted to be his vice presidential running mate. Here's you
we'll be talking about he's your favorite Republican. Here's you
Morning Joe and your mistress Mikah sitting on his lap
trying to make him her sugar daddy because she's got
a crush on him, and you're begging him to come
(20:30):
on the air. You people are frogs and hypocrites, not him.
He never changed. But what Trump is doing right now,
and this is what I want to highlight. What Trump
is doing is getting back to his roots from the
eighties and appealing to people on a very personal level,
(20:58):
a charismatic connection that he had gotten away from. Trump
had become a creature of Fox News and conservative talk.
But he's won that audience and they're not going anywhere.
They're going to be there tomorrow. He's got to go
(21:21):
back and he knows it because unlike George W. Bush
or Romney, or McCain or Bob Dole, Donald Trump connects.
He connects with women, with blacks, with young people, with athletes,
(21:42):
with artists. What made me think of this is today
is Michael Jackson's birthday. He would have been sixty six
years old. He's born on this day in Gary, Indiana.
And I want you to listen to Donald Trump talking here,
and he's not bluffing or blustering or making up some
(22:03):
This is true.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
What he's saying is true. And let this sink in
for a moment. What's your favorite kind of music. What
music do well. I think Elton John is great.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
I think the Stones are great, the Beatles.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
I love.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
Michael Jackson was actually a very good friend of mine.
I knew Michael Jackson very well. Lived in Trump Tower
for a long period of time. Would go down Tomorrowlago.
He actually got married, you know, Lisa Marie Presley, the
whole big deal at mari A Lago.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
They were in the tower, and I will tell you
he was up there one week with her and he
never came down.
Speaker 6 (22:28):
So I don't know what was going on, but they
got along. You know a lot of people say, oh,
they didn't. Really, they were up there for a week.
They never ever came And I say, where the hell
is Michael. I've noticed it.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
But the night before Lisa Marie Presley died, which she
died on a Sunday, was a Saturday night, and my
wife and I and Eddie Martini, the guy that got
me into radio, who's still a dear friend of mine,
and his wife Liz. The four of us were at
the table next to Trump. It's Saturday night and he's
having dinner with Lisa Marie Presley and Priscilla, and he's
(23:03):
got an iPad on which he programs the music, and
I had learned that from the last time we'd been there,
and the music was all Elvis, Michael Jackson, David Bowie
and Phantom of the Opera. That was He just kept
going back and forth and you could tell he was saying.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Oh, hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, you know what
that was that song? And that's who he is.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
I mean that that's the person he is when people
because a lot of people vote for who they like,
for not who they like, not policy, I'm hoping people
can see who he is as a person because for
better or worse, they're going to vote for that is on.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well done.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
So this is the Michael Verry Show. Eight years ago today,
the great Gene Wilder died. Fantastic actor, just wonderful. He
did it all.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
He was a stage actor, he was a screen actor,
he was a screenwriter, he was a director, he was
an author.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
He made us laugh. That's a skill.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
We were debating which scene to play to represent his
body of work, and we decided it had to be
Young Frankenstein.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Or Blazing Saddles.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
And you could recite your favorite Gene Wilder line or
your favorite Blazing Saddles line for that matter, on your
own right now and hopefully that puts a smile on
your face to do. But we chose the Waco kid
explaining why he retired, and we of course had to
censor it.
Speaker 8 (24:38):
Oh well, it got sell that every Prairie punk who
thought he could shoot a gun would ride into.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Town to try out the Waco kid.
Speaker 8 (24:46):
I must have killed more men, and Cecil B. Demill
got pretty gritty. I started to hear the word draw
in my sleep. And one day I was just walking
down the street and I heard a voice be me say,
reached for it, mister, And I spun around and there
I was, face to face with a six year old kid. Well,
(25:11):
I just threw my guns down walked away.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Little dud shot me in the apse.
Speaker 8 (25:19):
So I limped to the nearest saloon, crawl inside a
whiskey bottle, and I've been there ever since.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
You know, so much of what Blazing Saddles lampooned and
ridiculed was the discomfort people have over race. It's the
great problem in this country. I had somebody tell me
the other day that they were uncomfortable telling people they
(25:58):
were a listener to our show because they were just
really sick and tired of DEI being crammed down their throat,
to which I responded, if you can't like what you
like and say so publicly because you fear the politics
(26:18):
and policies of the left, then you've been censored, or worse,
you're censoring yourself.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
They've won. Well, I just really know.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Let me explain. The moment that you now censor yourself
is the moment they've won. This is like the people
who say I'm not going to vote. I'm so sick
of how bad things are in this country that I'm
not going to vote.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
What do you mean?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
The border's wide open? Men in the girls locker room.
Trump should be the president. Kamala Harris is horrible. I'm
so mad. I'm not gonna vote because they're gonna cheap.
So you do everything possible to ensure that they're gonna cheat.
I mean that they're gonna win so much so that
(27:20):
they don't even.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Need to cheat.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
We don't talk a lot about Texas as much as
I do on the morning show, and certainly not Houston,
which is in Harris County, But this one I had
to share with you. This is the chief equity Officer
Aralia Johnson of Harris County talking to the Harris County
Community Flood Resilience Task Force about the new definition of equity.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Folks, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
If you don't stand up to this and you don't
fight back, this gets worse. I know a lot of
you think, well, I'll just take my beat and get
it over with. No.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
No, no, no no no no no no no.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
They're not in complete control of our economy and our
schools and our government yet, but if you.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Keep letting them, they will be.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
You have got to fight back on this, no matter
that they call you nasty names.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
This is doctor Arelia Johnson.
Speaker 10 (28:21):
My pronouns is she hers, and I am the chief
Equity Officer for Harris County. The Commission of Court declared
racism and sexism as a public health crisis. We have
these huge aspirational goals as if we can under two
hundred and fifty years worth worth of institutionalization of disparity.
Sometimes our implicit biases are unconscious biases seep into interactions.
Speaker 9 (28:47):
Is not because we intend on being harmful.
Speaker 10 (28:50):
Sometimes we are completely unaware that we are being harmful.
And so this is something that we really have to
work on, and it has to be very intentional, unconscious
and so socially, the intelligent equity is locational or context specific,
which means that you have to recognize where you are,
your generational context, your historical context, your social context, your
(29:11):
political context, and recognize it and recognize it. Sometimes we
assume things to the detriment of progress. Right, So procedural
equity is going to be different because that's policies, that's practices, right.
Speaker 9 (29:22):
But if we can't get to those policies unless we're.
Speaker 10 (29:25):
Looking at the structures that are put into place, Like
racism is a structure, right, Sexism is a part of
the structure. Patriarchy and supremacy are part of these structures.
There are some ways where equity is now getting woven
into sort of like the some metrics. After talking to
doctor Peterson and some of our other department heads, like
(29:47):
pollution control, engineering, the toll road, and then looking at
a number of instruments and indicators, some of which have
come from the Justice forty initiative, been able to create
this tool called an Equity Action Tracker. There are some
other things that we're working on, an equity maturation model,
(30:08):
to determine where we are in the county as well
as an equity toolkit.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
What there do you have or have you found about
flood risk and Harrison County.
Speaker 10 (30:18):
That is a wonderful question, and to be honest with you, sir,
I do not have.
Speaker 9 (30:22):
Any data or flood control at this time.
Speaker 10 (30:25):
My office is two weeks old, My position is about
four months.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
In what ways is the Office of Human and Civil
Rights hoping equities show up in flood related things?
Speaker 10 (30:36):
I really don't know what my big overarching goals for
flood control is going to be.
Speaker 9 (30:42):
Yet we have this myth.
Speaker 10 (30:45):
That we need to bunk about what equity means, Like,
it's not this, It's not any of the miscommunication or
the misdirection that is happening in the media. I would
think one question that was asked to me some time
ago actually during the directro was how do we approach
sovereign citizens like you know, doctor Johnson. Do we just
kind of, you know, leave them to their own resources?
Speaker 9 (31:07):
And I was like, absolutely not.
Speaker 10 (31:08):
Just because they look at things from an ideologically different standpoint,
that does not mean that we do not we do
not reach out to them or provide them accessibility to opportunity.
How do we then and view these strategies that humanize
people that we wouldn't necessarily humanize. Our office is working
on equity focused centered trainings. Let me take a step
(31:33):
back first and foremost, we're doing an equity training needs assessment,
or we have some understanding about what foundational equity trainings
that we need to ve test and validate within the.
Speaker 9 (31:42):
Next thirty six months.
Speaker 10 (31:43):
Our goal is to really create this shared language, a
shared analytical framework, making sure we have institutionalized the equity definition,
the equity model as much as possible, that we are
shift through the way we look at things so where
equity is now a second nature that we are serving.
Speaker 9 (32:03):
In nineteen thousand, ye
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