Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time, time, time, time, Luck and Load.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The Michael Verie Show is on the air. 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. Now, a number of
people who are pro life are very pro life. They
(00:56):
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. But he could
be really, really, really against abortion, And there were people
who gravitated that. I like Mike Pence because if nothing else,
(01:21):
he's really against abortion. Okay, what about on the border
or these six hundred and nineteen other issues. Well, I
don't really know. I just know that first and foremost
he's very much against abortion.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Okay, But.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
All right, Well, but but there are gonna 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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
The face, and have the TVs the networks.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Take a photo of one screaming at the other, and
they both get to be the homepage of the station
to argue 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
(04:20):
trail where 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 4 (04:32):
Michael, that's not true. Everybody's against abortion. Everybody.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
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 4 (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 4 (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. So
he runs up after all the play has and he
drills that guy in front of God, the cameras, and
the referees. The ref never moves his head, puts his
(06:10):
hand down on his hip, flings the yellow flag up
in the air.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Fifteen yards.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Instead of two plays or at least one, depending on
the time, from the one yard line, we're going back
to the sixteen.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
And that's a problem.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
We need to be focused right 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
(07:15):
not support a national ban on abortion. I said, by
all means, vote for Kamala, 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
(07:37):
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 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
(07:59):
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. 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
(08:21):
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 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
(08:43):
be legal in a state that wants to have it.
He wants to win and still be true to his principles.
This guy over here says, no, no, no, no. Unless you're
willing to do the thing that will cost you the election,
you lose my vote.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Doing is big 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 4 (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 4 (10:02):
It was treacherous.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I have a photo of them being rescued, and we
treasure that photo.
Speaker 4 (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.
This is really bad. We've lost some important things. And
my kids said, Mama, our home is where we are
(11:40):
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 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 fa of the government
in New Orleans. What you have to do is you
have to make people who went from sad to angry
(13:10):
mad at George W. Bush. 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
(13:38):
we can have all these people, 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
(13:58):
wall of as Presidential Library. He didn't not stop because
he didn't like black people. What kind of nonsense was
passed off in this country. That's the dumbest thing ever.
And who was passing off that nonsense? Well, let's see
Brian Williams, who in the middle of it all was
(14:19):
lying about his heroics hotel room.
Speaker 1 (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.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
I beat that storm. I was there before it arrived.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I wrote it out with people who later died in
the super Dome.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Except that turned out to be a lie.
Speaker 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 I'm not, why I'm out?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Even if they can't breathe, stay six fan away.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
They made it all up. These people are all lying.
They're never stop lying, they never stop lying, and virtue signaling.
They use the poor black people to virtue signal. You
don't like the poor black people, only we do. Wait what, yeah,
(16:11):
Wolf Blitzer, you.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
And so black.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
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? What exactly does this mean?
Does this mean more African and less creole, or does
(17:08):
it mean there's so much.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
There are degrees of blackness and them them over there.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Bush has wronged the poorest and the blackest among them.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
George W. Bush and an al dominic Trump show.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
The Trump I knew when he ran for president in
twenty sixteen. This was not the Trump 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 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
And he was beloved.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Whoope Goldberg loved him, Oprah loved him. People loved him.
Major 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
(19:21):
because it helps them. But don't tell me that Trump
is a monster. Don't 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 4 (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 mont 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
mourning Joe and your mistress Mika sitting on his lap
trying to make him.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Her sugar daddy.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Because she's got a crush on him, and you're begging
him to come 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
(20:48):
his roots from the eighties and appealing to people on
a very personal level, a charismatic connection that he had
gotten away from. Trump had become a creature of Fox
(21:08):
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 back and he knows it because
unlike George W. Bush or Romney, or McCain or Bob Dole,
(21:31):
Donald Trump connects. He connects with women, with blacks, with
young people, with athletes, 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
(21:52):
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 This is true.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
What he's saying is true. And let this sink in
for a moment. What's your favorite kind of music, what
a music do well? I think Elton John is great.
I think the Stones are great, the Beatles. I love.
Michael Jackson was actually a very good friend of mine.
I knew Michael Jackson very well.
Speaker 5 (22:17):
Lived in Trump Tower for a long period of time,
would go down to Marrow Lago.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
He actually got married, you.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Know, Lisa Marie Presley, the whole big deal at mari
A Lago.
Speaker 4 (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. So I don't know what was going on,
but they got along.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
You know a lot of people say, oh, they didn't really,
they were up there for a week.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
They never ever came And I said, where the hell
is Michael, I've noticed what.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
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 got
(23:03):
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 4 (23:19):
Oh yeah, 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'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
re worse, they're going to vote for that R is
on who will done.
Speaker 6 (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 (23:55):
He was a stage actor, he was a screen actor,
he was a screenwriter, he was a director, he was
an author.
Speaker 4 (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 or Blazing Saddles. And you can recite your
favorite Gene Wilder line or your favorite Blazing Saddles line
for that matter, on your own right now and hopefully
(24:32):
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 4 (24:38):
Oh well, it got sell it.
Speaker 7 (24:40):
Every Prairie punk who thought he could shoot a gun
would ride into town to try out the Waco kid.
I must have killed more men, and Cecil B. DeMille
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 behind.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Me say, reach for it, mister.
Speaker 7 (25:03):
And I spent around and there I was, face to
face with a six year old kid.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Well, I just.
Speaker 7 (25:12):
Threw my guns down walked away.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Little dud shot me in the air.
Speaker 7 (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 4 (26:30):
They've won.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Well, I just really know. 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
(26:53):
in this country that I'm not going to vote.
Speaker 4 (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 cheat.
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 need to cheat. 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
(27:44):
about the new definition of equity.
Speaker 4 (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 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
But if you 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 4 (28:19):
This is doctor Arelia Johnson.
Speaker 8 (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 undo two
hundred and fifty years wor worth of institutionalization of disparity.
Sometimes our implicit biases are unconscious biases seep into interactions.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Is not because we intend on being harmful.
Speaker 8 (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.
Speaker 7 (29:22):
Right.
Speaker 8 (29:22):
But if we can't get to those policies unless we're
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
(29:43):
doctor Peterson and some of our other department heads, like
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, a been able to
create this tool called an Equity Action Tracker. There are
(30:05):
some other things that we're working on an equity maturation
model 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 8 (30:18):
That is a wonderful question, and to be honest with you, sir,
I do not have any data or flood control at
this time. My office is two weeks old, My position
is about four months old.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
In what ways is the Office of Human and Civil
Rights hoping equities show up in flood related things?
Speaker 8 (30:36):
I really don't know what my big overarching goals for
flood control is going to be.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Yet we have this myth that we need to bunk
about what equity means.
Speaker 8 (30:47):
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?
And I was like, absolutely not. Just because they look
(31:10):
at things from an ideolgically 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 back first
(31:34):
and foremost, we're doing an equity training needs assessment, or
we have some understanding about what foundational equity trainings that
we need to that test and validate within the next
thirty six months. 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.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
That we are shifting the way.
Speaker 8 (32:00):
We look at things so where equity is now a
second nature that we are serving.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
In nineteen thousand
It's that time, time, time, time, Luck and Load.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The Michael Verie Show is on the air. 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. Now, a number of
people who are pro life are very pro life. They
(00:56):
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. But he could
be really, really, really against abortion, And there were people
who gravitated that. I like Mike Pence because if nothing else,
(01:21):
he's really against abortion. Okay, what about on the border
or these six hundred and nineteen other issues. Well, I
don't really know. I just know that first and foremost
he's very much against abortion.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Okay, But.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
All right, Well, but but there are gonna 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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
The face, and have the TVs the networks.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Take a photo of one screaming at the other, and
they both get to be the homepage of the station
to argue 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
(04:20):
trail where 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 4 (04:32):
Michael, that's not true. Everybody's against abortion. Everybody.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
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 4 (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 4 (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. So
he runs up after all the play has and he
drills that guy in front of God, the cameras, and
the referees. The ref never moves his head, puts his
(06:10):
hand down on his hip, flings the yellow flag up
in the air.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Fifteen yards.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Instead of two plays or at least one, depending on
the time, from the one yard line, we're going back
to the sixteen.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
And that's a problem.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
We need to be focused right 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
(07:15):
not support a national ban on abortion. I said, by
all means, vote for Kamala, 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
(07:37):
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 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
(07:59):
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. 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
(08:21):
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 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
(08:43):
be legal in a state that wants to have it.
He wants to win and still be true to his principles.
This guy over here says, no, no, no, no. Unless you're
willing to do the thing that will cost you the election,
you lose my vote.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
Doing is big 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 4 (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 4 (10:02):
It was treacherous.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I have a photo of them being rescued, and we
treasure that photo.
Speaker 4 (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.
This is really bad. We've lost some important things. And
my kids said, Mama, our home is where we are
(11:40):
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 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 fa of the government
in New Orleans. What you have to do is you
have to make people who went from sad to angry
(13:10):
mad at George W. Bush. 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
(13:38):
we can have all these people, 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
(13:58):
wall of as Presidential Library. He didn't not stop because
he didn't like black people. What kind of nonsense was
passed off in this country. That's the dumbest thing ever.
And who was passing off that nonsense? Well, let's see
Brian Williams, who in the middle of it all was
(14:19):
lying about his heroics hotel room.
Speaker 1 (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.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
I beat that storm. I was there before it arrived.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
I wrote it out with people who later died in
the super Dome.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Except that turned out to be a lie.
Speaker 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 4 (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 I'm not, why I'm out?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Even if they can't breathe, stay six fan away.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
They made it all up. These people are all lying.
They're never stop lying, they never stop lying, and virtue signaling.
They use the poor black people to virtue signal. You
don't like the poor black people, only we do. Wait what, yeah,
(16:11):
Wolf Blitzer, you.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
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.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
And so black.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
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? What exactly does this mean?
Does this mean more African and less creole, or does
(17:08):
it mean there's so much.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
There are degrees of blackness and them them over there.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Bush has wronged the poorest and the blackest among them.
Speaker 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
George W. Bush and an al dominic Trump show.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
The Trump I knew when he ran for president in
twenty sixteen. This was not the Trump 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 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
And he was beloved.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Whoope Goldberg loved him, Oprah loved him. People loved him.
Major 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
(19:21):
because it helps them. But don't tell me that Trump
is a monster. Don't 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 4 (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 mont 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
mourning Joe and your mistress Mika sitting on his lap
trying to make him.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Her sugar daddy.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Because she's got a crush on him, and you're begging
him to come 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
(20:48):
his roots from the eighties and appealing to people on
a very personal level, a charismatic connection that he had
gotten away from. Trump had become a creature of Fox
(21:08):
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 back and he knows it because
unlike George W. Bush or Romney, or McCain or Bob Dole,
(21:31):
Donald Trump connects. He connects with women, with blacks, with
young people, with athletes, 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
(21:52):
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 This is true.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
What he's saying is true. And let this sink in
for a moment. What's your favorite kind of music, what
a music do well? I think Elton John is great.
I think the Stones are great, the Beatles. I love.
Michael Jackson was actually a very good friend of mine.
I knew Michael Jackson very well.
Speaker 5 (22:17):
Lived in Trump Tower for a long period of time,
would go down to Marrow Lago.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
He actually got married, you.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Know, Lisa Marie Presley, the whole big deal at mari
A Lago.
Speaker 4 (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. So I don't know what was going on,
but they got along.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
You know a lot of people say, oh, they didn't really,
they were up there for a week.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
They never ever came And I said, where the hell
is Michael, I've noticed what.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
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 got
(23:03):
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 4 (23:19):
Oh yeah, 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'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
re worse, they're going to vote for that R is
on who will done.
Speaker 6 (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 (23:55):
He was a stage actor, he was a screen actor,
he was a screenwriter, he was a director, he was
an author.
Speaker 4 (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 or Blazing Saddles. And you can recite your
favorite Gene Wilder line or your favorite Blazing Saddles line
for that matter, on your own right now and hopefully
(24:32):
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 4 (24:38):
Oh well, it got sell it.
Speaker 7 (24:40):
Every Prairie punk who thought he could shoot a gun
would ride into town to try out the Waco kid.
I must have killed more men, and Cecil B. DeMille
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 behind.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Me say, reach for it, mister.
Speaker 7 (25:03):
And I spent around and there I was, face to
face with a six year old kid.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Well, I just.
Speaker 7 (25:12):
Threw my guns down walked away.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Little dud shot me in the air.
Speaker 7 (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 4 (26:30):
They've won.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Well, I just really know. 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
(26:53):
in this country that I'm not going to vote.
Speaker 4 (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 cheat.
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 need to cheat. 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
(27:44):
about the new definition of equity.
Speaker 4 (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 4 (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.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
But if you 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 4 (28:19):
This is doctor Arelia Johnson.
Speaker 8 (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 undo two
hundred and fifty years wor worth of institutionalization of disparity.
Sometimes our implicit biases are unconscious biases seep into interactions.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Is not because we intend on being harmful.
Speaker 8 (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.
Speaker 7 (29:22):
Right.
Speaker 8 (29:22):
But if we can't get to those policies unless we're
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
(29:43):
doctor Peterson and some of our other department heads, like
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, a been able to
create this tool called an Equity Action Tracker. There are
(30:05):
some other things that we're working on an equity maturation
model 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 8 (30:18):
That is a wonderful question, and to be honest with you, sir,
I do not have any data or flood control at
this time. My office is two weeks old, My position
is about four months old.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
In what ways is the Office of Human and Civil
Rights hoping equities show up in flood related things?
Speaker 8 (30:36):
I really don't know what my big overarching goals for
flood control is going to be.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Yet we have this myth that we need to bunk
about what equity means.
Speaker 8 (30:47):
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?
And I was like, absolutely not. Just because they look
(31:10):
at things from an ideolgically 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 back first
(31:34):
and foremost, we're doing an equity training needs assessment, or
we have some understanding about what foundational equity trainings that
we need to that test and validate within the next
thirty six months. 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.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
That we are shifting the way.
Speaker 8 (32:00):
We look at things so where equity is now a
second nature that we are serving.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
In nineteen thousand
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