'The Five' react to Biden's 'pathetic' address on crime surge

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'The Five' react to Biden's 'pathetic' address on crime surge

Fox News host Dana Perino says the president's speech did not 'meet the moment' on 'The Five'

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," June 23, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST (on camera): So that was a very tired President Joe Biden talking about his plan to reduce the rise in homicides and shootings across the country. Basic component of the plan, more money for, quote, unquote, "programs that work" and a laser focus on cracking down on illegal gun trafficking.

I don't personally believe that that kind of crackdown is going to do a dent in any of the violence that we are seeing here in this country but I noticed a few things, Dagen, that he did not mention. He did not mention gangs, he did not mention the drug trade, the importance of fatherhood, longer sentences to keep these people off the streets and proactive policing which actually would reduce these shootings.

DAGEN MCDOWELL, FOX NEWS BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: He didn't talk about the root causes of the spike in crime, he said it's not a red or blue issue. Yes, it is. It's a blue issue because the death and destruction that we are witnessing in major cities across the country is designed by Democrats.

Joe Biden needs to stand up there, rather than talking about the gun lobby and going after federal firearms license dealers, he needs to say I stand up for the police, I stand up for the victims, I stand up for the terrorized citizens and residents of all of these cities and we will go after the criminals.

Let me quote Joe Biden from 1994. "Lock the SOBs up." But instead, he and Kamala Harris are just trying to paper over the carnage, this was the equivalent of some old kook coming into office and walking around with a clipboard trying to act like he's doing something and he's not getting anything done.

One final thought, in addition to the defund, demoralize and defang the police movement by all of the liberals, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stand up for bail reform, it is part of their policies. So, no bail, get out of jail if you are arrested, let me go back and look at.

In the original bail reform bill here in New York City which is one of the reasons that crime has spiked, these are some of the people that Democrats think it should go back out on the street. Someone promoting or possessing a sexual performance by a child, reckless assault of a child, no jail. Manslaughter, hate crimes, and arson. That's who the Democrats are and we saw none of the ability of Joe Biden to talk down what's happening in this country.

WATTERS: Geraldo, your reaction to this address, as we saw and have been reporting murders up 800 percent in the city of Portland, 50 people shot over the weekend in Chicago, shootings up 75 percent in New York City. The president did not seem fully engaged and as compassionate as you would expect someone to be in that position.

GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT-AT-LARGE: Well, compassionate side, where was the compassion. I mean, that speech was laid as the program that he proposes.

WATTERS: Yes.

RIVERA: What is he proposing? Summer programs for endangered youth and stopping the illegal sale of firearms. What about the fact that you mention, Chicago, eight people killed, 54 shot last weekend, that's an emergency? That's something that needs action right now, take that 600, or rather $360 billion that he proposed spending on these programs, use that to have stop and frisk in Chicago, let's have stop and frisk with federal assistance in Chicago, it's constitutional.

Let's have roadblocks, let's go after these gangs as organized criminal enterprises as RICO statutes. You've got to make this the emergency that it is. That was very, very sleepy. And you know I like the guy but that was pathetic and was not in any way -- it seems to me totally reactive to the bad press say you scramble to get something, you know, something done that could be much more emergent, it's much more, you know, serious than was portrayed by the president of the United States there.

WATTERS: And Dana, very focused on guns but not the people that are shooting the guns. Do you think that going after illegal gun traffickers here and there is going to do anything to stop the bloody summer that everybody expects?

DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: I think it could help a little bit, but to Geraldo's point, but President Biden just did not meet the moment.

WATTERS: Right.

PERINO: And one of the things I thought was this community leaders in Chicago that are trying so hard. Imagine that you're them and you're watching that, thinking well that's not going to do a darn thing to help us. And let's remember why is President Biden doing this speech today anyway? Because like on the border, with Kamala Harris not going on Friday, they -- that's why where they are the most week (Ph) when it comes to their politics.

So, they know they are taking on water on that issue. So, they said we better slap something together really quick and get the attorney general over here, right? Too long speech for the president and have him read it as if he was reading back somebody's fast food order --

WATTERS: Yes.

PERINO: -- in a drive through and that's why I say this doesn't meet the moment. They -- the Democrats should consider Fox, their early warnings system for problem.

WATTERS: Yes.

PERINO: This is not something like, guys, anyone over here. So, I want to take a look at this time. Last time is, it's interesting that he would say that the American rescue plan had money in there and was aimed at reducing crime. Well, that bill has been out there for three months. All we've seen is crime increase. And I know it takes a while to get money out there but money is not necessarily going to solve this problem.

The last thing I would say is that he says that you -- the cities, states, you are welcome to use extra COVID relief money to pay for police. So, now are they for funding the police, but with money that was supposed to go for COVID. And if we have that much money sloshing around out there, perhaps we didn't need that much stimulus in the first place.

WATTERS: Greg, last word from you.

GUTFELD: Yes, the two points you made. So, they're proposing more police, meaning we are back exactly where we were before the media and the Democrats had hijacked the George Floyd tragedy to reduce the police, right? So, I think now we're all supposed to pretend that this like year- long delusion that they all shared suddenly just no longer exists. And we can now return back to the good old days when we trusted our police and we needed our police.

Now, they're getting around to this. And they're getting around to this because they think that they can put it on guns rather than on themselves, right? So, we were the -- we were the canaries in the crime mine. We were pleading for help through this whole thing. And while we were pleading for it, the folks over at CNN were laughing at us, right? They were -- and they were purposely turning their cameras away from the crime. And you could not expose what was going on because if you exposed that, you could show how the media was culpable in all of this.

All of the people -- like, the best folks -- the best spokesman for the NRA is that guy, Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, the media. There were five million new legal gun owners last year and it wasn't because of Wayne LaPierre, right? Have you seen him? No.

PERINO: It's eight million.

GUTFELD: Yes, it's eight million now? No, it was Jeff Zucker, it was Kamala Harris, it was Beto O'Rourke and everyone else who simultaneously excuse the mob violence while denigrating the fears of a population. I had said this before. I'm now more pro-gun than I ever have been in my life. And I will continue to be -- I want everybody to own a gun. Every law-abiding person should have a gun because in this crime spike, the guns were there before and the guns were there after.

So, that variable doesn't play into the crime wave. It's not about gun violence at all. It's about violence and how we live in a culture, a climate change. We've had a change in our climate, where we now regard law and order as the bad guy and the bad guy as the victim. That's where we are. And if we don't change that thinking, we're screwed, and I almost use a different word.

MCDOWELL: Can I --

WATTERS: Go ahead.

MCDOWELL: I just want to add one thing. I know I already ran my mouth way too much. But the why now is Eric Adams, former police officer, a man who promised to carry a gun if he's the mayor of New York City. He's very close to winning the Democratic nomination. And you know who voted for him? Black and Latino voters in the outer boroughs, not the elites, not the snots in Manhattan. This party is turning against them this and they know it.

RIVERA: This is the civil rights issue of our time. Murder has become the leading cause of death among black men up to the age of 44. It's -- if this is not an emergency, what the hell is?

GUTFELD: Yes, but also, you have to remember, the burned and destructed building in Kenosha and in Minneapolis, that wasn't caused by guns, by bad people, as I would quote Tyrus. It's not -- we don't need gun control. We need bad people control.

WATTERS: And the White House seems totally out of touch with what's going on in the streets. Up next, Britney Spears breaking her silence right now in the battle to control her life and massive fortune.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PERINO: Britney Spears is speaking out right now in court as she tries to get back control of her life. The pop star saying she wants her conservatorship to end immediately and alleges her father loved to control. He was held over her. Jonathan Hunt is outside the courthouse right now. And Jonathan, catch us up.

JONATHAN HUNT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Dana, Britney Spears has been speaking for more than 20 minutes now and she seems to have a lot more to say. It is safe to say that she is very, very angry indeed about what has happened over the last 13 years of this conservatorship, and she wants it ended.

She started off by saying to the judge, I have a lot to say, so bear with me there. She then talked about finishing a tour in 2018 and going into rehearsals for her Vegas show. She says I wasn't good, I was great. And then she says -- she said no to one dance move. And at that point, her management and others involved in the conservatorship went behind closed doors, and then they came out, and the doctors that they were in control of, she says, changed her medication suddenly, putting her on lithium. She said, "I felt drunk." I never wanted to be on it.

And then she said, "Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing. My dad was all for it." She went on saying that Jamie Spears "Approved all of it." And she says her dad forced her to go to a rehab center. She says she cried on the phone with him for an hour and "he loved every minute of it."

She compared what her father did in sending her to that rehab center to sex trafficking. She said, I cry every day. And she said, I don't know how the state of California can do this. She said, I want changes, I want them now, this "stupid conservatorship should end." She said, she hasn't said anything like this publicly before because she's been so scared. She's been so embarrassed, but she says, "It's time I got my life back."

And Dana, she also said she does not want to go through any more medical evaluations. She says she has been through plenty of those. She actually suggested that it is others including her father, who should go through the medical evaluation. She says it's time she got her money back. It's time she got her life back. She wants the judge to order that right now. Dana?

PERINO: Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate it. Dagen, I guess she's still speaking. Do you think this is going to work for her?

MCDOWELL: Well, I will quote what her father's attorney said some -- a few months ago. Anytime Britney Spears wants to end her conservatorship, she can ask her lawyer to file a petition to terminate it. She's always had that right for 13 years and her lawyer never did that. And I question --

PERINO: That's why she wants to have her own lawyer.

MCDOWELL: Well, she, she can get -- she can change her lawyer potentially. But they've already changed the conservator over her money. It's now a co- conservatorship with Bessemer Trust. And she also has a different conservator over her personal capacity, Jodi Montgomery. The issue -- my issue is and this kind of goes to what Greg always talks about is how the media has poorly covered this.

RIVERA: But aren't you a little harsh to her?

MCDOWELL: No, let me just finish, Geraldo. The story is about her father, but the story is also about why was she in the conservatorship to begin with, and why was she kept in it for 13 years? We never discuss mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse or dual diagnosis or poly diagnosis, and that's the issue. The New York Times has overlooked it. They've tried to make it about like, left-wing ideology about downtrodden women and that's not the story.

PERINO: Geraldo?

RIVERA: I disagree. I think that Dagen is way too harsh on Brittany. Here's a woman --

MCDOWELL: No, I'm being harsh on the media.

RIVERA: Well, here's a woman who has generated tens of millions of dollars in a hugely successful Las Vegas residency. She was a judge on X Factor, on the American Idol. She did two Platinum records in the last decade. I think these gross old man should get out of her life. It's enough already, 13 years. Enough -- I've never heard of anything remotely approaching this with the rights of an individual have been so infringed by people who have an economic interest in keeping her under their control. It is bizarre, it is obscene. It is time to end it.

PERINO: Free Britney, Jesse?

WATTERS: I had a Britney-esque meltdown when I was 18. And instead of swinging an umbrella, I took an axe from my garage and I started chopping my picnic table to pieces over something my father did. I don't even remember but I flew off the handle, ran away from home. I think the cops found me walking along a street and my dad had to pick me up.

If my dad had put me into some conservatorship and frozen my finances, which were I think negative at the time, and then had a financial straight jacket around because I melted down at 18 -- who doesn't meltdown at 18? We've all been there. I think this thing has run its course. It's time to take the training wheels off. Maybe you don't say OK, you have your full freedom. You give her a little bit here. You give her a little bit here. Surely her legal team can say listen, she's a grown woman as Geraldo said. She's been successful in a professional capacity for quite some time. Your father may say I'm doing this because I love you. But sometimes, Dana, if you love someone, you have to let them go. Deep thoughts by Jesse Watters.

PERINO: Wow, wow, that's so interesting. That is such a profound statement.

WATTERS: Thank you.

PERINO: I'm going to write it down for my next book. Gutfeld, what do you think?

GUTFELD: I don't know. I kind of zoned out through this whole segment. I was thinking about what I'm having dinner.

PERINO: What are going to eat tonight?

WATTERS: Ribs, ribs.

GUTFELD: You know what I think? You know, I think that I could be her manager. And the first --

RIVERA: And steal all her money.

GUTFELD: I don't want any of her money. I will tell her to do a metal album. Just get out there and do a pure metal out. You get Mike Patton to produce it. You get the Melvins as your backing band. Do some heavy psychedelic metal album, and that would be your comeback and everybody go oh my God, she's amazing. That's what you do. That's all I got.

PERINO: And I don't think I've ever heard this much of Britney Spears except on you know where?

GUTFELD: Where?

PERINO: Peloton.

GUTFELD: Oh, that's true. They're obsessed with --

PERINO: All the time. Any final thoughts? Anybody?

RIVERA: My final thought is when Jesse said he chopped up the picnic table --

GUTFELD: That frightened me.

RIVERA: And when walking aimlessly, I thought that's where Bill O'Reilly chopped up.

WATTERS: Come here, kid.

GUTFELD: Watters was a dark world once.

WATTERS: It was. My mother says it's the dark years.

PERINO: Next up, mayhem and arrest at a school board meeting as parents push back against school policies. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUTFELD: Chaos at a school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia. A brawl breaking out and a couple of people were arrested. Parents protesting the woke school policies. But things really get heated after officials tried to shut down the debate during the meeting. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As long as you Marxist push your unconstitutional agenda on my child, she will not be returning back to school.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're teaching children to hate others because of their skin color. And you're forcing them to lie about other kids' gender.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Resign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: And now, the chair of the school board is accusing parents of "a dog whistle politics" and says she will continue to focus on equity. There's that word for students. Not equality, but equity. How can you be equity for students? That means they all have to have the same outcome.

PERINO: Yes.

GUTFELD: That's crazy. Anyway, that's not a question. My question is, I've never seen a kind of a quote like thinking spread so fast and so many different areas of the world. You have the Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley defending critical race theory. So, it's gotten to the military. Is this where the war is going to take place, at the school?

PERINO: Well, I mean, I just think that, you know, America is run by local districts, right? The Democrats don't love that.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: Right? Remember, we just had a big fight yesterday in the House although -- in the Senate, although it was 50-50, so it wasn't that big a fight, but a split right down the middle on voting rights because the democrats want to federalize the whole thing.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: And I think that a lot of times progressives are very, very patient, and they'll just get a little -- put a little something over here, a little something over here and let it spread. Well, this time it didn't work out. And now you have people going to school board meetings, and they probably never have been to a school board meeting in their life, and now they're there every night.

The thing that happened here was really unfortunate. There was 255 people I think signed up to speak. They only got through 59 of them, and then they cut off debate.

GUTFELD: Right.

PERINO: I think the school board would have been better off just sitting back and saying, how about it, you know, and let them get -- let the air out.

GUTFELD: Yes. Jesse, we now know over the past year that the teachers unions are corrupt. CRT is intellectually corrupt and even psychologically damaging. It feels like the time is right for an educational tea party like a movement. I think you should lead it.

WATTERS: I agree. You said that yesterday.

GUTFELD: I know.

WATTERS: I shouldn't lead anything. And I agree with you.

GUTFELD: This is one way you can save the world.

WATTERS: This is --

PERINO: How you saved education.

WATTERS: This is the right and the left, black and white, uniting against the teaching of racism and reverse racism to our students. And that's what this is. This is reverse racism and people are galvanized. And I would say it's a new part of the Tea Party. Joe Biden himself said America is not a racist country. Kamala Harris agreed. So, critical race theory is teaching that we are a racist country. So, this is even too crazy for Joe and Kamala.

And look what they're doing. I looked at the Loudon County little handbook. They are creating an anonymous racism snitch line. They're saying you have to confront how white people are unconsciously biased against black people. And they're demanding white teachers identify their white fragility. And they don't want white teachers to see color. They don't want -- they want - - they don't want them to be colorblind. And that's crazy and that's what people are upset about. And it gets all across the country.

In Oregon, math is racist. They're saying that black people can't succeed in this country. That if you're white, you're only succeeding because of a white supremacist system that your grandparents set up. It's horrible. And I'm glad people are rising up and snuffing it out.

GUTFELD: You know, Geraldo, there's -- what Jesse is talking about, there's a weird kind of white supremacy in the condescending nature of this, of the white leftist.

RIVERA: Oh, yes.

GUTFELD: They feel that they can -- they're the person that could help the black downtrodden person who can't -- who can't get the jobs or whatnot on their own.

RIVERA: But as a feed and manipulative as you may think they are, children are very resilient. Children can hear a teacher preaching this or that. And, you know, I had three kids graduate from -- two graduate from Spence and one left when we moved to Cleveland. But they -- their politics are all over the place. They're not at all indoctrinated.

I think that sometimes teachers are always more liberal than students. Why are teachers so progressive? I think a lot of teachers -- and I'm generalizing, of course. I think the teachers field, they have a very tough job for which they are underpaid and underappreciated. And so, they rail against the system. The kids hear it, then the kids go on, and they live their lives. And the lessons you take are the people you relate to.

But my kids turned out just fine. And I'm not worried about critical race theory. I'm not worried about any of these ideas. E Pluribus Unum, that's the idea that I tell my kids, out of many, one.

MCDOWELL: Parents like Asrad Nomani (PA) are worried about the race to the bottom, as Greg was talking about. Take over the board. Have at it. That's what they do in corporate America and I'm just glad my mom is not alive because she would have showed up at that meeting with a tennis racket and I'd be bailing her ass out of jail.

GUTFELD: There you go. "ONE MORE THING" is up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS: It's time now for "ONE MORE THING." Greg Gutfeld.

GUTFELD: Oh man, I hope you guys watched the "GUTFELD!" show last night with Caitlyn Jenner and Mercedes Schlapp. It was amazing. And tonight is going to be even better, Lara Trump and Pete Hegseth. We got a babysitter.

Let's do this. What? Greg's are cats out to destroy you. Well, let's take a look at this cat. Apparently, they -- he'd been stealing a lot of chips from the chip bag so they put a camera in the bag to see if he was stealing chips out of the tube. And I don't know. I find this kind of relaxing as he sticks his head in there and tries to look. There's his little paw There you go. There you go.

PERINO: Chips and salsa.

WATTERS: I have a strong urge to beat you up. I never felt that before until now.

RIVERA: I thought it went a few seconds too long.

WATTERS: All right, Dana, go ahead.

PERINO: OK, so I don't know if you saw this. There's a little bit of a temper tantrum but I think justified. This is Oakland A's pitcher Sergio Romo expressing his frustration last night. So, the umpire went to do a substance check and Sergio was mad. And so, he tore off his belt and he dropped his pants to prove a point.

It's becoming a bit of a national trend. Nationals pitcher did the same thing the other night when being checked for sticky stuff. So, players don't like this MLB thing and --

RIVERA: If I don't have time on my "ONE MORE THING," I'm going to do that right now.

WATTERS: Geraldo, you know what, go right ahead. And we should check you for substance.

RIVERA: Cleveland gets put down for a lot of things. It has the best dive bar is in the country. Take a look at Harbor Inn established in 1895 right on the waterfront on the Cuyahoga River. Go inside. It's the original bar from back in the day.

WATTERS: I have a feeling Bill Hemmer has been to that dive bar. And if he hasn't, he's going to be there very soon. Take it away, Bill.
 

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