What do South Bend residents think of Mayor Pete Buttigieg?
'Raymond on the Road' takes Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo to the presidential hopeful's hometown on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," August 27, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST: Great to see you. I'm Laura Ingraham. This is "The Ingraham Angle" we have a very busy show tonight. We'll get to all of it. Ahead, the second installment of "Raymond on the Road", tonight he'll join us from South Bend, Indiana where he reveals the uneven record of Mayor Pete Buttigieg edge through the eyes of those who know him best, the citizenry there.
And also tonight, former President Barack Obama is re-entering the political fray. Victor Davis Hanson is here to tell you what it all means.
Plus Dinesh D'Souza's, we'll explain why the 44th President's new $15 million mansion may be at risk.
And a woman claims in a DC divorce court that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar broke up her marriage, and the story just got weirder tonight. We have all the latest details for you.
But, first, "The Fairytale Party" that's the focus of tonight's "Angle". Now, when you're a kid, and your mom or your dad reads a bedtime story it can all seem so real, right?
You imagine a giant Beanstalk reaching up to the sky and little Jack is climbing it. You may have been scared that wolf was going to huff and puff and blow your house down. I personally always looked underfoot bridges for the Troll and three Billy Goats Gruff - scary.
But, eventually, we're supposed to grow up and leave the fairytales behind, but not so with it "Never Trumpers". They are still clinging to their fantasy to a Republican Party that no longer exists. And they think that if they hate the President, enough then they'll convince others to go along with their open borders, Pro-China trade, pro-military interventionist outlook.
[LAUGHTER]
INGRAHAM: Now you may not know these people. They have zero constituency. Republicans hate them, Democrats are just using them. I'll get to that in a moment. So let me introduce them to you. The founding member of "The Fairytale Party" is failed magazine editor Bill Kristol who famously predicted this in 2003.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM KRISTOL, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, FOUNDER: --Whatever else you can say about this war, let me make one point. George Bush is not fighting this like Vietnam. Whatever - we don't need to refight the whole history of Vietnam.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Saddam maybe, that’s the danger of Saddam--
KRISTOL: But it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me take a call.
KRISTOL: This is going to be a two-month war, not an eight-year war.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: He scoffed at the notion of Donald Trump winning the presidency - the nomination in 2015.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRISTOL: This Trump thing going on, I gather. He's doing OK in the polls for a while. But he's not going to be the nominee, so we'll be fine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: And now he claims to be a Trump mind reader.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRISTOL: I think he is - he sees bad economic news coming and bad political news coming and that he's a demoralized guy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Hey, Bill, 19 year high for consumer confidence. You might want to revise your remarks.
Well, in case you forgot. This is a guy who thought a "National Review" columnist could beat Donald Trump in the spring of 2016. He's going to do it all at the convention. That is going to be a big deal. Well, this was too much even for Mika Brzezinski to take.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC HOST: Bill Kristol has - got to stop sort of - I'm trying to think of an uncrass way of saying this.
JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST MSNBC: Well, how about digging? He's been digging since Trump got in the hole.
BRZEZINSKI: He's been wrong.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes.
BRZEZINSKI: Sorry.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Well, the war peddler didn't listen and he kept playing in this political land of make-believe, maybe he makes money there. And then there's Kristol's buddy Bret Stephens, the sullen neocon op-ed writer for "The New York Times". Now he regularly dishes out the nastiest bile about the President and his supporters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRET STEPHENS, NBC NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: What we saw over the last few days is a President who is either mentally unwell or morally unfit, maybe both, I don't know. You have behavior that is unprecedented in any kind of presidential history in the United States or frankly elsewhere.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: But Stephens himself a pillar of stability. Well, he's like a little flimsy balloon. He pops the second he gets a little pinprick on Twitter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHENS: Yesterday, a professor at George Washington University described me as a bedbug or a metaphorical bedbug. So I wrote him a personal e-mail, I didn't go to Twitter. I also copied his Provost on the note. People are upset about this. I want to be clear. I had no intention whatsoever to get him in any kind of professional trouble. But Manager should be aware of the way in which their people, their professors or journalists interact with the rest of the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Who made him a head of human resources? What a goofball. Hey, Bret stop lying. If he didn't want to get the guy in trouble at work, you wouldn't have cc'd the Provost, simple as that.
And have you ever heard of this woman? Her name is Jennifer Rubin and she's described as a blogger for "The Washington Post". Now every syllable out of her mouth oozes contempt toward President Trump and many of you're watching.
And now this woman of meager accomplishment wants us all to be banished - altogether banished from public life.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER RUBIN, WASHINGTON POST OPINION WRITER: What we should be doing is shunning these people. Shunning, shaming these people is a statement of moral indignation that these people are not fit for polite society.
We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now her talk of burning it down and urging that potential survivors be eliminated, and Trump's rhetoric? That's the problem? That incites violence? It's just shameful.
But one of my favorite characters in the "Never Trump" nonfiction series is this fellow named Max Boot, who could who kind of bears in the forehead at least an uncanny resemblance to Max Headroom. Which one's cuter?
Now before Trump got elected he kind of just seemed like another goofy neocon huckster, whose calendar was stuck in the year 2004. But Boot claims quote "The GOP has suffered a complete moral and intellectual collapse, well, by smearing everyone whose skin happens to be white. Who voted for Trump, Boot calls him - well, bunch of white supremacist.
What this sorry, but kind of hilarious lot doesn't really understand is that their fairytale house, it's already burned down in 2008 and in 2012 when they lost the presidency twice to Obama. Then Trump comes in and he builds a new party that drew in people from the Obama camp, voted for him the first time. People hadn't voted for a while.
And they recognized that Obama in the end was just another globalist who would cash out once he left office, the little people be damned. But to "Never Trump" fantasy - I was thinking about it, it's kind of like a bad romance novel, but without any of the hunky characters. You just want it to be over, and that's "The Angle", part one.
Joining me now is John McLaughlin, former Trump campaign pollster and Tom Bevan, Co-Founder, President of Real Clear Politics. John, now you've pulled for President Trump since his first run. How does this so-called smart set in the fairytale land - how do they fail to see that whatever view they have of what a real Republican is, that's over. I don't think it's ever coming back.
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN POLLSTER: No, no, they've totally lost touch. Because you already mentioned, they lost the 2008 and 2012 race to Barack Obama. And Obama then went on to destroy the health care system for middle-class America, raise their taxes, lose their jobs and basically put their sons and daughters at risk in countries far off lands that we couldn't win these wars.
So Donald Trump ran on a message of change and our strategy was to light up the Rust Belt, the Sun Belt, the heartland of America, and we brought out millions of new voters. We had a record 139 million voters show up and Donald Trump got 63 million votes, because he was saying change. And he ran against the Republican establishment and the DC establishment.
And to this day, he will win reelection because he's bringing change to Washington. Our last poll one to 51 to 38, the majority of Americans, want him to continue to fight for change in America and that's how we won and that's how we're going to win again.
INGRAHAM: And Tom yet the old Bushies - and there are a lot of them, and they're nice people, but some of them at least are just incapable of seeing the writing on the wall. MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, who was just irritated by Trump from the very moment, because Trump took down Jeb Bush, she's now comparing Trump to well this mad monarch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. It's 4:00 in New York. America's mad King George woke up to devastating reviews this morning of his latest turn on the world stage at the G7 summit and a stinging rebuke from the Democratic front runner to replace him in 2020.
All this, amid growing signs that his policy schizophrenia on trade with China may be plunging the world into a global economic crisis.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I mean, it's just indistinguishable from any Leftist host on any of these cable channels, Tom. But why does the most vitriolic condemnatory language often come from this "Never Trump" set why?
TOM BEVAN, PRESIDENT OF REALCLEARPOLITICS: Well, I was trying to think, Laura, if there's any sort of precedent for this where you have this group of folks who repudiated the president of their party in such a way. And there's a very small group.
I mean you mentioned a few of them, but there was a poll that came out recently that showed that only 2 percent of Republicans want to see Trump removed from office and that's what the "Never Trump" crowd wants to do. So you've got this small group of dead-enders.
But they seem to occupy - they occupy these megaphones in these platforms, in places like cable news and the major media outlets like "The Washington Post" and "New York Times". And so they have this outsized voice--
INGRAHAM: Yes--
BEVAN: --where they're spewing this language and it is. It's - the irony too is that President Trump, outside of some other issues like you mentioned, trade and foreign policy, has done a lot of very conservative things on taxes, deregulation, judges--
INGRAHAM: Judges.
BEVAN: --go down the line.
INGRAHAM: Yes.
BEVAN: But these folks they hate him so much, they feel it's such a moral outrage that he is--
INGRAHAM: It's an ego thing. Tom, I think what some of these guys ---
BEVAN: It's a style thing and an ego thing.
INGRAHAM: Yes, I think, with some of them, they really do want more of an open borders, - open markets, open borders, seal "Wall Street Journal" line on that many, many years ago that they've since kind of forgotten they said. They kind of - they are for that.
But I do think you hit it, ego and pride. There's a reason why pride is one of the seven deadly sins. And it's hard. I mean, I've done my mea culpa on some of the cheerleading I did on the Iraq war. I think when I look back on it, and I did this many years ago, but it just - it didn't work. We need to rethink the way we do things.
And I don't think they have - they don't seem capable of it. And I think, John, do you think this - at this point it matters? I mean, they're kind of just shrieking into windmills?
MCLAUGHLIN: They don't matter. On our polls we've been testing every month, the Republican primary, and Trump's getting over 80% of the vote. Weld is at 2 percent. He could be a minus 1, it's in the margin of error and he getting - so the Republican Party and the conservative movement is totally rock solid with Donald Trump for all the reasons you mentioned.
And the real reason their resentment is, he's outside the establishment and he is succeeding. He is growing the economy when the rest of the world is stagnant.
INGRAHAM: Right. OK.
MCLAUGHLIN: He's making America stronger.
INGRAHAM: And as Bevan said, it doesn't even matter. That reality - it doesn't matter if he's the most pro-life President, doesn't matter, if he's - he has best economy in the G7, it doesn't matter; best judges, doesn't matter. None of it matters but their ego matters. Gentlemen, thank you for your analysis tonight.
And the resistance media's latest Hail Mary, well that's the focus of my "Angle" part two. Do you even remember this guy? Evan McMullin was the "Never Trumpers" last Hail Mary candidate. Remember he got gobs of media attention, despite the fact that he never stood a chance of defeating Trump back in the spring of 2016?
Well for 2020, they found a new savior, radio host Joe Walsh.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE WALSH, R-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm going to hit Donald Trump. I'm going to punch him in the face every single day. I'm running because he's unfit. Somebody needs to step up and there needs to be an alternative.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: What an inspiring message? That's right. Former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh is who the "Never Trump" movement, if you can call it that, has been waiting for. As long as you ignore that he called Obama a Muslim, used the "N"-word on Twitter and may have owed his wife a mere $117,000 in child support.
But don't worry, Walsh is self-aware or is he?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALSH: I wouldn't call myself a racist. But I would say, John, I've said racist things on Twitter. There's no doubt about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Whoops. But none of that matters. It doesn't matter to the anti- trump forces in the media because they are still desperately hyping the impossible.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Could a combination of a Joe Walsh and a Bill Weld and maybe something else ding little bit in maybe a New Hampshire primary, for example? Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Could they cause problems for the President, could they weaken him going into the fall? Certainly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No matter how small they are and whether they can beat you or not, it becomes a real irritant, and it becomes a problem. No incumbent wants to have that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Could lollipops grow on trees? Could the road be paved with gold? Yes, yes. OK. Wait, none of you are convinced yet? Well CNN's Chris Cillizza has got your back. "Joe Walsh", he says, "could make some real trouble for Donald Trump," he writes.
Reality check. According to Gallup, Trump's approval rating sits at 88% among Republicans, that's just two points fewer than George W. Bush right after 9/11. Now, the ringleader of this ill-fated mission, as I said earlier, "Never Trumper" Bill Kristol.
He's all in on Joe Walsh, telling "New York Times". "He has a different appeal than Bill Weld. The fact that he was a Tea Party Congressman who voted for Trump in 2016, gives him an ability to speak to Republican primary voters that never Trumpers like me don't have."
Hey. Bill, he probably would have a better shot with this Joe Walsh from "The Eagles". Now what all the hype about Walsh is really showing is just how pathetic and self-serving the never Trumpers are. Because just let yourself marinate in this for a second. These folks are willing to sacrifice their own country to say "See I told you so".
So they'll lose the Supreme Court, all the federal courts, the economy, the gradually an upper hand with China - all of it. They'll lose it all, so they can have their little moment. And, of course, they want to take us back to what? The days of endless foreign adventures, big government losing culture wars, open borders, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Anti-Trump grifters are completely out of touch with reality. They're kind of like the party of the Tooth Fairy, except there's no money under your pillow in the morning, just more disappointment, because another trunk victory is coming, and that's "The Angle" part two.
All right, here to respond Herman Cain 2016 Republican presidential candidate. Now, Herman great to see. First Bill Weld - I mean that's like back to the back to the 90s, and now Joe Walsh, how many more of these pretenders will the media glom onto to promote?
HERMAN CAIN, 2016 GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They will glom on to anybody that's willing to cast dispersions on Donald Trump. I will sum up this Joe Walsh, not the one from "The Eagles", the one who wants to challenge Trump in one-word "publicity".
"The Squad", AOC and all of these are the liberal - I'm sorry, lunatics, the more outrageous things that they say, the more likely they are to be on TV.
So when Joe Walsh comes along and he's going to challenge Trump, the Liberals are going yay, we got somebody else that we can put in front of the camera. It's for publicity. His own self publicity, because he has seen this work for "The Squad"--
INGRAHAM: That's a great point.
CAIN: --AOC, and others.
INGRAHAM: That's a great point.
CAIN: The more outrageous - the more outrageous, the more likely they are to get the publicity.
INGRAHAM: Yes, Herman, they're the first people to scream foul or go after the - their livelihood. If there's one word or one phrase that they can hone in on and some little dweeb in his basement cuts and pastes it and sends it over the Internet. But these people say - they say they're going to punch the President in the face, no problem.
CAIN: Right.
INGRAHAM: And going to burn it down. We got to basically kill off all the survivors. I'm paraphrasing what Jennifer Rubin said - make sure there are no survivors. Can you imagine, I mean if any of us say that? You're destroyed. You might have no work again.
CAIN: You're not going to burned down a 164 million Republican voters, OK. You're simply not - or people who support Donald Trump. That lady's delusional that you showed earlier. She's absolutely delusional. And see, she talks about playing nice.
Well, Republicans have tried to play nice. They're the ones that aren't playing nice with that kind of rhetoric. And all that rhetoric does is to ensure that they get on TV, or if somebody writes an article that quotes them or something like that.
INGRAHAM: Or Herman they get a fancy perch at "The New York Times", so they become the house conservative. They're the house conservatives. There's nothing conservative about these people. They long gave up their conservative credential.
By the way, John Kasich who - and look, he was a good Governor of Ohio. But he didn't even show up at the Republican National Convention when he was Governor of this state when it was held in Cleveland - didn't have the grace to do that. He's now mouthing off on how he was the first one to really doubt Trump. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KASICH, FORMER GOVERNOR OF OHIO: I call him out more than anybody. And I have been doing it--
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know you have.
KASICH: I didn't have like a change of heart where we see some people say, "Oh, I used to support him and now I don't." I suspected this from the beginning that this was going to be disruptive to our country and disruptive to our allies, and it's been precisely that. I don't want to say I told you so--
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: But Herman?
CAIN: It's real simple. Can we say sour grapes? And secondly, all the accusations by Joe Walsh and others against Trump are simply not true period - not true.
INGRAHAM: Herman, it's always great to see you. Come back soon.
CAIN: Thank you.
INGRAHAM: And coming up, Barack Obama is back on the political scene, but why now? And why is his new mansion at risk? Victor Davis Hanson, Dinesh D'Souza have the answers next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Former President Obama is getting back into the community organizing with a new project, it's exciting, it's called "Redistricting U". Starting in 2021, they're going to send redistricting experts to train activists and targeted states to combat partisan gerrymandering after the 2020 census.
The critics are skeptical. The group behind a new initiative is called Allontheline.org, which itself is affiliated with a group chaired by former AG Eric Holder. Sure people are making a lot of money here, consultants.
Furthermore, Allontheline has a list of ten priority states it's targeting and you can see them right here on the map, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. But here's the kicker. Trump's - Trump won nine of those states in 2016 and only lost in Colorado by less than 5 percent.
So is this really just a campaign to help the Democrats and hurt Republicans? Joining me now of course, Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at Hoover; and Dinesh D'Souza, Conservative Author and Filmmaker.
VDH let's start with you. What's your take about Obama? Now a couple hundred million dollars later in the coffers for him, now getting back into politics, is that what it is?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: Yes, I think he feels his brand has been tarnished, and he's got to go back to - as you said, his preorganizing origins, the acorn era.
And the reason is, Donald Trump has systematically with a pen and phone executive order methodology that he inherited from Obama, undoing his entire agenda. And the icon of the Obama administration is a very unimpressive Joe Biden that Obama is not comfortable with.
And you've got this spectacle of the Democratic primary candidates running - they almost against the Obama legacy. You add all that up, and then the optics of a green Woke socialist spending $25 million on two mansions, one of which is right on the Seacoast, at a time when he warned us that the - the seas would be rising.
And that you've made enough money at some point you not to profit any more, spread the wealth, you didn't build that. It's just not a good "can't square that circle". So he's trying to get back and restore the Obama of 2008, I suppose.
INGRAHAM: Dinesh, he's clearly - he was smarting, right Dinesh, after the 2016 election results? I mean, it all got blown away that night. I mean, I'd love to have seen his face like a time-lapse photo.
So now this, is - this kind of seems like a weak move, though, it doesn't seem all that impressive to me. But he knows if Trump gets reelected, all these "Never Trumpers" all his - it's done, it's done for this foreseeable future.
D'SOUZA: Yes, 2016 was a repudiation of Obama, even more than a repudiation of Hillary. And with Obama, this whole notion that he is somehow trying to restore procedural fairness, I mean, it worked in 2004, it worked in 2008. It's been a declining credibility issue ever since.
Now the funny thing about the mansion in Martha's Vineyard, I think, is it really exposes the hollow rhetoric behind all this climate change. It shows that Obama himself knows it's nonsense, because if he believed a word of it, if he thought that the oceans were going to rise and his property was going to go underwater, he would not have made the investment and property values would have plunged.
So the buyers know it's not true, the sellers know it's not true. Their real estate agents know it's not true. Nobody believes the word of it. So this climate change stuff has become a never Neverland of rhetoric. And you see that even Obama's actions cannot be in sync with it.
INGRAHAM: That's a great point. And we have this side-by-side, I think we can look at and put it up on the screen what they're projecting for the house and what's going to happen with the water levels and so forth.
So Climate Central says that what the Obama Martha's Vineyard home is going to look like in 2016 in the extreme scenario - can we put up the shot? Do we have it? There it is. There we go. You can kind of see it. Now what it looks like now, that's what it looks like now. So you see how the water moves into the land areas.
I mean, it's kind of scary. If you can - I mean, you mean you can see the shaded areas, that's all underwater. That's his house underwater. You see him waving there. But it's ridiculous, Victor. This is - again, it's do, as I say, not as I do.
The little people will have to suffer with the new climate change regs that the Dinesh is talking about. They're all going to suffer, but Obama's going to be up there counting his Netflix cash in Edgartown with it with the swells in Edgartown, having a good time.
HANSON: Yes. I think it's sort of like medieval penance. That the more that you can remind people he's out organizing, the more he gets to stay in Martha's Vineyard and he can square that psychological impossible circle.
But on the gerrymandering thing, notice, he's not going to Illinois, he's not going to California, New York, Massachusetts. Those are all blue gerrymandered states. He's going to these swing states.
And then it's kind of an atonement again Laura, because remember, when he was President, he not only lost the House, the Senate and the future of the Supreme Court. He lost 1,100 local and state offices, and those are precisely the people who will redistrict according to the new census.
And so he's more culpable than any Democrat of getting themself in the dilemma that he says he's going to try to get out of right now. The whole thing is--
INGRAHAM: Right. Dinesh - yes, it's a big shared.
HANSON: --rich with irony and paradox and hypocrisy.
INGRAHAM: Dinesh, these are the same people, like DiCaprio and all these guys. I'm sure they're nice people. I don't know them. I'm sure they're nice people. But they are flying to their conventions on their 5Gs and flying in the Beluga caviar. And they are wailing about the latest horrible story. The Amazon is sad, it's awful. But none of it squares with the way they live their own lives, none of it.
D'SOUZA: Yes. The truth of it is nothing is happening that's that unusual in the Amazon. Even all these pictures on social media of the Amazon burning, most of them are lifted from earlier years going back as far as 2000. So what's really going on here --
INGRAHAM: There are fires there. There are pretty bad fires there.
D'SOUZA: No, I'm just saying that the fires in the Amazon are no different than the fires that have occurred in previous times. This is not the lungs of the earth. The earth is not going to run out of oxygen. What I'm objecting to is the apocalypticism and the alarmism.
But here's the point I want to make, and that's that while these people are saying all this about climate change, the real appeal of it, none of us know if the earth is getting hotter or colder, nor do they care. What they care about is the Green New Deal new deal is the smuggling mechanism for a socialist agenda.
INGRAHAM: Absolutely.
D'SOUZA: If you just look at the agenda, look at basic income and Medicare for all and raising the minimum wage, and none of this has anything to do with climate change. But since we can't have the old Marxist revolution, the proletariat is not revolting, we have to appeal to the planet is making us do it.
INGRAHAM: Victor and Dinesh, I could do an hour with both of you. Thank you so much.
And coming up, Raymond Arroyo on the road to tell a real story of Mayor Pete's record in South Bend. So what do his constituents think? And does he have what it takes to be the next president? A can't miss exclusive "Angle" report, next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't see him standing toe-to-toe with Putin and or some Chinese leaders.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: A new installment in our "Raymond on the Road" series tonight. Raymond Arroyo in South Bend, Indiana, home of Mayor Pete Buttigieg. But what's the mayor's real record look like from the ground?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAYMOND ARROYO, CONTRIBUTOR: From the looks of things you might look like I'm in St. Louis or Detroit, but actually I'm only a few miles from the Golden Dome of Notre Dame. Welcome to Mayor Pete's South Bend, Indiana, a place where the local population here, 25 percent of them live beneath the poverty line, and crime has risen to 20 year highs, with violent assaults exceeding by 173 percent the national average. And there are lots of abandoned homes here.
"USA Today" recently recently described South Bend as one of the most dangerous cities in America. They say it's double the national and state average for assaults. Why? What is happening here?
HARVEY MILLS, PRESIDENT, SOUTH BEND FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE: We have got a mayor that is more concerned about politics right now than he is about public safety in our own city. And it's infuriating.
ARROYO: Because of some of the rhetoric that Mayor Pete employs both here at home and nationally, has it made it more difficult for you to do your job, and your officers?
MILLS: Absolutely. Now the public sees us as villains. They're looking at police officers as someone that wants to hurt them, not help them. And morale is at an all-time low as far as I'm concerned. I've been a police officer here for 27 years, this is the lowest I've ever seen it. And it's mainly due to the mayor's lack of public support for our officers.
ARROYO: Tell us about the Eric Logan case. That garnered a lot of national press.
MILLS: More than 10 officers have been shot at since that shooting.
ARROYO: Wow.
MILLS: That scares us.
ARROYO: And to what do you attribute that?
MILLS: We attribute that to the racism remarks that Mayor Pete has been spewing and demoralizing our police department, and the public. The public is now afraid to approach us.
ARROYO: Do you feel safe in South Bend?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not at all.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Honestly, I can't wait to get out. I get tired of hearing of shootings every night.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like I'm on guard. I feel like they try to cover it up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm OK with where I'm at. There's some stuff going on downtown in some other areas that needs to be addressed.
ARROYO: Do you go downtown in South Bend at all?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sometimes I do. I used to a lot, but then it's a lot of fighting.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I particularly do not go downtown, especially after late. I don't care for it. I don't like it. My 15-year-old doesn't like to be out alone at night either.
ARROYO: Is there a homeless problem?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. I'm sure you saw it driving here. They are all over the city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And 25 percent live below the poverty level. These are their options.
ARROYO: Given what you've witnessed and lived under Mayor Pete's leadership here, is he ready to assume national office?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't believe so, no. My message to the mayor is to drop the politics and be a leader for the city that he swore to be a leader for.
ARROYO: And then there's Mayor Pete's record on abortion. In 2008, the Women's Care Center, a pro-life crisis pregnancy center, wanted to open up a facility next to that abortion clinic there, the brown building you're looking at. The city council approved their permit, but Mayor Pete vetoed it.
JENNY HUNSBERGER, VICE PRESIDENT, WOMEN'S CARE CENTER: We purchased a building that needed to be rezoned. We brought it to the city council, that approved are rezoning. That was vetoed. The owner of the property here where we stand across the street contacted us and offered us his property. And so we built here, and here we are serving women on the west side of South Bend.
Justice demands that every woman in this community, in every community across the country, has the opportunity to choose life.
ARROYO: We're in downtown South Bend. As you can see, it's not exactly populated in the afternoon, but Mayor Pete has instigated investment downtown. There is some new construction. The Studebaker factory here was recently turned into a tech hub. But the question is, can the residence afford to live in these new high-rises and apartments?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have two children, 24 and 25, I don't think they could afford to live in some of those spaces.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm trying to get out of South Bend currently. I don't really see a lot of opportunity in the city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I definitely feel like it's for those that have money rather than the actual residents here.
ARROYO: Is Mayor Pete ready for national office in your opinion after his record here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely not.
ARROYO: Why not?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I see him as an opportunist. I don't agree with anything on his platform.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I like Mayor Pete. I think he would do a great job in what he's running for, and I support him 100 percent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't see him standing toe-to-toe with Putin or soe Chinese leaders.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I personally don't think he should.
ARROYO: Why not?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With what he's done with the city, he hasn't really changed too much.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
INGRAHAM: And Raymond Arroyo joins me now. Raymond, terrific reporting there. What's your impression of South Bend? I've only been there a couple times because of football games or whatever over there at Notre Dame. But at least the people you interviewed, and it's not a scientific study or anything, but they seems like he's saying he's not doing his job at home, let along doing anything for the country.
ARROYO: Well, Laura, a lot of these people really like Mayor Pete. They think he's smart.
INGRAHAM: Nice person.
ARROYO: They think he's articulate. They give him credit. Look behind me. This new art center has been refurbished. But the streets are empty. There's nobody here. And this is a daylong approach to the area, it looks like this. It's abandoned, it's a ghost town.
On the other side they say they feel unsafe. They are worried about rapes. They're worried about violent assaults. And not only here, in the neighborhoods. And you saw the homeless problem we uncovered. That's in the woods, but that's here in South Bend. And the head of the police union there, Harvey Mills, shared more information with us about the drug unit being shrunken by Mayor Pete as well as traffic enforcement. So we have more to share with you later in the show. They've sent us a statement, the city of South Bend. We've been in contact with Mayor Pete's campaign.
INGRAHAM: We'll reveal that later.
ARROYO: We have more to share later in the show.
INGRAHAM: Fantastic. All right, Raymond, thank you so much.
And we will be back later in the show, as Raymond said, for more on that. Do not miss.
But coming up, a woman claims in D.C. divorce court that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar broke up her family. And there are new details on that story tonight. We're going to have those details in a moment. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Ilhan Omar's rarified status as social media's very savvy, attractive, first Somali-American Congresswoman, has largely insulated her from legacy media criticism. And tonight's breaking news seems to be just another example of this.
First the "New York Post" published a bombshell story on this divorce filing from a D.C. mother who is alleging that her political consultant husband, Tim Mynett, admitted to having an affair with Omar and that, quote, he made a, quote, "shocking declaration of love" for the squad member. The Daily Caller News Foundation is now reporting that Omar's campaign, quote, "disbursed tens of thousands of dollars in travel expenses to the company owned by Mynett." Omar denied even dating anyone in an interview today. Apart from a short article on NBCNews.com, the other major networks seem to be silent on this.
Here to weigh in, Monique Pressley, attorney and Democratic strategist, and Matt Schlapp, Chairman of the American Conservative Union. Matt, these issues are never pretty, but they're kind of piling up. And why is the media downplaying it when, again, the squad, they fancy themselves kind of at least cultural arbiters/moral arbiters of our time, but this is a little curious.
MATT SCHLAPP, CHAIR, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE UNION: Ilhan Omar is curious to me, to use that phrase. I can't quite figure out what her philosophy is in life. If she is like this modern feminist if it feels good, do it, kind of person, or if she's someone who has religious views that take her to another place. I can't figure it out. All I know is I keep thinking, if a Republican congressman had been funneling a bunch of money to their lover, I think we'd be reading about it all over the place. And I think it's a misappropriation of taxpayer money at the very least.
INGRAHAM: Monique, it seems like there's a few holes in this story, at least as we know it today. Her office is saying no relationship, but it looks like "The Daily Caller" has some of the documents.
MONIQUE PRESSLEY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: We are not going to believe it until we actually have facts, but I just can't believe it myself that my really good friends on the right are taking exception with a woman, if it is at all true, having an affair while one is married, the other is married to. This is the kind of stuff that for the past couple of years we've been saying through congressmen and senators and even presidents, it doesn't matter.
INGRAHAM: I think the problem is paying your consultant/lover. That's a problem. That's an ethical problem.
PRESSLEY: And even when there's money on the line, it seems we're saying not that big of a problem until now. So he is a legitimate consultant. We know that. He has a legitimate company that did legitimate business.
SCHLAPP: He has a legitimate wife and a legitimate child.
PRESSLEY: And I'm trying my best not to talk about the current president of the United States who had a legitimate wife and unborn child because what we were told by my good friends, like Matt, on the right is eh, or even my good friend like Reverend Graham.
INGRAHAM: No grandstanding. No grandstanding.
PRESSLEY: But that's not grandstanding. Those are facts.
INGRAHAM: But you're grandstanding because we all know that. We're talking about money going to your consultant?
PRESSLEY: And do we care or don't we?
INGRAHAM: Going to your consultant who also you have a relationship?
PRESSLEY: You care when it's the president or your care when it's the congresswoman.
SCHLAPP: If it's taxpayer money that's being used inappropriately or illegal way, there's not question.
PRESSLEY: It's campaign money. It's campaign money, but it's --
SCHLAPP: It doesn't matter. It's sanctioned by the FEC.
PRESSLEY: Exactly. So if you use campaign money to shut down a mistress, then there's a problem, or is there not?
INGRAHAM: Well, they certainly found out according to the investigation that it wasn't determined by the investigator.
PRESSLEY: Are they waiting for the state charges on that?
INGRAHAM: I don't think --
SCHLAPP: Are we really going to keep investigating these things for two, three, four, or five years?
PRESSLEY: No, especially when we already know the fact, why would we?
INGRAHAM: I think, look. I'm someone who doesn't dismiss these four women. I think they've been really incredibly savvy and, in their own way, very smart, how they've dealt with social media. They have a platform. I happen to disagree with it, but, boy, they are out there advocating for what they believe in. Again, it's not what I believe in.
PRESSLEY: They are advocating for what they believe it.
INGRAHAM: It depends on what you mean about morality.
PRESSLEY: Laura, one of the things that I appreciate about you --
INGRAHAM: Their morality is green jobs and green economy and --
PRESSLEY: When we looked at Gillibrand and the way she called out Franklin, which I, frankly, I'm a Democrat, but I didn't agree with, with all those things, you were always the one that said let process to be process, and you are the person who has always said let personal be personal. And I don't every disagree with that.
INGRAHAM: I defended Franken. I think Franken got a raw deal, frankly.
PRESSLEY: And so did I.
INGRAHAM: On this other stuff that's happening, we have got Beto on this third -- have you seen this? We've got to play this real quick. This is Beto tripling down on the third trimester abortion issue. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You were at of town hall meeting just like this in Cleveland, and someone asked you specifically about third trimester abortions. And you said, that's a decision left up to the mother. I was born September 8th, 1989, and I want to know if you think on September 7th, 1989, my life had no value.
BETO O'ROURKE, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Of course I don't think that. You referenced my answer in Ohio, and it remains the same. That's a decision for the woman to make.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHLAPP: It's the problem with the pro-choice mentality, your life has value, but you don't have any legal standing. It's what the country did for 200 years on a whole array of issues when it didn't affirm the fact that a human being has rights.
INGRAHAM: Both of you, sorry, but we are out of time. Thank you for being here.
And coming up, the radical Ninth Circuit court just ruled that the state of Idaho must provide transgender surgery to an inmate who is convicted of a sex crime against an underaged victim. That's not a joke. The governor of Idaho is here exclusively to tell us how he's going to fight back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals playing political activist once again, ruling last week that Idaho must pay for gender reassignment surgery of a criminally convicted individual who sexually abused a 15-year- old boy. Now, the court said Idaho's refusal to fund the inmate Adree Edmo, that's the name, the gender reassignment surgery violated the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment protection.
Here to respond exclusively, Idaho Governor Brad Little. Governor, this is wild. I remember my days clerking on the court, every time the Ninth Circuit came out with a decision, we rolled our eyes, but this one is a doozy. What are you going to do next?
GOV. BRAD LITTLE, R-ID: There have been two other courts that have ruled opposite, and we appealed this to the Ninth Circuit and we're going to appeal it again. We heartily disagree. It's a bad precedent. It's going to be expensive, and it's contrary to the health professionals that we've had reviewing inmate Edmo's records, all the things about the inmate. And it's just contrary to good practices, and it's another example of an activist court getting in the middle of something and creating a precedent. It's going to be expensive for the taxpayers of Idaho and potentially all the taxpayers of the United States.
INGRAHAM: It's a complete scam. It's a complete scam. It is the inmate - - was the inmate born a woman? I confess I can't tell from this. Born a woman or born a man?
LITTLE: Born a man.
INGRAHAM: OK, and wants to transition for gender reassignment surgery, but convicted of sexually abusing a little boy, correct? So this would be part of I'm sure never to go on to sexually abuse anyone again, I'm sure. This is -- I think people watching across the country, governor, see these kinds of stories and they feel helpless because unelected judges, they have life tenure on the court, and they feel like what happened to my country, what happened to common sense? And I think people really feel like they've lost the culture and it's a sense of helplessness and sadness at the same time.
LITTLE: As I said, there are two other federal courts that have ruled in very similar cases, just the opposite way. So we are hopeful that justice will prevail, and the taxpayers in Idaho and other states won't be forced to pay for what we see as a procedure that our health care professionals say is not necessary.
INGRAHAM: Governor, this will end up at the Supreme Court because of the circuit split, and we hope Justice Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and Alito and all the rest are watching this very closely. Thank you very much, governor, for the update.
And when we come back, Raymond Arroyo will be with us. New reaction from Mayor Pete's campaign and the city of South Bend. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: I'm still trying to get over that previous segment, but we're back with "Raymond on the Road." Raymond, before we get to what's next, have you heard from the city of South Bend after your visit there today and Mayor Pete's campaign? Have they gotten back to you?
ARROYO: They've already responded to the segment we play a little while ago, our report. They say public safety, this is Mark Bode, the communications director for the city of South Bend, "Public safety is a top priority for the city of South Bend. We are continuing to work hard to reduce violence and make South Bend a safer city for all resident. They go on to talk about the group violence initiative, to reduce gang violence, et cetera.
What they don't address here, Laura, we'll be reporting more on this Friday. Mayor Pete shrunk the drug enforcement as well as traffic enforcement here, those units. That has had a serious impact on these streets and the safety of the people here. We'll get into all of that.
And of course, we have our Venice Beach report on the homelessness surrounding residents in the very tiny neighborhood of Venice Beach. That's on Thursday's show. And "Seen and Unseen" tomorrow.
INGRAHAM: My gosh, what a busy week. "Raymond on the Road," and he has his own graphic.
ARROYO: It is a buys week.
INGRAHAM: His own graphic.
(LAUGHTER)
INGRAHAM: That's all the time, that's all the time -- I love it. It's like the sneakers. That's all the time we have tonight. We have more on tomorrow's podcast, make sure to go to Podcastone.com, and Raymond has his report from Venice Beach, and I've seen a little bit of it. It's wild.
Shannon Bream and the "Fox News @ Night" team have all the latest and they take it from here.
Shannon?
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