Transcript
J.D. Vance (0:00)
Who's the person who carries the nuclear football? And she was like, sweating like crazy with this 50 pound pack. And I was like, wait, you have to come with me when I go on, like a hike with my kids. And then I kind of hit me like, oh, it makes sense, but, oh, you must hate my guts right now. I just made you run through Southwest Ohio 3 1/2 miles. She's absolutely miserable, but, you know, you got to do what you got to do. And my wife actually asked the Secret Service afterwards. She was like, do they just hate the fact that we still try to live, like a pretty active, normal life?
Smug (0:32)
And, and.
J.D. Vance (0:33)
And the Secret Service is kind of like, yeah, it was like, well, half of them really like it because it forces them to exercise. And half of them, yeah, absolutely, hit your guts. Basically. The conclusion.
Smug (0:43)
Well, you mentioned Cincinnati. We can't get through a single interview with anybody without this guy injecting Ohio.
J.D. Vance (0:49)
Hamilton, Ohio.
Smug (0:50)
Yeah.
Duncan (0:50)
Proud native man's proud of his town. You know, it's just part of it.
Smug (0:54)
Go big blue.
Duncan (0:55)
Yeah, absolutely.
J.D. Vance (0:56)
But that's a reference to the Ohio State fans, too. The Hamilton.
Smug (1:00)
Yes.
J.D. Vance (1:01)
That was a Michigan shout out, not a Michigan shout out to me.
Duncan (1:04)
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. But as you know, in our hometown, just a few days ago, there was a horrible incident. Everybody saw it play out on the Internet. And, you know, just people saw in Cincinnati, people saw it around the country. And, you know, every city has its down days, its down months. But I'm wondering, you guys have done so much to keep people safe around the country from a federal level. What more do you think cities can be doing to make sure that people say, stay safe in their cities, you know, in the coming months and years?
J.D. Vance (1:36)
I think the biggest thing, and obviously we can help this at the federal level, but the most important thing that states and cities can do is to actually solve the law enforcement recruitment challenge that we have. So a big part of the story, what happened in Cincinnati, I assume you're talking about this terrible brawl that happened in southwestern Ohio. You had, I mean, basically a woman who was just an innocent bystander who got punched in the face by a grown man that's being investigated. Hopefully those folks are brought to justice. Just a really disgusting act of violence. But part of the story there is that there weren't enough police officers at the Cincinnati Jazz Festival. Why aren't there enough police officers? Because there aren't enough police officers in Cincinnati. And if you talk to local law enforcement, they'll tell, you know, Sometimes you hear heartbreaking stories of a fourth, fifth generation cop who says, I tell my son or daughter, do not go into law enforcement. Because it's so uncomfortable. Because they got attacked so much, especially back in 2020, 2021. And that's just left a really bad hangover. So we've got to get the best and the brightest into law enforcement. I think the most important thing is local governments. You know, you still got a lot of blue big city mayors, people who maybe have some, some memories of the defund the police moment. Maybe they themselves were actually advocating defund the police. And they've got to say, okay, this was a crazy moment. We got to support our local cops and we got to get good people back into law enforcement. Because pretty much every big city police department is really understaffed. You're going to have stuff like that, right? Because I mean, look, Cincinnati is not the biggest city in the world. You got 300,000 people, give or take. In the actual city proper, you're going to have. Of 300,000 people. Sometimes you're going to have misbehavior. You got to make sure local law enforcement is there to respond to it so you don't have to. This really disgusting street brawl that just went on and on and on, people got hurt. It's really terrible. The way to fix it is to get good people back into law enforcement.