00:00Oh, thank you so much. I drove all the way down from the Dayton, Ohio area, and it was wild seeing this situation on Fox News.
00:11This lady getting knocked out, you know, and it's like I'm sitting there going, this is not Cincinnati, is it?
00:18Are you kidding me? People up in my area enjoy coming down to Cincinnati for a football game.
00:26Cincinnati Bengals, go to the Montgomery Ribs Boathouse, have some ribs, walk around from the hotel, and it's just like New York, you know.
00:38I'm sitting on the fence. Do I go to New York for the Macy's Day Parade after seeing what I saw in New York three weeks ago with a long gun walking down the street?
00:48It's a snowball effect if you guys don't get this under control.
00:52Hotels will start losing employees.
00:58Taxi drivers won't be able to drive people around. Uber drivers won't be able to drive people around.
01:04People won't be able to feel safe from these small towns an hour out of Cincinnati to drive down here to go to a ballgame.
01:13What you're thinking of, how do we control this economic tsunami that's going to hit Cincinnati if this is not under control?
01:24Why don't you give the last one, or I'll close it out.
01:27Well, part of it is leadership, and I think that's what you're speaking on.
01:31And so we can't have a mayor, a city manager, which is the CEO of the city of Cincinnati, a police chief absent from governing the people.
01:44And that's what you've been watching on Fox News.
01:47People that are blaming everybody in the room except themselves.
01:51You know, a basic counseling move when you sit down with a licensed counselor is owning.
01:59Where has the mayor, the manager, our police chief owned what happened in downtown?
02:08If we don't change this in the next election, everything you've described is going to happen.
02:14But it's going to take courage for people not to look at party, not to look at race, not to look at gender, not to look at hairstyle.
02:25For us to elect people that will represent us and that will hold each other accountable in a system.
02:34I am baffled that the President Pro Tem can write a message that those who were assaulted begged for it and still have their job as I stand here at Jim and Jack's.
02:49That is unacceptable.
02:51If we put leadership in place that affirms the perception that we're safe, the young lady in the back who lives in OTR will stay.
03:04That you in Dayton will come and we'll go to Dayton.
03:09But if we don't deal with safety issues in our city as number one, we're done.
03:16It is the number one issue and we cannot elect anybody who has a position of defund, reimagine our police department.
03:27I'm not saying that police is the only answer, but right now when we're 200 down, it's one of the answers.
03:33We must make sure that we hire the best, we do the best training of them, and then most importantly, I'll end with this.
03:41We allow our police officers to do their job.
03:50As we wrap this up tonight, I want to say how proud I am of Cincinnati tonight for coming out tonight.
04:00Thank you all.
04:01Give yourselves a round of applause for coming out here and having an open, honest dialogue and conversation.
04:07Give our co-host Christopher Smitherman a round of applause for coming out here.
04:13I love that.
04:14We're going to be doing more together.
04:17And I think we're going to actually, if you're open to this, Christopher, we're going to actually do this in getting it right in Cincinnati.
04:24The beautiful thing about Ohio is we're actually a state of cities.
04:29Think about Georgia, which is a comparable state.
04:31They've got Atlanta, but it's one city.
04:32The beauty of our state is we've got cities like Cincinnati, got Dayton, where you came from, Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, you name it.
04:42That's one of the advantages of our state.
04:44And so I haven't asked Christopher this yet.
04:47I enjoyed this tonight.
04:48Maybe we should do this in the cities across the state as well to be able to use Cincinnati as an example.
04:54Get it right here.
04:55Nail it in Cincinnati.
04:56Scale it across the state.
04:58What do you say?
04:59That sounds like a plan.
05:00All right, let's do that.
05:02And that's what we wanted.
05:07Open dialogue with a culture of respect.
05:10I'll close on this point.
05:11All right, I think the true mark of a successful country, particularly in the United States, is are people brave enough to be able to say in public what they will otherwise say in private?
05:25And for the last decade, if we're being honest, there's been a big gap.
05:28I mean, if you think about the last decade, there's probably been the biggest gap between what people are willing to say in private versus what they're willing to say in public.
05:35What we're talking about today, this is considered in some circles to be politically incorrect, forbidden territory, urban crime.
05:42And there's a lot of underlying issues that even came up in this discussion, including tough issues relating to race, relating to history.
05:49We're not going to solve those problems.
05:50We're not going to solve those problems by hiding from them.
05:53We're going to solve them by confronting those problems directly.
05:57Speak in your mind in the open.
05:58Say it with a spine.
05:59Say it with vigor.
06:01But say it with respect.
06:02And part of respect means that you respect your neighbor enough to tell them what you actually think, not some fake, woke-washed or other-washed version of it.
06:12That's what brings us together.
06:14That's what makes us American.
06:16That's what makes our country, I believe, the greatest country known to the history of man, that we're actually able to do it.
06:22And what I love about Cincinnati, because this is not a unique conversation to this city.
06:27It's not even a unique conversation to our state.
06:29Look at what's happening in cities from New York to Sacramento, coast to coast, sea to shining sea.
06:34What you have is Cincinnati has an opportunity to set an example for what's possible for Ohio, what's possible for the United States.
06:41What I love about the cities, you go a 100-mile radius of where we are.
06:44I was born and raised here in Evendale, where we grew up for most, right off I-75.
06:50You go a 100-mile radius of where we are right now.
06:53You don't have a cross-section of Cincinnati.
06:54You've got a cross-section of the country.
06:56And I think that if there's one town that ought to set an example for how we fight this epidemic of violent crime, for how we actually restore respectful, open dialogue, it might as well be us.
07:08We were that city.
07:09We were that state for most of our history.
07:12I want to lead us to be that state again.
07:14And so, anyway, my commitment to all of you is in leading this state, we're going to stand for what is true.
07:21We're not going to apologize for our principles.
07:23We will not waver from our principles.
07:26We will stand for law enforcement.
07:28We will stand for the ability to do their jobs.
07:30We will stand for ending this wave of violent crime in our cities without apologizing for it.
07:35But we will do it in a way that, and I'll make you this promise tonight, and I'm going to ask you to hold me to this promise, is it's not about Republicans or Democrats.
07:46This is not about left versus right.
07:47This is about up versus down.
07:49This is about right versus wrong.
07:51This is about common sense.
07:53And I don't care what you are, what your party is, what your race is, what your religion is, what your previous political statements have been.
08:01If you care about giving your kids a world-class education, if you care about restoring safety on the streets and bringing back law and order to the cities in our state,
08:11if you care about giving your kids the same shot at the American dream that this city gave to me and to my family,
08:19then we will work with you to lead Cincinnati, to lead the state of Ohio to greater heights than we have ever seen.
08:28We are not a state in decline.
08:30We are a state still on our way up where we will look our kids in the eye and mean it when we tell them,
08:37you get ahead in the city of Cincinnati, you get ahead in the state of Ohio, and you get ahead in the United States of America
08:42with your own hard work, your own commitment, your own dedication, and you don't have to fear for violence as you do it.
08:49Thank you guys for coming out tonight.
08:51God bless you in a great state of Ohio.
08:54Thank you, guys.
08:57Thank you for being here.
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