958: Is Trump Bringing Back REAL Law & Order?

Brian Nichols  0:04  
All right, and with that, on to today's episode, returning to the show, you know him. You love him. Ken, good. Welcome back to The Brian Nichols Show. How you been?

Ken Good  0:13  
I'm great. Thank you, Brian. It's been a long time no see, but it's good to see you again. Long

Brian Nichols  0:18  
time no see, and here we are, both out of a hotel room. You're on your hotel room, I'm in my hotel room traveling. But you know what? We can't let a good conversation get missed due to travel. So we're making it work today. We're road warriors today. Ken,

Ken Good  0:33  
yeah, we're travel is trying to get us down, but we're overcoming.

Brian Nichols  0:40  
Yeah, the the audience didn't get to see the behind the scenes of the the headaches you and I both have had with technical issues getting logged in. But you know what? Gosh darn it, we're 15 minutes late, but we're going to have some fun today. I guarantee it. That's

Ken Good  0:52  
right. Well, I was having a great time until you were saying you were going to take off your hat. So we would both look old. I was really hoping you could say so just one of them would look old, and I would just assume which one you were talking about. But since you both look old, I'm kind of mad at the moment.

Brian Nichols  1:07  
I guess. You know, you can't see the gray hair. I just I'll have no hair at all. Ken, but you know, we'll leave the audience to decide who looks older for today's episode. Sound fair? Yes, sir. All right, cool. Ken, it's great to have you back in the show. I'm really looking forward to the conversation. I know last time, we were talking about what to expect from a Trump presidency. Elephant in the room, Trump won, and now we get to actually see some outcomes. And outcomes are we ever seeing? I know right now we're seeing some very positive outcomes, especially when you look at the impact on immigration, the impact on foreign policy standpoint, but also, you know, an impact in terms of how we're approaching criminal justice across the board right now. So I'm really excited to dig into that conversation, but before we do that, just do us a favor for the folks maybe who didn't get to check out your last appearance. Shame on you. Go check that out and fill us in. Who are you and why do you focus so much in this criminal justice world, specifically, specifically looking at Bail Bonds? Well,

Ken Good  2:06  
my name is Ken, good. I am an attorney in Texas. I specialize in bail law. I know that sounds really exciting. There's people going, Oh, I wish I could do that, but it's an area of the law that I've specialized in for probably 20 years now, I've truly loved and you know, the issues, you know, I grew up as an attorney, liking appellate issues, and so, you know, I was in a lot of competitions in law school. I argued a bunch of cases even early in my career. And so because of that background, when all of these issues with bail reform came up, I set about to become very knowledgeable on the

I just had an article published probably last Friday, or a week ago Friday on a bail issue on law 360 so it's an area that I enjoy, and it's an area that I write about a lot now, and so I try to, you know What? What? The reason why I became indulgeable in this is because I found that if, if we didn't, or if we weren't, nobody else was telling our story, and the story that they were telling wasn't true, it wasn't close to reality. So we decided we had to become experts on this area so that the truth could come out

Brian Nichols  3:20  
well, and this is one area we're talking about bail bonds that a lot of folks just aren't familiar with. Candidly, it's not something that you really you don't get to see every single day, right? It's only in unique circumstances, which, if you are a person in need of a conversation about Bail Bonds, good, good luck, because you're probably in a little, you know, red flags, or hot water, whatever the expression is right then, or it's something that impacts your family or something they're in. So this is a conversation that a lot of folks really aren't familiar familiarized with. It's just not something people deal with every day. So just before we dig into the conversation as it pertains to having Trump in power today, just give us a little bit of a context of what the bail bond world looked like before Trump, and why there is some some, very much, some positivity now that he's in office.

Ken Good  4:09  
Before Trump came to office, the criminal justice world and the bell world were under attack, and it wasn't at to make it better. It was under attack to make it more equitable, more diverse, more inclusive. And you know, we all know now that those are all co words for decriminalization. And so when we're trying to be, be have more dei and criminal justice, we're telling everybody to put up with more crime, and when we're telling everybody that we need to be more inclusive in the bell world, that means we need to release people without accountability. And so that's what, what's been happening as we've changed our as different jurisdictions have tried these no programs that have been pushed by these pseudo. Science groups, they've been absolute failures, and the problem is nobody's willing to acknowledge it. Here's a great example I've been I wrote an article in October of last year about why we should question the FBI statistics as not being accurate. 10 days later, the FBI came up, came out, and updated their statistics to show that crime was increasing, and suddenly, that's when I thought Trump has a good chance of winning, because I don't believe the FBI would be updating their statistics a month before the election to help Trump if they thought he was going to lose. And so that's when I became very positive about the election, because I thought that wouldn't be happening if they thought he was going to lose. And so now, with Trump in office, there's a sea change. We're going back to what we know. You can see it on immigration, where they're like, We don't need a new president. We don't need a new law on immigration. We just need a new president. Same thing on law enforcement, criminal justice reform. We don't need reforms to make people feel safer. We just need to enforce the laws that we have. And we've discovered shock of all shocks, that the bell industry does one thing. They do it very well, to get people to go to court, and there's not an alternative that gets anywhere close to them. And so people, we're actually seeing a resurgence of what we know works, and the bail industry a resurgence of using them in the criminal justice world.

Brian Nichols  6:30  
So I was listening to a podcast today over on a reason, reason magazines network. It's a podcast called just asking questions, and the podcast was talking with someone who worked in the criminal justice world, and this is a topic that they actually brought up themselves, is, is, you look at a lot of this, this narrative that we heard from folks on the left was, you know, just to reform things, Ken, we just need to tinker with things. And I mean, how well put it was during the State of well, the address to Congress that the the the what state of the union light, we'll call it, right where Trump said, and you, you, you paraphrase, that we didn't need new policy. We needed a new president. So how much of this stuff that we're seeing right now, and specifically, you know, looking at the world of bail bonds, but also, just by and large, the the criminal justice conversation that's really taken over, especially since 2020 10, how much of that has been due to like the fact that the law itself is broken versus we're just not enforcing said law,

Ken Good  7:31  
I would say 98% of it that we're not enforcing the law and everything Driving things, it's because of politics. Look at California. They decriminalized theft under $950 that was a result of Prop 47 the public was so upset about the way that was being handled that they prop I think it was prop 32 or 34 or something, but it was on the agenda, on the ballot in November, and it passed by 20 points to roll back prop 47 so I think if, if the public, when Prop 47 originally passed with the public has said, Hey, we're going to vote on putting up with more crime or not. We know what the vote would have been, but they were told, oh, we'll be safer by doing these things. And so I think what and everything in California taking place because they've capped their jail space or prison space, and they won't build additional prisons. So everything they do there is to decrease the number of people that go to prison because they're capped. And so it didn't have anything to do with crime. It doesn't have anything to do with fighting crime. It has everything to do with we're not going to build more space, so we're not putting more people in jail. So people have to put up crime, and that's what's going on. And when you look at it like that, you realize we know how to fight crime, we know how people to behave, and we're choosing not to do it, choosing not to do it, because politics, and you can see that change with Trump's in seven weeks. I mean, seven weeks. It took six weeks to the to secure our border. Same thing on crime. I mean, if, if our Democrat friends are not careful, we're going to start having such a disparity between our the rest of the country and our urban democratic strongholds. And they're, because of the demand safety. I mean, what people what they're forgetting. We've been through this cycle before, in the 60s where we were telling black or we were more forget criminal laws. Crime started going up, and then we had a backlash on how to address it. We're having that same exact same thing happen. What our Democrat friends are forgetting is that in our urban areas, in the 60s, it was the pastors that were the first to say, we have to they saw what it was doing to their young black men, their minority men in their communities. Same thing's happening now. Do. It's just now it's, it's much worse, because we have all this money. We have these, these, this money from advocacy, advocacy groups, left, pushing even further left. And then we're finding out now about all this US aid that's being used to, you know, I mean, essentially off people so that they won't close these policies. And now that all that's going to go away, the backlash is going to be even more powerful and stronger than it would have been, because it's been depressed, wrong?

Brian Nichols  10:30  
Well, and this is where the narrative from folks on the the right really was getting ignored over the past. You know, we'll say few decades, but really over the past four years, especially because we watched firsthand while the government argued, on one side we can arbitrarily shut down all of society because of a scary virus, but on the same side, we can't. We can't quell these, these riots that are taking place across the country in the argument of criminal justice and, oh, by the way, if you do happen to go to one of these protests or one of these riots, don't worry, COVID, the big, scary boogeyman of the time, it won't hurt you because you're out there fighting for social justice. And I think that was the moment Ken that a lot of folks woke up on the right. But you fast forward to the election here in 2024 that we just all experienced, and that narrative really got tested when you have folks like Kamala Harris who would look at the American public, and I'm not going to say lie like it was, it was gas lighting, it was lying. It was bending over backwards to hide from the truth. And you see when people would ask her, Kamala, you were on the debate stage in 2020 versus Joe Biden saying all of these quite radical leftist progressive talking points. And then fast forward just four short years, and suddenly you the sitting Vice President behind Joe Biden has had a complete change of heart, a 180 from your past positions, and you cannot articulate why that is, and that is, I think, when the rest of America, at least, the folks who have some some you know, common sense left, also woke up and said, Okay, enough is enough. It's time to start doing some stuff differently. So let's talk about that right there. Ken, what is the stuff that we are seeing being done differently? Specifically looking at how the Trump administration and the Trump DOJ is approaching bail bond issues in criminal justice across the board.

Ken Good  12:24  
Well, you know, let me start with saying, you know, when this became a really clear issue to me is in the criminal justice world, these same people would argue we should not hold 2122 2324 year old people accountable because their brain is not fully developed till they're 25 but at the same time, the same people are arguing that we should let young children, who are minors, make decisions about their bodies that's going to be life changing and cannot ever be stopped. And then, if you, if you've never seen these same groups, try to justify these two positions by arguing they're different parts of the brains you've not lived and you go, you're just completely bonkers. You've sold yourself to the devil. And I mean the devil you sold your soul to this these advocacy groups, because these advocacy groups like to argue the crime. You know, all these policies will will not increase crime when even common sense says they will So, so what is Trump done to this? First of all, he's put a big spotlight on the issue, and he's he's stressed the importance of of fighting, and he's also talked about going back to what we know, and I've already said this, but the immigration is the biggest thing is been in office for seven weeks. He secured the border in six weeks, and he's shown the world that we don't, you know, we don't need new statutes. We just need to do what we already know, enforce the laws that we already have. And you can see he's starting to do that. I mean, out yesterday, we had this whole awful fight with him deporting, you know, gang members of a Venezuelan gang, and now the news today is there's a constitutional crisis, because Trump didn't turn a plane around when a judge told him to jump. And, you know, I don't want to get into the legal arguments about whether you know Trump, but, but look at the picture. You know, you know, I've always been thought of it as, you know, when, when we have a city, we have a probably about a small group living within that city that's committing 70, 60% of the crimes. So we've got a city within the city of criminals. And then between those two, you've got this gray area where people are deciding, today, am I going to follow the law, or am I going to follow the criminals because they're getting away with it. What the sea change is that Trump is sending a very strong message to that gray area, which is very large, and they're telling them, if you follow the criminals, you're going to be held accountable. And they're seeing it, and they're going, I'm changing what I'm doing. I'm not going to go down that path. And that's. Just invaluable.

Brian Nichols  15:01  
So Ken, we we've mentioned immigration here a few times, and I guess just for the audience who they're maybe not aware or they just they're not in an area where they're heavily impacted by immigration. Just paint the picture for us. How much has the the illegal immigration conversation, specifically over the past 10 years, played into the the issues that we're facing. From a criminal justice standpoint,

Ken Good  15:27  
I would say that probably at least 50% of our crime problem is is, is a result of illegal immigration. You know, we heard about it with Trump saying, oh, Venezuela and the countries emptied their prisons instead of the United States and the press just all said Trump's line. And here we are now, seven weeks into Trump's President second presidential term, and those are all turning out to be true. I mean, can you imagine where countries can just empty all of their prisons into the into the United States? And I'll tell you how bad it got with Biden. I posted a story onto my facebook page during the election, but not, not at the end, and it was about how cartels were not laundering their money in the United States. They were moving their operations into the United States, and they're doing in areas where, you know, California is marijuana, so they're moving their whole operations into California because they've decriminalized it, but they also, because of open borders, they can bring everybody they need to work for them, and they'll go into some national park and they'll take it over. Well, when I push that store, it immediately got deleted. And I'm like, You're is this story being suppressed? Surely not. So I posted again, immediately got deleted. Never one thing about it, until Trump, a few months later, in the presidential election, started talking about it, and now with the election of Trump, not only had I have I been able to post that story, I've been able to do a podcast about it. So, I mean, I just didn't believe there was any suppression going on now in 2024 but I believe there was. I mean, we that's the reason why I think the backlash will be so much bigger and worse for the Democrats if they're not careful, because they were intentionally suppressing news that would have stopped them from doing what they were doing at the time. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  17:24  
well, and this right here, I think you just hit on something that it really does speak to how important it has been to watch folks like Elon Musk put, you know, his, his reputation, and you know his, his his income, his salary, or his, his, his treasure, I guess in this case, on the line, buying Twitter for $44 billion just to be able to make sure there was a platform where folks were able to openly speak their mind, but also to talk about these very real issues that were being not just ignored, but to your point, censored by the corporate media. And you know, I'm genuinely curious, Ken, to see the outcome here of now more and more folks not just being able to communicate freely, but now the stuff that your average person wasn't able to see, now they're seeing it. And in the world of sales, the folks who've heard me do my sales coach and I always teach help people see things that they can't unsee, right? And it's, it's at the point now where your average person has seen so much. They've seen the millions of dollars, as you mentioned, going to all these random non profits from USA ID that. I mean, let's just be real here, it looks like nothing more than a glorified Ponzi scheme or money laundering operation at this point. But then you factor in, you know, the fact that we had 1000s of illegals crossing the border daily, and that number has just dropped off the cliff, and to see that, all it took was people starting to stand up and say no. And you know, it's been, it's not been easy for folks on the more, I'll say common sense side of things, to stand up and speak to the common sense because I think Ken and I would love to hear your perspective here. You know, we had this very strong progressive culture, this leftist culture, that was permeating all the institutions you would turn on your evening news, and chances are that it was bought to and paid for by some progressive mentality or or mindset. You go to your colleges, your your universities, same thing, your your kids schooling, same thing. You go to the workplace, HR departments, same thing, Hollywood, the entertainment industry, same thing. So you have this, this continuation of this leftist narrative that your average person, that's all they heard. So if that's all you hear, that becomes your world, right? That becomes the status quo, normalcy, whereas the folks who were like, Listen, I'm not a radical extremist. I was the normal dude from 20 years. Ago, those people started to speak out more. And then once the floodgates open, Ken, it was over. It was party over. So I'm genuinely curious, do you think that going into 2026, and 2028 that we're going to see even more of a swing back towards, I'll say more, you know, moderate on the left, but even, you know, from a conservative, Libertarian, you know, Republican standpoint, even more of a swing back towards some of the traditional, you know, we'll say right wing solutions that seem to, by and large, resonate with a large base of Americans, just because they are rooted in common sense. You know, I'm

Ken Good  20:39  
very, very optimistic that that's going to happen. But let me tell you something. You know, when Trump was in his first term of office, I think probably the best description I saw of him was that he was doing something he wasn't comfortable doing, that was pretending to be a politician. And, you know, his mouth and he said things that were very non politician, like, I mean, you know, when I voted for him the second time, I was like, you know, I wish he didn't say some of the things he said. But the problem is, Trump is a very intelligent man. He's probably one of the smartest people we've ever had president. And now he's prepared. And now, I mean, the best comment I've, I've heard about Trump during his second term is now he's doing what he knows best. He is putting back together a bankrupt company. And I really think that that's true. Now, the thing that makes me a little bit nervous is there's only been one other president in our history that had two non consecutive terms, which is Grover Cleveland. And Grover Cleveland left office his second term very not liked, or he was not liked, so his poll numbers at the end of his second term were very low. So I'm concerned about that, but, but I think that Trump has the potential to be one of the most consequential, consequential presidents we've ever had. I think that if he continues down the path he is, and if the Democrats continue down the path they are, because I think it's going to take another election for the Democrats to moderate. You can see in their national committee elections, they just had that they went, I mean, they were essentially saying we weren't liberal enough if we did, or if, if, if Harris had not moderated, we would have won. And I think that's a mistake. That's the wrong conclusion to draw. Text of it. The United States is a center right country, at the very least. And they're they've been running at, I mean, in name only as center left. They've been running it from far left. And that's the reason why we've had the backlog, we've backlash. We've had it's going to be even worse, like I've said, because they've, they've pushed it, they've covered it up, they've forced it, and they've they've threatened people to make keep them quiet for a while. And that only works for so long, and then when the truth comes out, there's a lot more anger. So I think if I was to weigh in guess and say, What do I think for a year or two from now? I think that the the depending on the midterm elections, if the Republicans hold the house Katie bar the door, the Democrats may be done for a decade on national elections. So

Brian Nichols  23:18  
Ken with the around seven minutes we have left here for the show, I would love for you to paint the picture to the audience of best case scenarios, right? Let's say Trump and the Trump team continue forward here. We're making some headway in terms of, you know, some common sense reforms, specifically from a criminal justice Bail Bonds perspective, paint the picture of not just the best outcomes, but also looking from a strategy standpoint to make sure that we don't go into this this realm of insanity. Again, what are some things that we can see from a policy prescription to keep us in check, but also to keep us moving on this right path forward?

Ken Good  24:01  
Well, I think the things that we can do is we can trump can use his bully pulpit. He can say, you know, highlight what works and what doesn't, but you also, he's the best thing he's done is focus the FBI again, on crime instead of politics. I mean, I would say the Biden administration spent a lot of time fighting political opponents and not crime, and looking the other way on crime. If you want to argue that Biden knew what was going on, I think the best case scenario going forward is that Trump sends a strong message to the colleges that if you're not going to if you're going to sacrifice public safety in the name of public speech, but it really isn't First Amendment speech. It's all about intimidation for a select few, if that's what you're going to do, you're going to lose all kinds of funding. And I think they will jump in line, because they'll follow the money. And I think that will happen relatively quickly. I. I expect that to be done in the next year. I think from the law enforcement standpoint, you're going to see probably less from Trump, but more from red states as they get a hold of crime. And you see where blue urban areas continue to have problems, and where you're going to see it is crime going up, crime staying the same. But you're going to see it in commercial property values, when commercial property values dropped, and the properties are selling for 25 cents on the dollar, 30 cents on the dollar from what they were selling three or four years ago, that's a recipe for disaster, and those urban areas are not going to be able to go to Washington, DC and ask for a bailout. Trump's not going to do it, because he's going to say, this is your own fault. So I think best case scenario is you're going to see such a disparity between the urban areas and the rest of the country that they're going to be pressured by their citizens to fall in line. And so I'm very hopeful that was that happens, because I've always said the reason why I'm hopeful that criminal justice reform will change courses. What we were doing right then was not sustainable, and I think it's been proven to be true. It wasn't sustainable, and now everybody's changing course and going back to law and order. And I finally, I would say the biggest problem we have is, who do you listen to on crime stops? I mean, we've got all these advocacy groups just have all this money, and probably part of it was from USA, and so that's gone. So that will change, but they they just do these pseudo science, pseudo science reports saying crime is going down. That's absolutely a lie. And so it's, who do you believe? And I would say historically, law enforcement has been the go to place for statistics on crime, and we have to tell the public. If you want to know what to believe on crime, you need to go back to law enforcement. And you know, the biggest problem we've had is these pseudoscience groups are saying, Don't believe them. They're law enforcement. Well, now we're entering a period is believe them, their law enforcement, and I think that's going to happen in the next two, two to three years.

Brian Nichols  27:06  
Ken, is there any concern of for every Yin a Yang, right? Do you see any potential negatives here to move forward where you know what we're seeing from a positive common sense standpoint, today might incentivize people down the road to start flipping policy the opposite way, you know, flip the car right back into reverse to where we came from.

Ken Good  27:29  
Well, I do see some risk, and that is, you know, when the pendulum goes too far to the left, you have too much crime. I mean, crime starts going up, and the public's not going to stand for that. But when you see the pendulum sweep too far to the right then, I think right now is the argument we need to hold more people pre trial detention. We need to hold people, more people in jail, and not let them out. And I think the problem with that as well is the public's not going to pay for that, so we have a happy medium. That's what keeps the pin pendulum from swinging too far to the left, too far to the right. If we had kept the, you know, the filibuster and United States Congress, that would moderate people, because they have to find compromise. But once we got rid of that on a bunch of issues that that that's one of the reasons why we have these pendulum swinging. And so when the pendulum goes too far to the left, it's going to also swing very hard to the right, and that's where we are right now. But I'm very hopeful. I'm hopeful that the people who are making policies currently are making them with good intentions. The one of the reasons why Biden was so at risk during his presidency to litigation was because he was making bad decisions, and he was doing things that he could not do, and he even admitted it earlier that he couldn't do it, but he couldn't get the Congress to do it, so he did it anyway. That's not what Trump is doing with executive orders. He's doing it based upon a statute like, you know, the the one he just did to get rid of the terrorists. It was based on a statute that allowed him to do this. Now they can argue that it hadn't been invoked since World War Two, but it's still a statute on the books that he can invoke and do exactly what he's doing. That's a big difference. And so as a result, I don't think the Democrats are going to have near the success in litigation. Eventually. They're having great success on TROs, but that's because TROs are not appealable once they get to the preliminary injunction, the initial tro has been so watered down, and he's Trump still will win most likely, but that's not about winning. That's about slowing him down. So I think the other than the risk of over detention for people in red, red state. I think we're on a good track.

Brian Nichols  29:44  
Yeah, comparing and contrasting Trump's administration with Biden's administration, it looks like a lot of the stuff that the by administration did was more not from a stroke of a pen, but the stroke of an auto pen. But that may be a different conversation for a different day. Ken good, always a pleasure talking to you. Where can folks go ahead, continue the conversation, learn more about criminal justice bail bonds and all that fun stuff and more. Well,

Ken Good  30:05  
if people want more information about me or my group, we can you can go to pbtx.com, the professional bonds win of Texas. We have a blog where we highlight important criminal justice stories, but we also have our own podcast where all we talk about is criminal justice. There's a link on our menu, but you can also go to the bell post com, and you can see we've been this is our fourth season right now. There

Brian Nichols  30:30  
you go. Good stuff. Well, Ken, keep up the great work. It's always a pleasure having a great conversation. And by the way, folks, yeah, this is showing that The Brian Nichols Show as well as Ken, good. We will. We will do a show regardless of where life takes us or whatever hotel, hotel rooms we end up in. But Ken, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show again. And folks and you got some value from today's episode. Another drill. Go ahead. Give it a share when you do, please tag yours truly at B Nichols liberty. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and over on Instagram, and by the way, for The Brian Nichols Show, you can find us on your favorite podcast platforms as well as video platforms for podcasts, Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, music, wherever it is your podcast content and for videos, head over to YouTube. Head over to rumble, Twitter or, I guess now, x or Facebook, which, by the way, we are live streaming all episodes over on Facebook, X and rumble when they air Mondays and Friday evenings, at 8pm or, I'm sorry, 8:30pm EST, there we go. So make sure you set your calendar. We'll have those new episodes air every Monday and Friday evenings. And other than that, go ahead, shoot me any of your your questions, your comments at Brian, at Brian Nichols show.com and of course, thank you for commenting on and sharing today's video with that being said, Brian Nichol, signing off here on The Brian Nichols Show for Ken, good. We'll see you next time. Bye.

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