Griffin 042726 11AM

I'm one of the brightest men in America on hold. And he's a local guy. He's a brilliant commentator for CNN. And he was there Saturday night, David Urban. Before we get to him, I want him to hear this clip because he'll have his take on this. This is last night. This is Nora O'Donnell and Donald Trump. Listen. The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this quote, administration officials, they are targets. And he also wrote this. I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction to that? Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you're horrible people, horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. I'm not a pedophile. Excuse me. Excuse me. I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with... or stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let's say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, you know, I'll do this interview and they'll probably, I read the manifesto. You know, he's a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I'm not any of those things. And I was never, excuse me, excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that on 60 minutes. You're a disgrace. But go ahead. Let's finish the interview. The other thing that he wrote in the end. You're disgraceful. Okay. David Urban, one of my boys, this post from Senator Dave McCormick, David Urban was nearly glowing. He went to West Point, served in the 101st. He simply wasn't about to let anything bad happen to us. I believed him. You were there Saturday night. Before we get to McCormick, I want you to tell me was Nora's question appropriate, sir? You know, look, it's all about timing, right? I think, you know, this is a man who is now almost shot and killed, you know, this is not like Butler, but an attempt on his life again. uh the third time um so so i you know i don't know i think there's there's a timing question here you know marty um they did this right afterwards probably a little raw um i i think that perhaps the president was um exhausted a little p oed about the whole thing right and um and so i would have you know i saw nora that night i was i talked to her during that kind of after the event she was sitting pretty close to me. So, if it was me asking the questions, I would have focused on different things, right? I mean, clearly what the guy wrote in his manifesto is he's some mental hygiene issues. Let's just put it that way, right? He's got some real issues. And so reading what he wrote,

How does that add to anything? I mean, the guy's nuts, right? He clearly went there to hurt and harm the president. So throwing in the salacious thing that he's a pedophile, he's this. She could, she could a phrase the question differently, I think, and accomplish the same goal. Yeah, but is she there to babysit him, sir, or to read from a manifesto the man wrote that he brought up in the interview? Yeah, well, I mean, he could have said, listen, there are lots of terrible things in the manifesto, which people can read online if they'd like to. But why? Why? What are we doing here, man? I don't know. I just don't add, there's a period in value there. Like, I'm not sure what that adds to it. I see both sides. I know what you're saying. I'm not here. Listen, I'm not here to, I'm not here to like the president takes lots of tough questions every day. He's a grown man. Right. I just think that there's some things that, you know. There's a reason they don't read these things on TV. There's a reason they'll put it out there. They don't want to encourage other crazy people. They don't want to get people ideas. They don't need to get in the weeds on this BS because it's the ratings of a lunatic. If you want to go read Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, you can go read it, right? If you want to read what Luigi Mangione wrote, you can go read it, I'm sure. But no one's reading it line for line. I think there's a... There's a way to accomplish journalism. There's a way to ask tough questions without getting into the perient nature of just like, you know, the salacious kind of stuff that... And to your point, to your point, I watched you yesterday afternoon extensively. Embarrassed the president. You did a fantastic job yesterday and I watched you. Cool, calm, and collect. However, I watched Scott Jennings. He immediately went into the gutter. Blamed this entire scenario. Blamed all this hate in America. on Democrats. And you brought up, you brought up the governor of Pennsylvania, and someone else brought up the House Speaker in Minnesota. Until we hold hands together and say, all of this sucks, we won't make progress, will we, sir? Oh, it does suck. It does suck. And somebody, you know, um, said, you know, people point out on my team, on the Republican side of the aisle, look, nobody tried to kill Barack Obama, nobody tried to kill Joe Biden, nobody tried to kill this person, that person, and now we had three attempts on Donald Trump's life. They've killed Charlie Kirk. They would try to, somebody tried to break into Brett Kavanaugh's house and kill him. And it seems, right, if you're a Republican, it seems that it's pretty one side. Unless you're Josh Shapiro. No, no, listen. Unless you're Melissa Hartman. No, no, listen, Marty, I said it, right? You did. Josh was within, you know, minutes of being burned up, right, killed his whole family by some crazy person. So listen. It's to be condemned on both sides. Everybody, we need to, and this is at the point of this weekend, right? Everybody says, oh, look, everyone's so cozy in D.C. Well, no, it isn't cozy. It's like going to fight when you're boxers, and they send you to your neutral corner for a little bit, right? This is a point in time in Washington, where we need more people talking to one another. We need people to understand one another. We need everybody's not the enemy, right, Marty? Right on.

So, you know, whether it's MS or Fox or CNN, like I take pride in being on CNN because I think CNN tries to call balls and strikes and go down the middle, maybe a little bit, it's a little bit left to center. But, you know, they try their best. All right. I don't want to lose you here, man. Recap, recall what you recall from Saturday night. Where were you and what you remember happened? I was right up. So I was sitting right up front, Marty. I was literally from the first row right in the vice president was right in front of us. And I was sitting with them. Some folks right behind me was the Secretary of DHS and Brett Baer is sitting next to me. On the other table was Dana White and Secretary of Defense. I was right in the middle of cabinet up front. And I was looking down at my food and I heard pop pop and I looked up and there was like a, we were in the very, very front of the room. So right next to the dais, right? And so when I look back, this is a huge baller, Marty. People don't understand 3,000 people in this room. So it's a big space. And it looked like the wave. You know, you've seen the wave at a football game. Of course. People were going down. You know, you've seen dominoes had dominoes fall. It looked like dominoes falling across the room. People were just hitting the deck from left to right. And then lots of security guys saying, get down, get down. People have their guns drawn, handguns drawn. And as soon as my head pivoted back to the right, up to the dais, you know, tons of people running on the stage with guns. I pushed, there was three women with me, ambassador from Kuwait to other women. I got them under the table. I am, this article that's in the free press, Dave McCormick's talking about Bari Weiss, who's the head of CBS. um called me her hero because i kind of laid on top of these women and told them like everything's going to be okay i i was joking with my said listen i went to west point i was within the 101st i was in the army you know they were kind of joking urban's a tough guy and and he's going to take care of us and i told them you know i saw the long guns got the the president has a um like a SWAT team that comes out. It's called the cat team, cat team, right? And they came out. They had the long guns drawn. When I knew when those folks were up there on the stage, we were perfectly safe, I tried to realize that there was a woman who was a waitress. She was kind of like crying next to me as well. I told her to calm down. It was going to be fine. And she tried to keep calm. That first five minutes, Marty was pretty tough. I'll tell you, having been, you know, a guy in the Army, haven't been, I was in the Senate in 1998 when A crazy person ran through on the house door, shot officer chestnut in the head, killed somebody else, ran around, shot people up. Marty, I was in the Senate on 9-11 when we were told there was a plane coming for the Capitol. One month later, I was in our own inspector's office. I was exposed to anthrax. I had to take Cypro for 90 days. So I've been around a little bit of stressful events in my life, right? David, can you hang through the break? Can you hang? Yeah, sure, sure. It's important stuff. You've got to hear more from David. He is the man. Folks on the left try to blame Trump for all this violence and hate. Ask Ron Layton about that. He was live 20 minutes ago. He protected four presidents. He said the fastest increase in death threats he ever saw in his career came toward Barack Obama. David Urban was there. Saturday night joins us. Folks love the second guest, the Secret Service. Ron Layton said they did their job. Did they, sir?

Oh, 100%. I will say this. Marty, you know, I was, as I was, you know, the people were, there's women that had kind of pushed him under the table. Had my hands on their kind of backs and was kind of kind of comfort him because it was pretty scary that first five minutes when no one really knew what was going on. And, you know, there were a lot of guys with guns running around telling everybody to get down, get down, shouting. you know, tables getting knocked over, things being broken, pretty chaotic that first five minutes in the room. I saw the service, you know, jump into action. And when they were out, when they, um, Counter assault team was up there. You know, the guys look like SWAT guys up there, had their long guns drawn. I was telling the people at the table. I said, everybody just relax. We're super safe. The Secret Service has us. They're protecting us. They're protecting this room, right? They weren't really protecting us. They were protecting the president, who was in the back still, hadn't evacuated the building. The president was in the whole room back there for a while. The president actually wanted to come back out. I know in firsthand, first account, that he wanted to come back out and finish the dinner. I saw that. And he was arguing with the Secret Service. Come on, man. And the Secret Service wasn't going to let him go. But so the Secret Service is up there. Long guns drawn. And I told him being at our table, I said, you know, these guys are experts. Nobody's hurting us now. We're safe. And that was a good feeling. It was good to know that they were there. I think they did an incredible job protecting the president. Listen, you can debate the perimeter stuff, right? The hotel. Symantics, exactly. Well, it's a pretty porous. You know, there's an active hotel that one of the people have to get screened. If you're a guest, you know, there's a separate kind of different entrance. And the issue becomes where the perimeter was inside the hotel. It's a big, big hotel, looks like a convention center. And so could they have had the magnometers push back a little further, maybe? But listen, the system worked, right? The guy. Didn't get close. He was a floor above the ballroom, right? He was a floor above everybody, right? And so, you know, he got taken down now. Someone said, oh, they should have bike racks. So he had this serpentine through. Well, you have to also figure out. You've got to get 3,000 people in and out of this room in a pretty, you know, expeditious manner. But I think about going to any sporting event. You go to the, you go see the Penn's play. Or if you go see the Steelers play, right? You're getting into the bucks play. It's hard getting in and out of these stadiums. And they don't do that pair. Listen, if some bad person wants to do bad things, they're going to figure out how to do it and gain the system. This system ultimately worked. Men and women in law enforcement who were there did a great job. One of them took a bullet to the chest, right? So these people put themselves in front of their protectees. You know, they would land on top of their protectees, making sure everybody got out. They did. They performed phenomenally. I would not blame the Secret Service here at all.

you know, want to cause harm to me, right? And, um, it is, it is, and I think I'm a pretty reasonable guy, Marty. Um, if you watch me on television, my opinions are not, I'm kind of, I'm, I'm a, I'm a normal guy from Aliquippa, right? Hope Fever County, right? I'm, you know, we could go, go out of a fish sandwich at the oyster house. I think, you know, I wanted to bar there or, you know, sitting in the restaurant side would agree that 99% of things I say, but yet, People find something to pick on or they believe something about me is not true. And then they send emails or tweets that are pretty aggressive in terms of my personal safety. And so. People who serve in public office, people like you, Marty, I'm sure you get stuff, right? You get emails, I'm sure, full of vitriol and they borderline. Look, a lot of people are smart, but send me email saying, I hope you and your family die slow cancer. I hope your family has this. I hope your family has this. They don't cross one. Then I get some people that say, I'm going to track you down and kill you, right? Those are the people that get the FBI treatment. But it's never been this ugly, has it, sir, ever. No, no, no, no, Marty, I've been doing this. Listen, I worked for our inspector. He was not the most popular guy. Completely agree. Completely agree. But yet, we never, ever had people, you know, but there was never a constant threat of some physical harm like there is now Charlie Kirk and others, right? We saw it happen, President Butler in our backyard, Marty and Butler. David, you know, my man, I got to go, brother. Not acceptable, man. All right, buddy, love you, man. Fantastic. And, Marty, thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for doing what you do, always. You're a mom-man, brother. David Urban. People in Pittsburgh appreciate you. See you, buddy. Later. So, cordial. A portal. Bap, ba, bum, bum. Grab that, please. Rich ship come. Thank you, young lady.

I want to talk about the NFL draft. Big picture stuff. Okay? I was there quite a bit at Arts Landing downtown all over. Loved it. Massive success. Massive. Very few arrests. Insane work by police. Insane. But drama nonetheless, I posted this video from the south side. Whoa. Oh. Man. The state police moved in there like they were assault. It was like an invasion. Horses. Crossing the street, men, guns, you name it. Swat cars to move out this mob with bad intentions. I had to grab the unofficial mayor of the south side of one of my boys, Rich Chupka. Rich call back. I just hung up on you. It wasn't intentional. It was not intentional. There he is. My man. Marty. Sorry about that. That was my fault. That video, the state police, wow. That was major, sir. How many people do they have out there? I think they had 28 horses. Wow. Yeah. It was nice. You say it was nice. Why? Well, it stops all the shootings and all the violence. And we could use that every weekend, actually. What time was that? That was late, man. That was, what, 2.30 in the morning? Yeah. And they were sent there by whom? Well, I'm assuming, you know, the governor. Or, you know, they might have been over at the draft. And then they brought them from there over to there. There were, am I exaggerating? There were thousands of people on the streets. Oh, yeah. I mean, Marty, that's like that every weekend. For seven years. So some of these folks argue why are you doing this to us? We're just having fun. Well, 30% vacancies, three murders in seven months, at least 20 fights on Friday night. That's what's fun. In other words, it had to be done, sir. Oh, yeah. It's been overdue. It's been seven years of chaos, lawlessness. Seven years. And they committed to that because of the draft? I think, you know, killed two birds with one stone. They had them at the draft for cry control. And soon as the draft was over, they brought him over to side. It was intimidating as hell, wasn't it? What's that? It was intimidating, if you're in that crowd. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, we need it. We need it over here. Every single weekend, sir. Absolutely. I mean, we got a, we got a seven years, a five block area that we can't figure out how to fix. So now they're telling me the mayor approved this and you know this to shut that five block area down in essence and search everybody that comes through between 12th and 17th Street. Pretty soon. Next couple weeks. Are you cool with that?

Well, they have good intentions, but in theory, it works, but in practicality, it will not work. And then you're going to take the traffic off of East Carson and put it into the residential areas, which will make it worse for the taxpayers of Pittsburgh. All right. So you know the narrative of the draft. A significant number of businesses kicked ass, and a significant number of businesses got their ass kicked. In other words, no one showed. Why, sir? Traffic patterns and road closures. That's what the, you know, that's what the main reason is. And the massive crowd moved from the buses to the point, to the north shore, back to the buses, to the Exactly right. And so no one was going to the strip. No one was going to Lawrenceville. No one was going to Bloomfield, right? Right. I mean, it wasn't an event for the whole of Pittsburgh. It was an event for the NFL and downtown Pittsburgh. Yeah, but let me tell you what you did. And this is why I love you. You created your own damn events. You created your own hype. You created your own revenue, and you didn't whine and complain that you were losing money, did you, sir? Yeah, exactly right, Marty. Right? You did the dirty work? Did you not, sir? Yep, absolutely. And these businesses that just expected people to show up, didn't, did they, sir? You know, I mean, you can't rely on the city to do anything right. You have to do it on your own. But you did, and you marketed it, and you kicked ass. Did you not, sir? Yeah, it was like five St. Patrick stays in the rough. So I love you. My man gets it. Thanks, brother. Thank you, Marty. My man. One of my boys was there all weekend, Carlos. And Carlos is a smart man. And Carlos sees what Rich saw and what I saw. My brother, this event was not for everyone in terms of money in their pockets, was it, sir? I think so. I mean, a lot of people were hopeful that it would be, and sometimes the way the media portrays, you know, certain things gets a little bit more hype around it. But, I mean, all in all, for me being down there the two days, first of all, I think 75 to 80% of the people down there were from Pittsburgh. I agree. Or at least Steelers fans. I don't know how many were from Pittsburgh. Richie Chupka's wife and my wife grew up together. So hold on. So hold on. You just mentioned several things. Number one is why I love this man. That's why the hotels were at 60% occupancy and not 95%. Folks either did it as a day trip.

Or stayed in the suburbs, right? And then came in on buses, right? 100%. Then you got other factors like, you know, the casino trying to charge $250 for parking and people just like knee-jerk reactions to things. And sometimes it does more harm than good. And like Rich said, it was an event confined to that area. It's like, you know, if you go to Bloomfield Little Italy days. The guy, the bars in South Side can't complain that nobody's over there for that week. Boom. Boom. Understand the dynamic. Understand the math. They ain't coming from the North Shore into Lawrenceville to have a pizza, are they, sir? No. No, there were so many places, yeah, there were so many places around North Shore and then like the first block of like six, seventh and ninth street, you know, close to Fort Duquesne Boulevard, like that first block between Fort Duquesne Boulevard and Penn Avenue. Those restaurants and businesses did good. But I think like outside that, if you drove a couple blocks away, you wouldn't even have known there was a draft in town. And then there's the guys downtown. My man that knows the jazz bar in Penn Avenue. Well, they shut down Penn Avenue. He got screwed. Completely screwed. Bad. Yeah, that's unfortunate. Bad. But Carlos, I told my wife this. The crowd was like an amoeba. The amoeba moved from the buses to the point. From the point to the North Shore. From the North Shore back home. Yes, sir? Yeah, that's what it was. I mean, and they did a great job. The city did, the public transportation. I mean, there's nothing anybody could say wrong about how they, how they facilitated all that, and the logistics and the flow of people from Point State Park to North Shore. It was set up beautiful, and they did it right. I give them a lot of credit. The mayor and everybody else involved, they did great. And you said this too, and you nailed it. The casino screwed themselves. I got messages from employees over there who made no tips this weekend. Why? Because no one gambled. Why? Because they said, screw you. We're not paying $250 to park, right? Should have been free parking. Right on. People are going to go in there and spend money. They like, whoever thought of that's a bad business, you know what I mean? Like you can't, like I do, and I've said it all this whole time, I make my business about relationships, not money. They went straight for the jugular, got greedy, wanted a, you know, quick, quick score and shame on you. That's what happens. Here's what I would do. fill up the parking lot. And if you have five spaces left, then charge $250. But make sure you got your money first, right? Yeah, for sure. I saw you down at that event Wednesday, and I saw that sign parking $250. It's like, I've gone to a lot of Super Bowls, national championship games. I go to a lot of events.

the last 20 years, let's say. I've never seen parking that high for something like that. I don't even know what they were thinking. That was crazy. Shame on that. Pragmatic, awful decision. Carl's my man. Thanks, brother. Thanks, Martin. He nailed it. Truth to power. My friend Josh owns this insanely cool club on Penn Avenue that we love, quite frankly. It's called Con Alma Jazz right downtown on Penn. They got screwed. They did. No argument. Why? The city shut down, blocked off Penn Avenue. Insanely screwed. Might as well just shut down. Had no reservations. Completely hosed. There were people. That, and by the way, it's not like this guy hadn't been screwed before. The homeless have destroyed the facade. Drunks and thugs and junkies have started fights right right at his doorstep. And so to add insult to all this insanity, they block off his street and his restaurant. You could have shot a bowling ball through there and not hit anybody. Totally screwed. Hotels downtown. Massive disappointment. Massive. By Saturday. Rooms that sold for 12 to 1,400 bucks. I'm not kidding. Three months ago. 150 bucks. By Saturday. Hotel rate 65 to 70% full. They expected 90%. By Saturday, some hotels were offering employee rates, 50 bucks. Same with parking. Parking that started out of $250, ended up at $30. Parking that started out at $20. ended up at 12 bucks. To Carlos's point, they got greedy. Their mouths were watering. They were counting money, and it never, ever, ever materialized. However, comma, in direct proximity to the event, the restaurants, the clubs, the joints, slammed, packed. 6x the revenue. I got a text from a winery on the north side. They were promised you'll get five times the revenue. No one came. No one showed. Here's the deal. Most people came to the draft to go to the draft. It's almost like this. Most folks that go to Kennywood don't eat at restaurants around Kenneywood. Why? Because they're in Kenneywood. The same thing happened for this draft. At the end of the day, folks stayed in hotels outside the city. South Point was jammed, overbooked.

They took buses into the city. They went right to Point State Park or Market Square, and then they went across the river and watched the draft. Then they did the same thing at night and went home. They did not stay at the hotels. They did not matriculate into the venues around the city, Lawrenceville. They just didn't. The strip got screwed. The strip was dead. But here's my thing. Folks go to the event to go to the event. If the city promised you revenue, they were full of it. I was downtown, for the most part. Anything outside of Market Square was dead. That being said, this city kicked ass. This city hit a home run. This city did an insane job. The cops, love you all, state police, the feds, the sheriff, the county crushed it. Problem areas. Once the cops go away, Market Square could be bad. I'm just saying. The teens decided that Market Square is their playground and when they get there, they're going to kick someone's ass. And that's not good. Somebody better have a long-term plan for Market Square or it's going to get ugly fast. Believe me.