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Death of a Dog
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 20, 2017
“Charlie Manson is on death’s door,” I heard Friday evening from various sources. “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” was my first reaction, followed this morning with grim satisfaction that at 83 years old, the monster was dead. Good riddance.
Puerto Rico Me Encanta
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 25, 2017
My first thought was for my own family. When Hurricane Maria took aim at the already Hurricane Irma-battered island commonwealth of Puerto Rico I was filled with despair. “How much can these poor people take?”
Breaking: OJ Parole
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 19, 2017
Few covered the Simpson double murder Trial of the Century as closely as I did, from 1994-1997. The night of the civil court verdict finding him liable, ‘Rivera Live’ my CNBC show beat the broadcast networks and set a ratings record that lasted until a presidential debate 19 years later.
Texas Anti-Sanctuary Laws
by Geraldo Rivera | May 28, 2017
Texas is about to enact the nation's toughest anti-sanctuary city law. in the nation It not only allows cops and sheriff's to question the immigration status of anyone, anywhere, at anytime, it also specifically makes it a crime for a local cop or sheriff to refuse to detain an undocumented immigrant who was otherwise eligible to go free.
Wiretapping Allegations
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 04, 2017
Woke up to a new blizzard of tweets from President Trump alleging his offices in New York were wiretapped by the Obama Administration. Don't know if that is true
Time is right for immigration reform
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 28, 2017
Hi sorry I've been away. In London at the moment, back tomorrow night to battle Bolling on O'Reilly Wednesday evening. I'm writing now because I just heard President Trump say the time is right for an immigration reform bill.
Trump, Russia, & General Flynn
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 15, 2017
During the drip drip of Watergate, every time President Richard Nixon seemed about to survive drowning, a new tsunami struck. Every time President Bill Clinton seemed about to float out of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, another wave of bimbos hit. Now that
Calhoun College name change
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 13, 2017
The following series of tweets indicate why I resigned a prestigious, though informal and largely honorary position at Yale University's Calhoun College. Named for one of the towering figures in 19th Century America, the college had been
Weekend Interlude
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 06, 2017
After sweet Superbowl weekend interlude on the sweet island, heading back to be with pal Sean Hannity tonight. Have to find my game face to talk refugee ban
POTUS needs Latino members
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 25, 2017
Disappointed that President Donald Trump has not yet seen fit to name a Cabinet-level or even high-ranking Latino to his inner circle. The nation's largest minority group, about 18% of the entire U.S. population is an integral slice of the American pie.
President Trump's Inauguration
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 20, 2017
Fun celebrating the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States, who I have known for four and a half decades. I join my Fox News Pals Colonel Oliver North, Eric Bolling, and my BFF Sean Hannity in congratulating Donald Trump and wishing him and the new first family of the United States the very best.
POTUS #45 Inauguration
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 20, 2017
Inauguration went off without a hitch. The ceremony is truly majestic. This really is an extraordinary country. Crowds were thinner than 2013 and maybe half 2009, and not diverse at all. There's no disguising
Obama did the right thing
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 17, 2017
President Obama did the right thing regarding General James Cartwright and Chelsea Manning. Manning did a terrible thing in divulging American Secrets. On the other hand she has already served 7 long hard years behind bars.
Time with the President-Elect
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 14, 2017
Great spending time with the president-elect yesterday afternoon. He started by joking that I look better without the beard. But then he went right into a serious discussion about how
Ft. Lauderdale Murders
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 07, 2017
Ft. Lauderdale Airport Perp was agitated- disoriented -diminished capacity-charged w domestic violence-demoted and drummed out of service and walked into FBI and told them he was hearing ISIS. And still he was allowed.
President Elect Donald Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 05, 2017
My friend President Elect Donald Trump is our legitimately elected leader. He has the opportunity to continue to defy expectations and the pundits and have a great presidency, for which we should all be cheering.
Now Begins POTUS 45
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 01, 2017
So now begins America's Great Adventure of POTUS 45. What kind of president will Donald Trump be is the question the whole world is asking? I'm reasonably confident that he will be just fine, people have to give him a chance. Be open-minded.
Kanye goes to Trump Tower
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 13, 2016
While it should have been weird to see Kanye West and his entourage march into Trump tower this morning, because the President-Elect is uniquely grounded in show business, it seemed as natural as, say, Rick Perry being named as Energy Secretary.
This morning's appearance on Fox & Friends
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 10, 2016
1- While it is certainly true that the President-Elect won by a landslide in the Electoral College and it is also true that the CIA blew the assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, still don't we want to know
Bravo Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 07, 2016
A dream comes true for the Dreamers. They are the undocumented immigrant kids given protection from deportation by an executive order called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). There are about 744,000 of them
Selective Conservatives
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 28, 2016
Conservatives have a way a being very selective when it comes to which tyrants are reprehensible and which are approachable.Has for example speaker Gingrich recently spoken out about the oppression in China?
RIP Fidel Castro
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 26, 2016
RIP Fidel Castro, a far more nuanced man than his obituaries indicate. The most important Latin American leader since Simon Bolivar. Yes he violated the rights of many of his people, usurped vast swaths of private property, killed, trampled on freedoms and brought us all to the brink of nuclear war.
A Tale of Two Disses
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 21, 2016
What happened around Vice President-Elect Mike Pence's visit to "Hamilton" is hugely overblown. From folks in attendance, it is clear that Governor Pence was already out of the theater when the statement begging for unity and comity was read for the audience.
Trump's Cabinet Choices
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 19, 2016
President-elect Donald Trump has the right to choose anyone he wants for his Cabinet and inner circle. He has earned the right to make those choices. Having said that, there is no doubt but that the people he has selected have come from the Hardline segment of the Republican Party.
Sanctuary Cities & Intellectual Laziness
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 14, 2016
Folks criticizing Mayor Rahm Emanuel for re-stating Chicago's status as a Sanctuary City do not even bother to analyze his stance in legal terms.Basically, a Sanctuary City is a city that refuses to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Trump Triufo, Immigrante Miedo
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 11, 2016
Going to a Broadway show last night, my way across Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan was blocked by hundreds of angry college-age young people, including many Latinos, protesting the election of Donald Trump. They chanted variations of, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Donald Trump go away!”
Potheads for Hillary?
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 04, 2016
The massive study in the Journal of Drug Issues makes clear that along with the now unstoppable and long overdue movement to end Reefer Madness and its grossly unfair impact on those poor and uneducated people who smoke too much pot, we obviously need a massive and aggressive campaign of public health.
President Obama addresses the crowd
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 03, 2016
Just watching President Obama addressing a Miami crowd, you see clearly how much better he is at politics than either of the current candidates. He is smooth and charismatic in an effortless way. Understanding that he is enjoying a nostalgic wave from the public and the press who already miss him
Traditional Votes
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 03, 2016
For all the anxiety and fretting over Hillary's alleged sleaziness and Donald's purported character flaws, what appears to be happening in the final days of this election is that traditional Democrats, including, but not limited to blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews, college grads, students and suburban women are going back
Fall In Central Park
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 02, 2016
Biked to work thru Central Park, beautiful fall day, all blue sky, sunshine and trees shedding their oranges and reds as they prepare for winter. Theyr'e getting the park ready for Sunday's epic New York Marathon. The city is booming and looks great.
Beautiful fall afternoon in NYC
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 01, 2016
The New York Times still gives Hillary an 88% chance of victory next Tuesday. I'm not feeling that vibe. My sense is that the former Secretary of State's balloon was popped by FBI Director James Comey, and that billionaire businessman Trump has come back from the Access Hollywood dead.
Official U of A Ribbon Cutting
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 28, 2016
Official ribbon-cutting and opening of the park we donated to my alma mater the University of Arizona. The Park is open to everyone in the Wildcat community and we hope it gives the students a quiet spot in the middle of the Big Campus where they can relax and enjoy.
Pot's Time Has Come
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 25, 2016
Back in the 1970's I sat on the board of NORML the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Also on the Board was Jacob Javits
Latest CNN/ORC Poll
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 24, 2016
Latest CNN/ORC poll has Clinton up by 5%. Not exactly the 12% landslide ABC poll had yesterday. Trump's still way behind and would require an historic comeback bigger than any other ever.
Social Media
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 22, 2016
The trouble with Facebook and Twitter- actually all social media to a certain extent- is that it gives Anonymous people the opportunity to vent in a vicious way that they would never ever do face to face.
Hot Mic, Explosive Debate, Donald in Crisis
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 11, 2016
The news that Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic sounding like a dirty old Hollywood pervert hit the race for the White House like an exploding bomb last Friday evening. His unguarded remarks to Billy Bush about how he could molest any women he wanted because of his celebrity destroyed his chance to be the 45th president of the United States. The remarks were raw and they were ugly, even in the context of what he later explained was “locker room banter.”
Not Just Hillary Clinton
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 02, 2016
Donald Trump is not just running against Hillary Clinton. He is running against a more formidable foe, the mainstream media, which means all the major outlets except Fox News and the handful of relevant hard right wing websites. Imagine how daunting it must be to face the entire investigative power of the New York Times and the Washington Post?
First Presidential Debate 2016
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 26, 2016
All things considered this first debate did not disappoint. Forget the noise about her stamina and his lack of readiness. Now it is a question of which candidate will do better on issues of real importance to the American people.There was nothing on her email scandal, or Benghazi or the Foundations or the other scandal stuff that has pre-occupied hours of air time.
Super Bowl of Politics
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 25, 2016
Good morning, I predicted from the very beginning that the presidential contest would come down to Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump. But I never in my wildest dreams expected the race to be this competitive. The polls I've seen today and yesterday indicate that Mr. Trump and Secretary Clinton are in a virtual tie.
Trump on Obama's birthplace
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 16, 2016
Donald Trump's handling of the birther controversy has been disastrous. The momentum that his campaign has been enjoying since Mexico evaporated instantly when he only reluctantly acknowledged that President Barack Obama was indeed a natural-born citizen of the United States.
Hillary Clinton In The Media
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 12, 2016
As a person who thinks Hillary Clinton has been unfairly treated in the media, characterized constantly as shrill and secretive and lacking candor and veracity, I have to say her critics have stumbled on something very important. The diagnosis of pneumonia is serious enough that she was obligated to share it with us long before Sunday's public collapse.
Roger and Me
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 08, 2016
The man we knew as the blustering genius who invented our mighty Fox News Channel is a deceitful, selfish misogynist, if the charges against him are true. And if they are true, then his shame and banishment are well earned.Like virtually all my colleagues at Fox News, I was totally blindsided by his sexual harassment scandal, which is why I responded to Gretchen Carlson’s initial filing of her lawsuit with extreme skepticism.
A Sorry Place In Contemporary History
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 06, 2016
We have come to a sorry place in contemporary history. If you point out how popular culture, including hip hop & rap, glorify the virtue of violent urban life, you are labeled a racist or culturally insensitive. The same thing happens when a commentator points out the obvious structure flaw in the thinking of Black Lives Matter: that the organization cares about Black Lives, first and foremost when those lives are taken by Blue Cops.
Fox & Friends September 3rd
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 03, 2016
Talking points for special appearance this morning on Fox and Friends:Number one the timing of the holiday weekend FBI/State Department document dump certainly seems to suggest that they are trying to minimize the impact of the Hillary Clinton documents discovered.
I am having just woken up unaware of any mitigating Factor to explain away the harsh rhetoric of Trump's Wednesday night immigration speech.
Fox & Friends September 2nd
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 02, 2016
Talking points for Fox and Friends at 8am et today:On Trump's speech and doubling down on his tough message about undocumented immigrants:
Hi as I've been saying Trump speech was great for a primary, but was unnecessarily harsh for a general election. I thought he was much better earlier in the day in Mexico. In Arizona he seemed too strident and unnecessarily harsh.
Donald Trump - What about undocumented immigrants?
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 30, 2016
Donald Trump's immigration policy will be judged by one thing: does it or does it not include Mass deportation for undocumented immigrants?If it does, then there has been no softening of his Draconian position that he has been expressing over and over again in the past year. If it does not include Mass deportation then what is the difference between Mr. Trump's policy and President Barack Obama's policies?
Fox & Friends August 27th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 27, 2016
My talking points for Fox & Friends today Live at 9am1- In re: the Clinton Foundation: Frequency of overlap of her meetings with donors fuels ironclad perception of a quid pro quo. “You give $ to fndn, then you can meet with the Secretary of State.”
The Fndn is ripe for investigation. Republicans in congress should not have wasted so much time on Benghazi baloney.
Trump's Pivot
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 20, 2016
In the last few days Donald Trump has become the candidate I thought he could be a year ago. His speech on Urban America, his statement of regret, his visit to flood - stricken Louisiana and now his seeming moderation of his draconian immigration policies are signs he understands what his campaign has been lacking: compassion, humility, humanity and moderation.
Donald Trump Politics
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 18, 2016
After Donald Trump got the nomination, I was sure that he would pivot to the center. His whole adult life has been characterized by his moderate pragmatic politics. He was a pro choice friend of the Clintons. When he said he had New York values as opposed to Senator Ted Cruz in the primaries for example, that resonated deeply with people like me from the political Center.
Address The Warfare
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 15, 2016
Perhaps driven by the Milwaukee rioting that followed the police shooting of an Armed black man last week, I am hopeful that groups like Black Lives Matter and more mainstream organizations like the NAACP address the internecine warfare that is convulsing neighborhoods in Baltimore, St. Louis, Newark, Detroit and so many other cities, including Milwaukee.
My speech today at the NAHJ/NABJ
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 05, 2016
After knowing and interviewing Donald Trump for decades and especially after spending every day for six weeks with him taping and broadcasting Celebrity Apprentice last year, I admit to feeling a sense of pride when my friend came gliding down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce that he was actually going to do it; run for President of the United States, something he’s been threatening for as long as I’ve known him.
Was Iran paid to free hostages?
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 03, 2016
There is a big controversy currently over whether the Obama Administration secretly paid Iran a bunch of cash to get our hostages released.First of all, getting our folks released is a good thing. I have long thought that the policy that we don’t pay ransoms and that we don’t negotiate with terrorists is too rigid and unrealistic. Better to do whatever it takes, but on the down low, so as not to encourage repeat offenders.
In this case with Iran, it seems we legitimately owed Iran the money from the 1979 arms deal
Hillary Clinton Will Regain The Lead
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 28, 2016
Look for Hillary Clinton soon to regain the lead in the Race for the White House. Too much of Donald Trump's support seems thin and emotional, kind of careening from one news cycle to the next.Last night's Democratic Convention was a Donald-Punch-a-thon that will severely test the notion that the Republican nominee is Teflon Don impervious to criticism.
Even his previous thick skin can not have prepared him for last night's character assassination, which careened from derogatory name-calling, to outright accusations of fraud and greed and worst of all: it was wrapped in ridicule.
Trump's White House Bid
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 13, 2016
Donald Trump's longshot bid for the White House continues to defy the odds. Now surveys in battleground states Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida show him tied or leading Hillary Clinton. Part of Trump's resilience and mini- surge is the constant erosion of Hillary's popularity caused by the cancerous effect of the GOP's insincere but highly effective Email scandalette. Republican attack dogs have created an air of dishonesty about her that has been very effective in wearing down her public morality and credibility.
Mr. President, Guide Our Stricken Nation
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 11, 2016
It is not too late for the president to guide our stricken nation away the chaos now threatening to unravel our integrated society. 1-When he goes to Dallas Tuesday his first priority and focus must be the cops. This was an outrageous assault on the Thin Blue Line without which our world would descend in savagery.
2-Comforting the cops families, who I pray welcome him into their homes, he must stress that cops are not and can not be regarded as the enemy.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 11, 2016
As he is being vetted, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie knows something we don't because of court-imposed secrecy: whether or not he is an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Bridgegate scandal.If he is, then the best he can hope for in a Trump Administration is some relatively low-profile Cabinet level appointment, like Commerce or HSS.
But if he is not an alleged co-conspirator, then he would be a kick ass choice for VP by Donald Trump.
Dallas Police Shootings
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 08, 2016
In Europe on a family vacation, we got confirmation in our early Friday morning that a fifth police officer had died in Dallas, which made this dreadful incident the worst single act of cops being murdered in America since 9/11.Those who are outraged, as every single decent human being should be, by innocent black men like Alton Sterling and Philando Castile dying needlessly in confrontations with cops, must now be at least as outraged by the willful slaughter of these innocent Dallas cops at the hands of an urban terrorist
Ataturk Attack
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 30, 2016
Ataturk is Turkey's largest airport & a major transport hub. It is also the destination for the soon to be renewed flights between Turkey and Israel. I believe there is good possibility that Turkey's current outreach to Israel may have specifically triggered an attack that probably would have been carried out here, there or elsewhere anyway.
Brexit
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 24, 2016
Stunning vote. Shows the power and potency of the Take back our Country movement. Immigration loomed large and will do so here in November. Whether Trump was there accidentally or by prescience, he was in the right place at the right time to cash in on the vote that reflects his own immigration policies.
Trial of Officer Caesar Goodson Jr.
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 23, 2016
As I predicted, the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. for the "depraved heart murder" of 25-year old Freddie Gray has resulted in an acquittal. Since nobody can say for certain when or how the career criminal who attempted to escape received his fatal injuries, the outcome was predictable. Was he hurt when he was initially tackled or when he was dragged to the paddy wagon or during the ride?
Trump's Speech Attacks Clinton
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 22, 2016
Trump's speech just concluded was a scorching, no holds barred attack on Hillary Clinton that accused the former Secretary of State of selling out her country for personal profit.He said she “enriched her family, making you poor.” Essentially, he accused Clinton of bribery, treason and being an accomplice to the murder of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi. She has done nothing right, nothing good. It she is elected, we will lose our country.
Gun Control Vs Terrorism
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 17, 2016
The gun control vs terrorism debate is counter- productive and unintelligent. Is there really any fundamental difference between the massacre at the Pulse Orlando nightclub and the massacre almost exactly one year ago at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston South Carolina?
Pulse Orlando -- 102 Grieving Families
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 14, 2016
Whether it was primarily a hate crime or an act of terror or the result of Muslim immigration or radical Islam or stupidly lax gun laws or a self-loathing closeted cross dressing, wife-beating sociopath, the one fact that everyone can agree is that there are 102 families in various degrees of grieving in Orlando, Florida.
Pulse Orlando
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 12, 2016
En route to Orlando. As the plane door closes 50 are reported dead and as many are wounded in the worst mass shooting in our nation's history. Because the target was Pulse a gay bar it is unclear whether the gunman's motive was Hate or because he is Muslim of Afghan descent, Terror. Whatever, he has committed an act of slaughter that will eventually touch every Americans life.
Hillary Secures Nomination
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 07, 2016
Hillary Clinton has made history, finally securing the nomination that should have been her's months ago. Senator Sanders exposed her vulnerabilities as a candidate. But she has moved dramatically to fix what ails her. She has modulated her tone and she has broadened her appeal.
Her rival my friend Donald Trump has done the opposite.
Muhammad Ali Story
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 03, 2016
As we pray for his speedy recovery and send love and best wishes to his family, here is my favorite Muhammad Ali story:In 1992 after making bail, I got out of jail in Janesville Wisconsin charged with assault for a fistfight with a Neo-Nazi who was also charged.
Upon release I drove to Rockford Illinois to catch a short connecting flight to Chicago.
Speaker Ryan endorses Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 02, 2016
Today was a terrible day for Donald Trump.When he should have been basking in the belated endorsement from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, instead he is embroiled in another unnecessary controversy. This one concerns intemperate words Truimp has been spewing against a sitting federal court Judge Gonzalo Curiel Aside from the folly of questioning the integrity of the federal judge hearing your case, (Trump University class action fraud litigation), to do so on a racial/ethnic basis is grotesquely immature.
Solving the Transgender Controversy
by Geraldo Rivera | May 26, 2016
I have no problem with the federal government declaring that transgender are a protected class, like blacks, browns, Asians, gays, elderly etc. Nor do I have any problem with the bathroom directives. My problem is more basic. What is a transgender person/ I obviously know what the definition is. The problem is legitimacy. How do I know that you’re a legitimate transgender and not just a pervert looking to see girls in various stages of undress. The federal government might lose this lawsuit because of Vagueness. Are we required to treat everyone who says they are transgender as legitimate?
Geraldo Of Arabia: Tora Bora To Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | May 24, 2016
This is an open letter to former Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan USMC (ret.); former Editor, Baltimore Sun William Marimow, and to former Sun television writer David Folkenflik.Subject: Urgent: Lost Tapes Found
Gentlemen,
Beauty and the Beast, when Kate met El Chapo
by Geraldo Rivera | May 06, 2016
Joaquin Guzman, better known as El Chapo is the billionaire drug kingpin who’s Sinaloa Drug Cartel is largely responsible for the terrible scourge of Heroin and Fentanyl flooding the United States. Sinaloa-provided dope smuggled across our southern border is killing thousands of Americans and creating an unprecedented crisis in regions like New England and the upper Mid-West. These are suburban and rural communities that have never experienced anything of the magnitude of the current epidemic. In tiny New Hampshire, for example, there were 400 overdose deaths in both 2014 and 2015, and 2016 is on track to match those terrible years.
The New York Times lies (again)
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 28, 2016
In a story appearing in the Thursday 28 April 2016 edition headlined "Victor in Mayoral Primary Is Ready to 'Get Baltimore Working',” reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes that the apparent winner in the hotly contested Democratic primary for mayor, State Senate Majority Leader Catherine E. Pugh, “stared down Geraldo Rivera, the Fox News anchor, and berated him on national television for ‘inciting people’,” during the devastating 2015 Baltimore riots. Ms. Stolberg concludes that it was the defining moment for Senator Pugh’s successful primary campaign.It is a total fiction.
Clinton Vs Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 26, 2016
Trump is triumphant and the time has come for the GOP to unite behind his candidacy.Hillary Clinton is triumphant and the time has come for the Democratic Party to unite behind her candidacy.
As I said last July, it is Clinton vs Trump in the general election. The American people have a clear choice between the flamboyantly excessive billionaire businessman and the undeniably impressive if sometimes grating former first Lady, Senator and Secretary of State.
This Rough Stuff Ain't Nuthin
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 14, 2016
Everybody is aghast at the alleged threats emanating from the Trump and Sanders campaign or more precisely from their most ardent followers directed against politicians like the so-called super delegates and other professional politicians opposed to their man.It is small potatoes compared to the bare knuckles shown by the “Brooks Brothers Brigade” in Florida in November 2000. They were paid GOP operatives acting as hooligans led by Congressman John Sweeney who physically shut down the recount of over 10,000 votes in Miami.
Trump At NYC GOP Gala
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 14, 2016
You saw a different Trump tonight speaking to the NY GOP Gala. You saw Trump the builder. Speaking in the Grand Hyatt he reminded everyone that it was the crumbling derelict Hotel Commodore until he manuvered to get control of it as a 27 year old novice developer.He re-developed the hotel and saved the neighborhood. He sold the hotel 20 years later for a $143 million dollar profit and remade 42nd street.
He then went on to convert the west side of Manhattan from a mangled rail yard and tracks and wrecked piers and made it into a wonderful neighborhood where Erica and I used to live.
When Race Jokes Became Unacceptable
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 12, 2016
I remember when the world of slang race jokes changed. Back in a galaxy far far away, the USA 1969-1970, I was Co-Chairman of a group of activist attorneys called the Black and Brown Lawyers Caucus. Under the aegis of the Reginald Heber Smith Fellowship Program for Poverty Law administered by the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Law and funded by grants and the federal government, we were legal services attorneys working in our various beleaguered communities to help poor people facing acute problems in places like Landlord/Tenant and Family Court. We were also political activists who monitored the numerous anti-war and civil rights demonstrations for abuse by police.
General Campbell's Retirement
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 08, 2016
A great soldier retired today. General John F. Campbell who I called "America's Spartan" after watching him in dozens of tight spots in heroic action in Afghanistan and Iraq.A superb combat commander, he and his wife Ann also always worked tirelessly to care for, protect and serve the families of our GI's.
He led his troops from the front in some of our toughest battles with flawless courage and distinction.
Wisconsin Primary
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 05, 2016
It looks like Donald Trump has lost the Wisconsin GOP Primary to Senator Ted Cruz. Early returns indicate he will lose by about the 10% predicted by the various polls. But what does it really mean? Only that the selection of the billionaire businessman as the Republican candidate will be delayed for several weeks.When the process comes here to New York and Pennsylvania in two weeks and then New Jersey and finally swings out to the Golden State, California, it is hard to see how Cruz can stop Trump.
Dancing With The Stars Takeaway
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 30, 2016
My main takeaway from Dancing With The Stars, Season 22 is that I probably should not have waited until I was a lame 72-year-old to do the show.The physical challenges of the dance routines are rigorous, the training akin to the buildup to a boxing match. Actually, boxing has the advantage over dancing in that fighting is not as tough, at least not to me — and I was a boxer for 25 years. Getting punched in the face is nothing compared to the embarrassment of missing a dance step on live TV in front of 12 or 13 million viewers, which I did routinely on DWTS.
Happy Monday
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 28, 2016
Happy Monday morning following what I hope was a great Easter Sunday for you and yours. I'm sitting in my Dancing With the Stars' trailer after an early morning camera blocking for tonight's big live show.Yesterday was a fun holiday brunch at the Bel Air Hotel where we stay when we're here on the Left Coast.
The rehearsals have gone well this week, but I fear that last week's disastrous premier might have sealed our doom. If so, you'll see me on GMA from New York tomorrow morning.
A Spirited Routine
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 24, 2016
Week Two on #DWTS @DancingABC coming up. I smiled reading the criticism of #POTUS dancing the tango in Argentina. He was a lot better than I was in my first dance on the TV show. My fabulous partner Edyta and I have been working on a spirited routine for Monday night's show that should improve our scores if I don't choke or stumble. She is a saint, so patient, fabulous and charismatic.
It is not just that I'm an ancient mariner, unskilled and stiff. I also have a lame foot. But this next dance doesn't require much high-stepping so we should be alright. We're certainly going to have more fun doing the routine this time than last. Hopefully, you all will save me with your votes to see another week on the show.
Is Trump A Racist?
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 17, 2016
Contrary to popular mainstream media wisdom, Trump’s populist, anti-free trade, anti-immigrant message may bring the GOP candidate an unprecedented bounty of African American votes, maybe as high as the 25% I expect him to get of the Latino vote.For the media to brand him particularly racist within the context of the Republican Party is hypocritical, intellectually sloppy and ignores the last half century and more of American history.
Sunny Southern California
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 16, 2016
Hello from sunny Southern California where I'm about to begin rehearsals for #DancingWithTheStars. So far it's been very challenging and way outside my wheelhouse, if you get my drift.Even though I am out here to dance, I've got a couple of things to say.
First of all in terms of last night's primary elections, folks just have to stop moaning and groaning about their candidates. Donald Trump is the de facto nominee of the GOP. Hillary Clinton is the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.
No Chance, Sanders
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 08, 2016
Senator Sanders has no chance to win the Democratic nomination despite the fact he may win Michigan tonight. But the strength of his appeal is a function it seems to me of the potency of the protectionist sentiments he shares with Donald Trump. The blue collar is fighting for its life and those men represent their hopes.Speaking of Donald Trump the GOP better get used to the fact that he is the probable nominee of their party.
Major Sack
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 07, 2016
Most of the freedom fighters are a rag tag hodgepodge of civilians that have less discipline, training, experience and organization than a Chicago street gang. They are hapless, clueless and frequently seen retreating at the first shot.They cant even tell the difference between incoming or outgoing fire; they shoot with little or no idea of what they are aiming at; and they are as dangerous to th
A Dose of Reality
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 04, 2016
It is with dismay that I watch the flamboyant exaggeration concerning Hillary Clinton’s E-Mail Scandal. Here is the truth:1- There is no secret Grand Jury investigating her private server
2- There is zero evidence that her private server was hacked by anyone inside or outside the USA
3- There is no indictment pending against anyone, including Secretary Clinton
Romney denounces Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 03, 2016
Mitt Romney was uncharacteristically impassioned in his denunciation of Donald Trump. Seldom has the former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate been more forceful. How ironic that he choose to use that fire to scorch his own party’s leading candidate.
My Encounter With David Duke
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 29, 2016
It was a firsthand look inside a cross burning just outside of New Orleans with the “New Klan” and their Young Leader David Duke. They start off inside the “Patriot Book Store” of the Klan. Duke feels that the country is headed for a depression and people need to secure their homes.
Nevada Republican Caucuses
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 24, 2016
The results from the Nevada Republican caucuses make clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. He will win in Texas beating Senator Cruz. He will win in Florida beating Marco Rubio. And he will win in Ohio beating popular governor John Kasich.His candidacy is a phenomenon of charisma, energy and verve. It is less about anger than it is about a people tired of politicians and the corrupt institutions that are geared toward self service survival and self enrichment.
There is also this: when Trump's mouth moves, the words that come out are the words the listener wants to hear not necessarily what is being spoken.
Major Sack Excerpt
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 21, 2016
Most of the ‘freedom fighters’ are a rag tag hodgepodge of civilians that have less discipline, training, experience and organization than a Chicago street gang. They are hapless, clueless and frequently seen retreating at the first shot. They can’t even tell the difference between incoming or outgoing fire; they shoot with little or no idea of what they are aiming at; and they are as dangerous to themselves and to civilians in the area as they are to Gaddafi’s forces. Driving through the old section of Brega early Sunday morning I was surprised at how lightly manned the road was; where was the Rebel army? Later I learned that they usually show up for work after breakfast in Benghazi. Then they call it a day in time to get home for the evening meal.
The Political Front
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 19, 2016
On the political front, I just wanted to give you my take on what's going on in the race for the White House. Just back from South Carolina earlier this week.On the Democrats side, Hillary Clinton will be saved in the Palmetto State by the black vote. African-Ameriicans make up 55% of the primary voters and among them, President Obama maintains a 90%+ approval rating. That is why Secretary Clinto
Pope Francis, Donald Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 18, 2016
Pope Francis lowered the boom on Donald Trump this afternoon, saying that the billionaire businessman doesn't seem "Christian," because of his harsh stance calling for the rounding up and deportation of undocumented immigrants, not to mention Trump's Great Wall.Francis is my favorite pope in a generation, a man sincerely motivated to minister to the poor and afflicted.
Donald, on the other hand, has been criticized often by me for immigration policies that are draconian and unworkable. But for the pope to say Donald isn't a Christian does seem a bit over the top. Since popes are no longer considered infallible, let me just add that I wish the Holy Father had framed his critique of Trump in ways that did not call into question the man's faith.
SC, Race Role Presidential politics
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 12, 2016
Heading to South Carolina to investigate the role of race in presidential politics.I covered the massacre at Emanuel AME Church. It was a horrifying story that spoke volumes about the awful legacy of hate crimes against black people in the south.
But guess what? I think the south and maybe South Carolina particularly are more evolved and frank about the racial divide than many of us arrogant northerners.
What left an indelible impression following the church massacre--aside from my personal rage at the KKK wannabe creep who perpetrated the crime--was how the congegrants responded; in grief, anger and sorrow, but also with forgiveness and calls for healing. It was stunning to see and deeply impressive.
Saving Hillary From The Bern
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 11, 2016
Afternoon, hope you have some great stuff planned for the holiday weekend. We promised Sol to take her skiing, which is the worst idea ever given that this will be the coldest weekend of the year.In the presidential race, Hillary Clinton's campaign is promising to be more "aggressive" vis-a-vis Senator Bernie Sanders.
I guess that is necessary given the drubbing she received in New Hampshire. But if by more aggressive the campaign means louder or more screechy then their re-boot will have the exactly opposite to the intended effect.
Heroin Panic in the Granite State
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 08, 2016
With the voting about to begin, the people in the first in the nation primary state are demanding to know what the various candidates intend to do about the problem they consider most serious: the heroin epidemic that has been ravaging New Hampshire, where overdose deaths have been an everyday occurence. Unlike so many other issues that are on people’s minds’ across the country, there is no doubt that this plague of overdose deaths is front and center.
With at least 30 already dead this year, 8 overdoses in the last week, what the various candidates are advocating to solve this crisis is front and center in the waning minutes of the New Hampshire campaign.
Old School Cool
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 08, 2016
Bernie Sanders continues to lead big-time in the Granite State, hours before the voting begins in New Hampshire. He is up by double-digits despite a ferocious comeback attempt by Hillary Clinton. The biggest source of the senator’s strength is undoubtedly the millennial generation, roughly those from college age to early 30’s. So why?
The first answer is free stuff. These young people are loaded by college loan debt that is unsupportable and un-payback-able.
Artful Smear
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 05, 2016
It is an "artful smear" to imply that because Hillary Clinton takes donations and speaking fees from Wall Street she is in the pocket of the financial industry. Unless someone can allege one single proven incident in which she has done or not done some official action that favors Wall Street, Bernie Sanders should either just keep his mouth shut or direct his fire at some identified politician who has rolled over for money.As far as Senator Sanders saying Barak Obama has been an excellent president, well, let me just say that POTUS is not given enough credit for the performance of the economy, which keeps churning out new jobs bringing the unemployment rate down to 4.9% from a high of 10% seven years ago. No matter how fast you spin that is a fact, 4.9% is the envy of the world.
Voter Violation
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 04, 2016
Realizing that most of us want to put Iowa in the rear view mirror politically-speaking, there is one lingering issue that could impact the presidential race going forward. Senator Ted Cruz has apologized for spreading the false notion that Dr. Ben Carson was dropping out of the presidential race. Dr. Carson accepted the apology, but Carson continues to voice extreme displeasure at the dirty trick.
Since it's not a crime for politicians to tell lies about each other's campaigns, the Carson flap will go away except insofar as it tarnishes Cruz' image and credibility.
Random Thoughts
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 03, 2016
Random thoughts this morning in New York City:1-School of Rock on Broadway is a great musical. The lead actor Alex Brightman is a star, full of energy and charm and the exuberant kids in the band are awesome. Sol, our 10-year old also says it rocks!
2-There is No Way prosecution in Philly can go forward vs. #BillCosby. Defendant specifically relied on pledge of immunity from the District Attorney when he gave damning self-incriminating statement. There is zero chance any conviction could stand up on appeal.
Trump 2nd Place
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 02, 2016
This was a bad night for Donald Trump because he is a winner and second place is not winning. Plus, his concession speech was inadequately prepared. Saying “I love you Iowa” is not substantive and doesn’t particularly give downstream voters a reason to choose him over Marco Rubio, who also spoke without notes but more intelligently.Senator Ted Cruz carries the night, but it doesn’t feel as if he has momentum does it? He played his trump/evangelical card, with his pastor dad in the lead.
Iowa Caucuses
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 31, 2016
Hi everybody, hope you've had a great weekend. Fox News is programming all Sunday night leading up to the crucial Iowa caucuses. Tomorrow is crunch time for the candidates, but none more than Senator Ted Cruz who has staked all on this unique state, heavily Evangelical and almost all white. If he can't stop an urban New York values sinner like Donald Trump here, then Cruz is toast.He's right about that one thing. If Trump wins here, he wins everywhere else that matters.
On the Democratic side Sanders could surprise with a big turnout among younger voters. But do you know what's weird?
Who Won?
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 29, 2016
To me there are three clear winners of last night's debate and only one was actually on the debate stage.1-Senator Rand Paul was very effective in reminding conservatives that stuff costs money, even scorching the earth of the Middle East. And while I'm not a crazy libertarian, I appreciate the fact that unbridled government power to snoop is probably un-American.
2-Megyn Kelly was also a big winner. She was poised and well-prepared and despite her obvious discomfort over being such a big part of the story, she was a true professional, elegant and smart.
Hannity Tonight
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 26, 2016
I'm at Fox News getting ready to go on Sean Hannity's show at 10pm ET to talk about the bombshell news that Donald Trump will not be participating in Thursday night's GOP debate. His reason is that my dear colleague Megyn Kelly was not fair to him the last time around. He is also responding negatively to a mocking press release that said essentially that Donald has to get over himself and if he thinks Megyn is tough he should wait for Putin and the Ayatollah. A funny line he could easily have laughed off.
Law vs. Hot Air
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 22, 2016
Debating Hillary's Email Scandal with Judge Jeanine this morning on Fox & Friends, I made two points. One: The email scandal that has tarnished the former Secretary of State's campaign is, at its heart, a political rather than strictly legal controversy.
Without getting too deeply in the bushes, there are two statutes most often cited as the "crimes" she is alleged to have committed: 18USC1519 on the Destruction, Alteration and Falsification of certain records; and, 18USC2071 on the Concealment, Removal or Mutilation of records.
Both are crimes that require intent.
There is no proof that she intended to give classified information to anyone not cleared to receive it.
National Review Condemns Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 22, 2016
In an extraordinarily aggressive move, the usually cerebral conservative journal, the National Review roused its forces to condemn the candidacy of Donald Trump. The main angle of the cover-to-cover condemnation of Trump was that he was unreliably conservative. Because the billionaire businessman has evolved on positions ranging from gay marriage to abortion to immigration reform, the NR suggests that he could do it again, that he could back off his harsh stance on Mexican and Muslims and heaven forbid, make a deal with the Democrats.
Trump & Cruz
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 15, 2016
First of all, Donald Trump kicked Ted Cruz' smarmy ass last night. For Cruz to diminish everybody, all of us here and everything about New York City is to attempt to gain advantage by bringing down the single most important city on earth. Trump brilliantly reminded us of that time after the 9/11 catastrophe of the Towers when the entire world rallied to our side. And we rose from the ashes on the strength of their courage and sacrifice.Why would Cruz, who never made a non-public sector dollar, nor ever served in the U.S. military, attack NYC, the city everyone wants to live in or be from, is a mystery to me.
Sean Penn Anger Misdirected
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 11, 2016
Folks are furious at actor Sean Penn and Mexican-American actress Kate del Castillo because they got chummy with El Chapo, the notorious drug kingpin rearrested last Friday. Why exactly is that? Penn was not "acting" as a journalist, he was one when he and the soap star bravely entered the jungle and risked physical and financial harm to pursue the huge exclusive interview with the fugitive who was the most wanted man in the world.
Sean Penn El Chapo
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 10, 2016
Folks are getting mad at actor Sean Penn because he got chummy with El Chapo, the notorious drug kingpin rearrested last Friday. Why? Penn was not 'acting' as a journalist, he was one when he bravely entered the jungle and risked physical and financial harm to pursue the huge exclusive interview with the fugitive who was the most wanted man in the world.Like John Miller, the former federal official, journalist and current commissioner of the NYPD who interviewed the then world's most wanted fugitive Osama bin Laden, Sean Penn is protected by the First Amendment and by custom.
Making A Murderer
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 08, 2016
It was hard to get wife Erica's attention last night, because like millions since it was released on NetFlix in mid-December, she was binge watching "Making A Murderer."My personal opinion and remember it is only an opinion:
Did Steven Avery commit the savage rape, mutilation and muder of Teresa Halbach? Probably.
Did authorities plant evidence, coerce a confession and skew the criminal justice system to insure Avery's conviction? Possibly.
Bravo Mexico
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 08, 2016
Bravo Mexico on the violent takedown of the notorious billionaire drug lord El Chapo. 5 of Joaquin Guzman's thug bodyguards were killed in the intense firefight between them and an elite force of Mexican Marines in Los Mochis a town in Sinaloa State, El Chapo's hometown.Coming six months after El Chapo's escape through an elaborate tunnel from a maximum security Mexican prison, the drug lord must now be extradicted to the United States.
'Natural Born'
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 06, 2016
Despite being born in Canada of a Cuban dad and an American mom, there is no question among any legal scholar over the American citizenship of Senator Ted Cruz.He is a citizen because under the laws of the United States he did not have to be naturalized, that is, despite his birth in the Great White North, no further legal action was necessary to make Senator Cruz an American citizen once he choose to be one.
But here's why I insisted that my son Gabriel and his lovely and talented wife Deb, living in Germany, come home to have their baby, my grandson Desmond in the United States: I want him to grow up to be president and not be worried about a Supreme Court challenge to his legitimacy, which Ted Cruz will surely have to face.
Bill Clinton's Speech
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 04, 2016
When former President Bill Clinton began speaking today during his debut for Hillary 2016 I noticed the slight tremor in his hands. Having suffered health problems in recent years, he seemed more frail than we are used to seeing.But after a kind of rambling, understated start, he spoke with growing confidence about issues, other than Monica Lewinsky.
Like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton is an iconic, historic, larger-than-life character. And while the mileage seems to have taken a greater toll on the president than it has the billionaire of the same age, both are vibrant, vital, forces of nature.
An Empty Piñata in 2016?
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 04, 2016
A couple of weeks ago, I repeated on air and with gusto my long-standing conviction that Donald Trump was going to be the Republican nominee. Teflon Don’s political resilience has defied political convention and made fools of the Washington media establishment and pundit class. His pollperformance is unprecedented, as is his ability to deflect criticism and make it work for him. Every outrageous thing Trump says, whether about Mexican and Muslim immigrants, menstruating anchors or even mocking President Bill Clinton as a monstrous pervert is apparently resonating among the community of GOP primary voters.
My second big picture pronouncement during that television appearance before the holidays was that Hillary Clinton would soundly beat Trump in November. Moreover, I said that the defeat would be so devastating that there would not be another Republican president in my lifetime.
Muslim Vote
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 24, 2015
As I said this morning on Fox and Friends, the Muslim vote in the USA is relatively small, 1.2 million, but they can make a difference in a toss-up state like Florida.Add their numbers to other minorities who tend to lean Democrat, including but not limited to Hispanics, Blacks, Asians and Jews, not to mention pro-choice women of all races, and you must come to the conclusion that demographically/philosophically the country is swinging perhaps forever away from the Republican base.
Donald & Hillary
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 24, 2015
One more thing about the Donald's public schlonging of Hillary; her angry retort, and his finger wagging warning about her going down the road to further confrontation on the issue.Unlike GOP softies like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson and especially Jeb Bush, all of whom Donald devoured with a few bites, Hillary is a tough old bird who's going to be tough to swallow.
Ask Trey Gowdy. You remember him, the ambitious young prosecutor who was finally going to make Benghazi stick?
Why Trump Leads
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 18, 2015
O'Reilly asked me last night why Trump was leading the polls despite his inflammatory remarks about nearly everything and everyone who crosses him.My answer was basically that although Trump says crazy sh*t, he does so with charm, verve, charisma and yes, energy.
He doesn't know a lot of geo-political specifics like who's president of Zimbabwe or what the Nuclear Triad is, but unlike the other candidates, he's done enough complicated, real life stuff that he gives the impression that he'll be able to sort out even the awesome responsibility of being president.
Trump & Bush
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 16, 2015
When no matter what the weaker person did to stand up to the stronger, we used to say that, “X was Y’s “B*tch.” It was a crude way of describing that one was Alpha and the other Beta and it applied whether we were talking about wide receivers going up against less able corner backs or artists more skilled than a colleague or business rivals, where one always got the better of the deal.Forgive me for the crude recollection, but that is what I thought of watching Donald Trump dismissively handle Jeb Bush’s otherwise game, but failed attempt to put the billionaire mogul in his place during last night’s presidential debate.
Callous Disregard
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 16, 2015
The case against black Baltimore cop William Porter was the product of mob violence. How else to explain the charging of this officer with Manslaughter under the absurd theory that he demonstrated (beyond a reasonable doubt) "callous disregard" for the life of Freddie Gray.What was the evidence of "callous disregard" meriting so serious a charge against an officer of the law?
Morning From Foggy Unnaturally Warm NYC
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 14, 2015
So far this global warming is working for the USA Northeast, unless you're a ski resort operator. By this time last year it was freezing and miserable. Last night in Manhattan I walked the dogs in shirtsleeves. My roses are blooming in Edgewater and I regret every day that I put the boat away for winter so early.The impact is all downside though for the drought-stricken regions of Asia, Africa and especially the Mid-East. Ground water is drying up and competition for it is stoking regional disorder. Masses are on the move to greener pastures.
Trump Popularity
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 11, 2015
As Donald Trump rides the wave, it is interesting to analyze his undeniable popularity among Republican primary voters. He has successfully conflated the two most urgent issues terrorism and immigration. By stoking fears of the Outsiders, the Others, he projects the strength Americans crave for protection against their own worse nightmares.The fact President Obama has been unable or unwilling to speak forcefully about destroying ISIS only serves to make candidate Trump seem more effective in contrast.
Too Bad
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 10, 2015
It is with regret and frustration that today I filed a lawsuit against Cumulus Media, the financially troubled company that owns 77 WABC Radio. The company produced and aired my talk show in New York and on the web for four years until November 24th, when they locked me out of my studio although my contract does not expire until December 31st.In a nutshell, the dispute began when the new management of the company reneged on a 2016 deal the former management had negotiated. The news of Cumulus' breach was delivered to me on the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, when I was still in Europe covering the tragic events in Paris that had brushed even my family's life days earlier. That was just one example of the corporate rudeness that is the principal reason I am filing this action.
Donald Trump is a flame thrower
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 08, 2015
Donald Trump is a flame thrower, but he is not fireproof. Facing near unanimous condemnation, for the first time he seems unable to get ahead of the current outrage he ignited when he called for the exclusion of all Muslim immigrants from the United States.I believe to my distress that a significant percentage of frightened Americans agree with Trump and with what is clearly an outlaw, illegal un-American suggestion. But can that populist appeal save his candidacy this time?
I don’t see how. Too many decent, disparate voices within the Republican Party are now heaping scorn and condemnation on the leading GOP candidate.
Declare War on ISIS
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 07, 2015
In last night's speech to the nation, the president called out Congress for not passing a new and specific 'Authorization for the Use of Military Force' (AUMF), in essence a congressional declaration of war against ISIS.In an otherwise unremarkable speech it is a profoundly important point.
Today, various GOP officials are trying to explain why it is not up to them to take the initiative; not their job. It's all on POTUS they say, that President Obama can go forth and make war on ISIS as he has been, justified by the vague and ancient authorizations that followed the terror attacks on 9/11/01.
Presidential Address
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 06, 2015
Tonight the president addresses the nation on the urgent matter of national security in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre. I predict he will complain about guns and violence but offer only token measures to counter the escalating peril of homegrown extremism. We need to take action because in an open society like ours a driven killer regardless of motivation can inflict terrible damage.
The fact is, we have to protect ourselves, especially our children like banks protect gold and money. That does not mean more armed citizen vigilantes, which will only lead to more tragedies as well-meaning amateurs make mistakes or leave weapons where children can get access.
What we need is a vastly expanded professional security system to supplement law enforcement. All schools, government offices and businesses, including restaurants and clubs above a certain size should have an armed person charged with security in the event of an emergency.
In a school it could be a coach or off-duty cop or teacher or administrator with appropriate training.
We Are At War
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 05, 2015
Morning, slept in for the first time in weeks and awoke to a barrage of negative comments here and on twitter about my various posts. Discounting the comments made by the usual Shrivel Souled Trolls, there is a legitimate debate raging about the proximate cause of the mass murders that afflict our nation.Yes we are at war with the savages of ISIS and with anyone else who wants to do us harm. Clearly, the long arm of Sunni Muslim extremism reached deep into the soul of San Bernardino and tore our guts out.
We must destroy ISIS. As I have written here countless times it represents an existential threat to civilization.
But ISIS didn’t attack the children in Connecticut's Sandy Hook or the Umpqua Community College in Oregon or Rep. Gabby Giffords' campaign headquarters in Tucson or the folks in the movie theater in Aurora or the black folks in the Charleston church or the Iraq vet, cop and mom at Planned Parenthood in Boulder.
GunsRUs
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 04, 2015
How did the Second Constitutional Amendment ratified in 1791 and designed to protect the newly liberated United States from falling prey to tyranny get bent 224 years later into protecting the gun rights even of people on the Terror No-Fly list, and abusive spouses against whom there are orders of protection, and psychiatry patients? Why is it easier in most states to get a gun license than it is to get a driver’s license? Drivers at least have to demonstrate some level of competence. They can only drive when they’re sober. They have vision, road and written tests.
Cars have to be registered with an owner’s name attached. Every time a car is sold, the registration has to reflect the change of ownership. Why don’t guns and bullets have to be registered?
The Paris attacks changed everything
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 02, 2015
As I write this from Paris, in London the Parliament is debating a dramatic escalation of the War against ISIS, as Britain votes to begin bombing the terrorists in Syria as well as Iraq. In that expected approval of bombing, Britain joins France and Germany in declaring war on the savages who wrought such bloody havoc here in the City of Light on Friday the 13th, killing 139 innocent civilians and injuring hundreds more.For Germany, the declaration is especially dramatic given the generally non-military stance taken by the German Republic for the last 70 years. Now, Germany is sending more than 1,000 troops and an armed frigate to support the French aircraft carrier already on station to escalate the fight against ISIS.
Paris Press Conference
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 01, 2015
#POTUS just concluded lame presser in#Paris. The questions allowed were mild. The answers given were predictable. The highlight? That climate change is solvable.The result of the non-presser is the world missed a chance to get real news.
Mr. Obama just met with the Turkish president Erdogan. During presser POTUS conceded that #ISIS oil is going through a 90 kilometer portion of the #Turkey border.
So #POTUS agrees with Russia President #Putin that Turkey is double dealing and financing our ISIS enemy.
Didn't President #Erdogan just say he would resign if it was proven that Turkey was buying and protecting ISIS oil? Should Erdogan resign?
Donald Trump’s political
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 30, 2015
I have been very forgiving of Donald Trump’s political incorrectness because it is fresh after all the canned politics we’ve been exposed to in the modern era. He treated my family and me so well during the six weeks of Celebrity Apprentice. He’s blunt and out-spoken, and unconventional and a great family man. His kids are great. My kid goes to school with one of his grandkids. He’s a New Yorker. I’m a New Yorker.And so I treated him like an old friend and didn’t get mad when he said that outrageous comment about Mexican drug dealers and rapists. I begged him to apologize and said I couldn’t vote for him until he changed his position, but I didn’t lose hope that he would see the error of his ways.
Hot Time in Paris
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 29, 2015
Different folks have different ideas about what’s responsible but there’s no doubt about one unavoidable fact, 2015 is going to be the hottest year this planet has experienced since we started keeping track about 165 years ago. The obvious fear is that as Earth keeps getting hotter, we’re going to suffer more extreme weather like droughts, floods and water and food shortages. Places as far apart as the Maldives and Miami are said to be threatened.
The folks attending the huge Climate Change conference here in Paris, including #POTUS believe that humans activity is one big reason for the increasing temperature, mostly coming from Carbon Emissions from smoke stacks and vehicle tail pipes…and they point to the two biggest carbon polluters on the planet, China and the United States.
This is the End, (Chapter One)
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 28, 2015
Radio has always appealed to me as an intimate way to speak with an audience that on television is usually far removed and anonymous. In the four years since I joined 77 WABC radio in my hometown of New York I have enjoyed uneven success, but managed to establish an open-mined core following which was cosmopolitan enough to listen to more than just reinforcement of established right-wing ideology that characterizes most of AM radio and has since Rush Limbaugh 27 years ago made the medium the conservative antidote to main stream i.e. left-wing liberal mass media.In the last two years, my employer Cumulus Media, the owners of WABC and the second largest radio conglomerate in the country suffered both organic and self-inflicted financial distress as evolving technologies and overly aggressive expansion drove the stock price from a high this year of over $4.50 to its current penny stock status.
To fans of my #77WABCradio show
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 25, 2015
This may be goodbye. I’ve just been informed by [email protected] the new Cumulus Media CEO & by [email protected] the New York VP/Market Manager that they do not intend to honor the handshake deal I made with the ousted company chief John Dickey, an agreement to extend my current contract for a year.
The decision to renege on our deal on the eve of Thanksgiving is especially upsetting coming in the wake of my emotionally charged and highly rated coverage of the Paris massacre and frantic efforts by authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Ding Dong the Wicked Witch Is Dead
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 19, 2015
26-year old Abdelhamid Abaaoud the Moroccan-born Belgian sadist who was the mastermind of the dreadful Friday the 13th attacks here in Paris France is dead. His diabolical plot to inflict massive casualties on the French people and force the closing of their open society in part succeeded.In separate attacks on that awful night, 129 innocent civilians were savagely murdered, most shot at point blank range. 414 were injured, many grievously, and terror was sown in the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of families, here in France and around the world, including my own.
And as bad as it was, it could have been so much worse. Only because of tight security at the soccer stadium, probably there because the president of France was there watching the game, were three suicide bombers prevented from adding countless others to the butcher’s toll.
Low Rent Kamikaze
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 19, 2015
As a kid I remember being shocked reading about Japan's Kamikaze pilots, who drove their planes into our ships, intentionally killing themselves to inflict as much damage as possible on us, the enemy.It made such a vivid impression because they welcomed death, when our brave soldiers sacrificed themselves knowing life was precious and irredeemable.
70 years later without the nobility of the Kamikaze and choosing soft targets they know usually can't fight back, the suicide bombers of the Muslim extremist age embrace death even over victory. Like the Paris bombers they are Apocalyptic Nihilist seeking to destroy and die trying.
Their reckless wrath and cold-blooded contempt for life makes them a true threat. Civilization must act decisely to fulfill their death dreams and speed them on to whatever awaits.
Pre Dawn Raid
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 18, 2015
The wrath of France came crashing down on the remaining perpetrators of last Friday night's massacre that claimed 129 lives, injured hundreds of others a day came much too close to home.In a pre-dawn raid 7 were arrested this morning, two others, including a female suicide bomber were killed.
This comes even as France has joined the USA and Russia in bombing the ISIS stronghold in Raqqa Syria back to the Stone Age.
These actions won't bring back the innocent lives lost, but they almost certainly will impact the ability of the terrorist enemy to perpetrate further atrocities. Also, revenge is sweet.
Rock, Charlie and Paris
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 17, 2015
As you know, I’m in Paris right now, covering the profoundly important story of the terrorist massacre that inflicted so much pain and suffering and which has totally disrupted French life, with disturbing overtones for the rest of the civilized world, including the United States.But hearing the shocking announcement this morning that one of our most famous or at least most infamous celebrities on the public scene, crazy Charlie Sheen is HIV positive, I had several reactions.
Let me start with one of those ironic coincidences that make you scratch you head. In 1985 I was here in Paris when a comparably famous American celebrity, the actor Rock Hudson was brought to Paris, dying from, you guessed HIV-AIDS.
Paris Mourns
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 16, 2015
Because their thug countries have become uninhabitable, the upheavals in the Mid-East principally Syria and Iraq, but also Afghanistan and Libya have set loose a flood of refugees, 800,000 this year alone crossing through Turkey into Europe.Aside from the obvious social disruption caused by bringing huge numbers of displaced Sunni Muslims to mostly Christian Europe, there is grave danger, because hidden among that horde will be extremists under the control of ISIS and other Sunni Muslim groups.
In the savage attacks here they found a Syrian passport on the body of one of the suicide bombers who passed through Turkey and Serbia on his way here.
Paris Fights Back
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 16, 2015
Watching the president from Turkey today, I could not help but think that this smart sincere man is making a fundamental mistake when it comes to ISIS. They are not like the other terror groups. They are a de facto nation/state. They hold territory with infrastructure, banks, schools, oil fields etc.Like Nazi Germany, their leaders have burrowed deep into the sands of Syria and Iraq to protect themselves against our uneven aerial bombardment. From their hardened hiding places they are launching these deadly attacks against civilization.
We need our Armed Forces in conjunction with France and our allies to take them out of their holes and kill or capture them.
En Route To Paris
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 14, 2015
Leaving for Paris to check on Simone and her classmates and report on the situation for Fox News beginning with Fox and Friends Sunday morning. It has been a rough night for Sim. All the kids at the stadium were re-traumatized when they realized the explosions they heard at the soccer stadium were suicide bombers and that so many kids their age were slaughtered at the rock concert.Paris is in lockdown, for which I am grateful. I'm grateful too for all the expressions of love and support our family has been receiving from friends and viewers.
Reflecting on the scope of this butchery it seems that perhaps a dozen or more killers conspired, prepared, armed themselves and then carried out six coordinated attacks; right under the noses of French intelligence.
Race Based Activism
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 13, 2015
An epidemic of race-based activism is sweeping through college campuses and it is going to get a lot more widespread and forceful. Influenced by the tactics of Black Lives Matter, and armed with the knowledge that liberal college administrations cannot stand the heat, an unformed but rapidly coalescing movement is afoot and it is going to go viral, no campus is immune.In some of the causes, like rampant student debt, the activists will be multi-racial. But what American colleges are just beginning to experience is a nascent revolt by African-American students who have been simmering since Trevon Martin.
There is tremendous un-wielded power in black athletes who dominate the ranks of big-time football and basketball.
Simone In Paris
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 13, 2015
Simone, my beautiful 21 year old doing a semester abroad in Paris for her junior year at Northwestern was just an eyewitness to horrifying history tonight. She and her friends were at the big soccer stadium watching the France vs Germany game when the attacks happened. The French president was also watching the match when three explosions rang out.The crowds were evacuated and chaos gripped the city. Thankfully a friend who lives in Paris rescued Sim and her friends who were stranded when authorities closed the metro and shut down cab service.
Having covered dozens of these terror attacks over the years all I can say is how different and more difficult it is when your own children are involved.
Thank God my family has been spared. But we send our sincerest condolences to the families of the victims. As the death toll continues to rise, there will be far too many in need of comfort tonight.
Tyshawn Lee
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 12, 2015
Tuesday in Chicago they laid to rest 9-year old Tyshawn Lee who was assassinated to send a message from a rival gang to his gang-banger dad that his crew should not try to sell dope in the other crew's territory. If you get a chance, please listen to the heart-wrenching eulogy to that poor child by the Reverend Michael Pfleger, which should resonate all the way from the Windy City to four corners of the nation.Tyshawn, who was shot multiple times in the face and back, was laid to rest at St. Sabina Church. His body arrived at the church in a small casket, especially made for a fourth-grader.
The Shame of Operation Wetback
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 11, 2015
@RealDonaldTrump last night invoked a melancholy chapter in American history, heaping praise on a draconian 1954 federal initiative to forcibly deport tens of thousands of undocumented Mexican immigrants. To prevent repeat violators, the immigrant’s heads were often shaven so they would stand out to the Border Patrol. Many immigrants complained of beatings and abuse. To prevent their attempts to return, thousands of them, many hailing from border towns close to the United States, were sent by ship, bus and train to areas deep inside Mexico and far from their homes.As with Mr. Trump’s current plan, many Mexican-born U.S.-citizens were swept up with the truly undocumented. Citizen children were often forced out along with their parents. Stranded far from familiar territory, many struggled to find their way. In a single month, July 1955, 88 deported workers died in the scorching heat of the Sonora desert.
Homeless Encampments
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 10, 2015
The City of New York has had to shut down 21 homeless encampments since the summer because they were violating laws about pedestrian access. And now as winter approaches, we pedestrians are being treated to a new homeless hustle, the beggar with pets, cats, dogs, parrots sometimes a combination of all three. The obvious reason for the furry and/or feathered friends is that the animals make the vagrant more sympathetic and we rationalize our generosity and compassion by saying it’s to feed the critters not the unsavory character, who we suspect, usually correctly, is playing us.How’s this for a solution? if panhandling street beggars and homeless vagrants bother you, stop giving them money.
Show Me State Cop-Out
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 09, 2015
The forced resignation of the president of the University of Missouri was a capitulation to anarchy and polticial correctness. Is the University of Missouri really the hotbed of instutional racism the protesters claim? If so, was former president Tim Wolfe really responsible? And who runs the place, the football team?This, I think, is an example of a weak-kneed liberal administration, probably guilt-wracked because their university has been slow to integrate surrendering to loud mouthed activists who managed to disrupt campus life.
The coup de grace was when 30 black members of the football team said they wouldn't play this Saturday if Wolfe didn't resign. The team is just (3-4) on the year, and faces a tough, highly-anticipated televised game against BYU at big Arrowhead Stadium, home of the NFL Kansas City Chiefs.
Trump on SNL
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 07, 2015
#BastaTrump (enough Trump) is staging what organizers hope will be a massive protest vs the billionaire businessman's appearance tonight on SNL.I have no problem with that.
He has been given a mighty platform to promote himself despite a draconian immigration policy that is harsh beyond reason and therefore counter-productive. The notion of rounding up 11 or more million mostly law-abiding, decent, hard-working folks, many with citizen-born children is at its core un-American.
But protesters tonight cannot and must not be obnoxious law breakers acting out in ways that turn sympathy to Trump and antipathy toward the cause of immigration reform and compassion.
Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 06, 2015
Their best political moments are behind former governors Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee.The fiesty, blustering Republican governor of largely Democratic New Jersey, Mr. Christie saw admiration for his energetic pragmatic swaggering style evaporate when it was revealed his key aides had rigged traffic on the George Washington Bridge, the most important Hudson River crossing, to punish political opponents.
He denied any involvement, but many did not believe him or felt that, at least, his confrontational bullying style had inspired his political thug allies to act out on his behalf.
The irony to Christie's being dropped from the main stage of the upcoming FBN debate is that the governor had a strong performance in the last debate, and attracted positive comments most recently about a relative who succumbed to drug abuse.
The economy is back in black
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 06, 2015
As Republicans continue to hit at the Obama Administration and by extension Hillary Clinton on the issue of jobs, it can no longer be denied that the U.S. economy is in pretty darn good shape, and getting better all the time.Hiring is robust, with 271,000 jobs added last month alone, and the unemployment rate, which I remind everyone spiked over 10% at the height of the Great Recession is now half that, just 5%. Anything under that 5% number represents practically full employment.
Jobs as a political issue might not be all that going forward.
Russian Tragedy
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 05, 2015
Since the Russian airliner was destroyed over Sinai in Egypt over the weekend, I have been saying that it was probably caused by a bomb onboard. The killing device was either planted on the aircraft as it sat waiting for passengers in the early morning weekend hours at the small airport in a sleepy seemingly tranquil resort community on the Red Sea, or it was carried on board by a passenger bent on suicide.This is the gravest danger we face in the short-term. It doesn't take much more than a hand grenade with an egg timer attached to make a time bomb.
There are literally thousands of young Sunni Muslim extremists volunteers eager to sacrifice themselves for the glory of Islam and the ISIS cause.
Reject so-called experts who see our challenges as either high-tech or exotic. As the uncountable refugee swarm over Europe makes painfully clear, there is a generation of young Sunni Muslim men who have been torn loose from the bounds of civilization.
Thursday Politics
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 05, 2015
On the political front, the biggest questions of the day are:1-Whether Senator Marco Rubio's surge can survive brutal attack by Donald Trump and others on Rubio's finances? His history with GOP credit cards and personal finances seems sketchy.
2-Will Dr. Ben Carson's oft-told tale of attempting as a 14-year old boy in Detroit to knife a friend in the belly, only to be thwarted by a belt bucket and thereafter finding God will stand up to scrutiny?
3-Will the attempted boycott by Hispanic groups of NBC/SNL have any affect other than rallying liberals to Trump's side under the banner of free speech?
4-Which of the candidates will be found best able to handle the number one issue on the minds of New Hampshire voters...drug abuse?
Progressive Liberal Bill De Blasio
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 04, 2015
A beautiful morning in New York City today, brilliant sunshine, pleasant maybe record-setting temperatures, the trees in Central Park taking their time shedding still colorful leaves that are clinging to their branches. All of it, making me happy to still be alive and living in the city at the center of the world.Which brings me to Bill De Blasio, our first progressive liberal socialist mayor since David Dinkins two decades ago. Elected two years ago, overwhelmingly with an underwhelming record-low turnout of 24% of all eligible voters…barely one million out of the 4.3 million registered voters, actually bothering to cast ballots, he has been suffering from a dramatically plunging approval rating among New Yorkers.
He’s down to 38%, his lowest ever approval.
Talking points for tonight's Hannity
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 03, 2015
I think we desperately need universal background checks and limits on gun purchases and the sale of heavy weapons.Also, too many urban black families do fear run-in's with cops more than they fear their kids getting jacked up by crooks.
Hillary's meeting today with the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown will help her bridge the enthusiasm gap among black voters and is smart politics as long as she resists the embrace of the increasingly toxic BLM movement.
Having said all that, it is so sad to see the denial of advocates for urban justice that the biggest, most urgent problem, is black on black violence, the inner city civil war. The failure to deal with that more passionately is a melancholy failure of POTUS.
Mets Lost -- Monday
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 02, 2015
Happy Monday, hope you have a nice weekend. If you did and live in New York it’s probably because you didn’t watch any local sports. The Mets choked, losing the World Series in five games to the Kansas City Royals, 7-2; the Royals coming back after trailing by more than two runs in the 8th inning three times. If you were Mets manager Terry Collins would you have let the Dark Knight ace pitcher Matt Harvey stay in the game to pitch the ninth inning? He had dominated the Royals, shutting them out for eight innings, and striking out eight of them. But he couldn’t hold them in the ninth, even though everybody in Citi-field wanted the Mets’ ace to finish the job, and they would have burned Collins in effigy if he didn’t let Harvey try.
Third Debate on CNBC
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 30, 2015
The first polls are in grading the not-so-great Third Presidential Debate on CNBC. As you have heard by now, the network’s moderators got crushed by candidates united in their disdain for gotcha questions on silly topics like Fantasy Football.Here’s Chris Christie.
“Carl (Quintanilla), are we really talking about getting government involved in fantasy football? (LAUGHTER) We have -- wait a second, we have $19 trillion in debt. We have people out of work. We have ISIS and al Qaeda attacking us. And we're talking about fantasy football? Can we stop?”
Here’s my least favorite candidate, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. In fairness, he got the best biggest applause line of the night by attacking the mainstream liberal media and again those CNBC moderators.
Hero Officer Holder
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 29, 2015
Before I get to last night’s presidential debate, let me start with the grim, rainy, melancholy but still inspiring and reassuring funeral for hero NYPD cop Randolph Holder yesterday in Jamaica Queens.Brother Craig and I went to pay our respects, parking blocks away and walking through a gray rain that ranged from mist to downpour toward the Greater Allen AME Cathedral, the weather matching the mood.
Passing rank upon rank of thousands of cops from the city and throughout the region all gathered to salute their slain colleague, I said hello and sorry to as many of them as I could, amazed as I always am by how wonderfully integrated the force is, and how young so many of these cops are, many if not most still in their 20’s.
What should the school cop have done?
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 28, 2015
Morning, There is a problem with prosecuting the South Carolina sheriff's deputy for the violent takedown and drag out of the disruptive 16-year old female student who was refusing either to surrender her cellphone or leave her classroom.First of all, the student was being a selfish brat who deserves suspension from the school for her stubborn, and even violent refusal to follow legal instructions from her teacher and an assistant administrator, even before the school resource officer was called to the scene.
The force then used by the cop forcibly to remove the child seems excessive and has generated enormous controversy around the nation. Race also raises its ugly head. He is a white cop with a record of excessive force allegations; she is a black student whose previous record is so far confidential.
Hold Your Nose, If Necessary
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 27, 2015
Reverend Al Sharpton was invited to speak at the funeral of slain NYPD officer Randolph Holder Wednesday. The invitation was extended by Officer Holder’s father, Randolph Holder Sr., himself a cop in his native Guyana. But late yesterday, the murdered cop’s fiancé announced she opposes Sharpton’s address. Many city cops are also unhappy with the invitation since Sharpton has been a prime mover in leading protest marches and rallies alleging police racism and brutality.But here is my point. Although he is a deeply divisive figure, the Reverend Al Sharpton would be an appropriate speaker, if the family is united in the request.
Hate Sharpton or love him, there is little doubt that he is the cities and perhaps the country’s pre-eminent civil rights leader.
They Got The Gun
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 26, 2015
Driving home from Kennedy airport last night, and driving down the FDR I saw a police boat with its blue light flashing and remembered that Marine Patrol cops had been searching for the gun used in the murder of NYPD officer Randolph Holder who was shot and killed in a shoot-out with a scumbag Tuesday night in Harlem.Having dived with those harbor patrol cops in those dark, swirling and murky waters of the East River near Hell’s Gate, I knew that the divers were facing extremely difficult daunting conditions. The river there is at least 20 feet deep, and the bottom there is an oozing muck that has sucked up centuries of junk into its dark embrace. There’s near zero visibility and basically the search is done by feel rather than by sight.
One side says ‘they didn’t lay a glove on her’
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 23, 2015
The other side swears they exposed the secretary as a self-serving, hard, cold political operative that didn’t have the decency to raise a finger to help American diplomats in distress.Those are the polar opposite views on how former secretary of state and current probable Democratic presidential nominee performed during her marathon, emotionally grueling testimony yesterday before a bitterly divided congressional panel investigating the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American heroes on 9/11 three years ago.
As I watched yesterday, it seemed to me that the Republicans were scoring at least a few political points as they relentless questioned every aspect of Secretary Clinton’s performance before, during and after the terrorist attacks on our consulate in Benghazi Libya.
But my wife Erica, watching the same scene remarked about how distastefully mean and rude the congressman grilling Hillary was behaving.
Grilling Hillary
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 22, 2015
It’s Hillary’s date with destiny or at least with the GOP-led panel investigating the 9/11 assault on our consulate in Benghazi Libya three years ago. She’s got to convince the American people that she did not botch our response to the terror attacks that ultimately ended in the murder of our ambassador Chris Stevens and three other heroes.But the expected grilling she’s been anticipating will probably not be as hot as it might have been a few weeks ago, now that the Republicans on the panel have been burned by charges that they’re nothing more than a partisan hit squad whose goal was never getting the truth about Benghazi as much as it was to tarnish and taint the character and political prospects of Secretary Clinton, the probably Democratic nominee now that Vice President Joe Biden has bailed on making the race, as I expected he would.
What I don’t expect to hear too much about today is her use of a private email server.
Don't Blue Lives Matter Too?
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 21, 2015
The NYPD has lost another hero, the fourth cop killed in the line of duty in just the last ten months. It happened at about 10:30 last night, 33-year old Officer Randolph Holder shot in the forehead during a gunfight on a pedestrian overpass on the FDR Drive near 120th Street…It apparently started around 8:30pm as an argument that turned into a gunfight between two rival crews based in the East Harlem public housing projects.As police, including Officer Holder closed in the gangsters beat it, with the cops in pursuit. One of the perps then stole a bicycle at gunpoint and was making his way across the overpass to the walkway that hugs the East River there near Hell Gate not far from Gracie Mansion. As shots were exchanged between that suspect and the pursuing officers, Holder was mortally wounded.
Space Race Crazy
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 20, 2015
As if we needed any more evidence of how race-crazy we’ve become, did you see the trailer for the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens? It aired during Monday Night’s dismal Giants Eagles game, which was an embarrassment for the New York team and the whole town.Anyway, after the trailer aired a couple of dramatic things happened. First as you’ve heard, even though the movie doesn’t open for two months on December 18th, the web sites that sell tickets, like Fandango, crashed; along with the servers of the major theater chains. Which was great; I still remember waiting in line on May 25th 1977 in Los Angeles to see the original movie.
I also remember that there were no black people in the first Star Wars
First Snow
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 19, 2015
I saw my first snow of the season yesterday evening. We were driving up the State Thruway to suburban Suffern New York; the sun was shining on the trees turning brilliant autumn colors when a single cloud blew over us and starting sprinkling snowflakes, on October 18th, which makes me think this, is going to be a long, dark winter.Erica, Sol and I were en route to a lovely event at the historic Lafayette Theater…the nation’s most prominent tailor 87 year old Martin Greenfield was publicizing his terrific new book, 'Measure of a Man: From Auschwitz Survivor to Presidents' Tailor'
Trump Whirlwind
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 19, 2015
As he is prone to do, Donald Trump stirred up a political whirlwind when he essentially blamed President George W. Bush for the devastating 9/11 attacks that happened on 43's watch.It happened as Trump was clawing apart rival presidential candidate Governor Jeb Bush's frequent claim that his brother Bush 43 "kept us safe," Trump says hold on, 3,000 died on that terrible day, how is that keeping us safe?
As with Trump's other outrageous remarks like those about Senator John McCain and POW's, and even more notoriously, about Mexican immigrants mostly being drug dealers and rapists, this 9/11 reference ignited a furious reaction.
From Jeb Bush and other Republicans it was basically, 'How dare Trump?' Their basic response to his apparent blasphemy was shock and outrage.
Their Ratings, Their Rules
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 16, 2015
They used to say in theater that without Jews, Gays and gypsies there is no Broadway. The same goes for presidential politics. Without Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson there can be no presidential debate. When the two leading candidates said they felt they were being exploited by CNBC for ratings, and then joined in threatening to boycott the pending debate unless it was shortened from three to two hours, there was really nothing the network could do but to acquiesce.
Donald is not just angry that he was the main attraction and the network was getting a free ride to sell all those commercials and that he is not getting a piece of the action. He is also conscious of the fact that he wilted during the third hour last time, losing focus and concentration as it droned on and on.
2nd Exclusive with Donald Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 15, 2015
GR: "What do you think about Dr. Ben Carson’s resilience? In the national Fox News poll, he’s right behind you, 24% to 23%. In the key states, South Carolina, Nevada and others, you lead him double-digits, but what do you make of the fact that he’s still in it? And if he’s not nipping at your heels, he’s still in the rearview mirror?Trump: Yeah, he is. And you know he’s been very nice to me. And I’ve had a good relationship with him. I really can’t figure out anything. I see some of these people, Carly’s gone way down since she did well in the debate and since then she’s gone very far down. Others have gone very far down. Don’t forget when he and I go so far up someone else is going down…and one of the things I don’t understand is that when some of them have zeros like Pataki has zero why is he hanging around?
Geraldo: Why is he hanging around? You think its ego?
Donald Trump Exclusive
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 15, 2015
GR: "When you become president will you make the Pledge of Allegiance, will you reinstate it, the words “one nation under God” so everyone says the Pledge the way we used to when we were in school?Trump: Well, I hadn’t heard that question before, but the answer is yes. I would do that. I think it’s terrible, what’s happening. You can’t use the word Christmas anymore. You say “Merry Christmas” and it’s not politically correct – and believe me, I say it anyway. But if you go to stores, you don’t see ‘happy Christmas”, “Merry Christmas” – you see “Happy Holidays”. You’re lucky you even see that! It’s just gotten crazy.
GR: So you would bring back “Merry Christmas”? You would bring back the celebration of Christmas.
Final Excerpt with Donald Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 15, 2015
Final excerpt from my exclusive interview with longtime friend and former 'Celebrity Apprentice' boss Donald Trump this morning. Excuse the overlaps as we talk heatedly about the Latino protesters who interrupted Trump’s rally last night in Las Vegas.Geraldo: “Finally, I get to immigration, those protesters, as few as they were, they do represent a lot of Latinos. The surveys I’ve seen, still the majority of Latinos are very unfavorable toward your candidacy.
Trump: No… look at the Nevada poll. 38%, I lead with the Latinos, as you would say, or with the Hispanics, as I would say. I lead with the Hispanics with 38%. I have a substantial lead.
GR: But why not moderate it? Since you have a lead (Overlap)
Trump: The Hispanics that are here legally love Trump because I’m going to produce jobs. You know how many Hispanics I employ.
GR: But why not soften some of this rhetoric? Soften some of it. I mean, you’re not going to go door to door. The Donald Trump I know is not going to go door to door and say, ‘Let me see your papers’.
Say Goodbye To The Sixties
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 14, 2015
Bernie Sanders reminds me of me 50 years ago when I didn’t trust anyone over thirty and my friends and I were going to bring “the man” to heel. The world is unfair, the war sucks, the government is owned by Wall Street and income re-distribution, social change and forced integration were urgently necessary to save the planet from itself.All those issues are as real today as they were in the 1960’s. The difference is that we have changed. Watching the utter dysfunction and woeful partisan division of government at every level, has deflated our sense of ourselves as titans of social change, and has made clear that steering the system is a painfully incremental process. Wall Street is still reaping disproportionate profit. The racial and social divide is as big as or bigger than ever. And we can barely get along well enough to confront foreign enemies or agree on accepting refugees and immigrants or even keep the lights on and the garbage picked up.
Kevin McCarthy
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 09, 2015
Fascinating and a bit disturbing to watch the rapid rise and fall of Rep Kevin McCarthy's quest for the House Speakership. Did he really only decide to quit because Rep. Walter Jones (R. NC) threatened to expose McCarthy's alleged affair with another Republican from North Carolina, Rep. Renee Ellmers? Ironically, that moral lapse might give the GOP plausible political deniability.
Now Republicans can say that McCarthy was ousted for moral rather than political reasons.
Indeed, I'm wondering if McCarty was thrown under the bus by his colleagues as revenge for his inadvertent revelation of their hypocritical Benghazi scam.
Ben Carson Grilled
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 09, 2015
Dr. Ben Carson is getting pilloried for his remarks about not going quietly when confronted by an armed maniac. Generally, the tone of the scornful comments range from incredulous to damning, as in "how dare he blame the victims for their victimization?"The critics miss the point, which is that mass killers must be confronted and disrupted to the extent possible. By fighting back, even ordinary folks, like the passengers on board flight 93 on September 11th, can disrupt evil. Had they not fought back that awful day, far more innocent Americans would have died.
It is uncomfortable to contemplate the need for physical daring and reckless courage in everyday life. But these incidents are so draconian and extreme they demand the able-bodied to attempt something extraordinary.
Trump Was Right
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 07, 2015
Donald Trump is right about President George W. Bush and the devastating consequences of W's ill-conceived Iraq War. It was a waste of lives and treasure. In political terms, as significantly, the eccentric billionaire businessman now leading the GOP pack in the race for the White House had the courage to do what Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and I, did not. He opposed the 2003 invasion.
I didn't. Like Clinton and Kerry, I suspended disbelief to march in lock step to the drums of war. The proof offered by the Bush Administration in the buildup to war was patently thin. Even though the respected Secretary of State Colin Powell shamefully promoted to the United Nations the bogus evidence of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, most of us thought it sounded fishy.
McCarthy Gaffe
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 06, 2015
As someone who generates a viscerally negative reaction from right-wing critics (and trolls of this column), I sympathize with Hillary Clinton more than most Baby Boomer men. There is just something about her (and me) that ignites a nuclear response. But enough about me, I'm not running.
Hillary is, and I think, she may have her critics on the ropes for the first time in a long time. She is in the process of turning a corner and recovering some of the mojo that for several years leading up to this presidential election cycle, made the former Secretary of State the most admired woman in the world.
GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy's confession about the motive and impact of the Benghazi scandal, which struck everyone who heard it as pure truth, is a gaffe that will keep giving.
Hilary Investigated
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 05, 2015
Hillary Clinton has the right to be pissed off. She has been more investigated than any public person on earth with the possible exception of her husband the 42nd president. In Bill Clinton's case, the relentless probing, Whitewater, Travelgate, silverware-gate, Vince Foster's suicide, etc., eventually led to a single revelation: he lied about having an affiar with an intern named Monica Lewinsky.Perhaps that is the kind of scandal the Republicans guiding this relentless and never-ending congressional probe are hoping for, that Hillary's use of the private email server, now deemed legal by the Justice Department, will uncover some personal transgression or trespass. Who knows, maybe an email will surface showing she flirted with a dictator, improperly expensed a private dinner, or tore her pantyhose.
Umpqua
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 01, 2015
The mass murder at Umpqua again reveals we are a gun sick nation. All the 2d Amendment bullshit aside, the gun lobby controls the country, and allows armed maniacal lunatics to roam free and kill.That said, isn't it malpractice per se for any educational institution not to have at least one armed guard on campus trained and ready to fight gunfire with gunfire?
Cops are great, but unless someone is right there, armed and ready, locked and loaded, innocents will continue to be slaughtered by gun-empowered, penis-envying, disgruntled, self & life-hating, sicko creeps who got someone devoid of conscience to sell or give them a deadly weapon with which to take the lives of people much better than they.
Armed Guard
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 01, 2015
The president's anguish over this latest campus massacre is no doubt genuine. We share his grief. He says grief is not enough, that we have to do something.Why not tell us what to do Mr President? What bill do you offer, what legislative scheme? Will you rally the governors you cited? Tell us how to stop this in the real world, with implementable steps that do not require some vast left wing conspiracy.
You blame the gun lobby? Why not take them on? Confront the NRA and call out every hack who ever took money from them.
By all means do these things.
But until the coming of utopia, advise every educational institution of a certain size to have one armed guard on premises to fight fire with fire.
Get Well Donna Shalala
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 30, 2015
Hi damn shame about Donna Shalala the former HHS Secretary who now runs the Clinton Global Foundation. I interviewed her just yesterday in New York hours before her apparent stroke. We spoke about the refugee crisis and the impact of presidential politics on the Foundation's mission. She seemed fine, sincere and optimistic. She is of Syrian/Lebanese descent and is profoundly concerned about the fate of innocent civilians.
Just goes to show how fragile life is.
Wish her a speedy recovery and send warmest regards to a fine person.
Fall of Kunduz, Afghanistan
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 29, 2015
From today's news reports: "For the first time since 9/11 the Taliban has taken control of a major city in Afghanistan. The U.S. military has carried out an airstrike on the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, in attempt to eliminate the threat of force and it is not clear if more airstrikes will follow." I am currently in the process of completing a book on my years as war correspondent for Fox News. The following is an excerpt detailing the original capture by our Afghan allies of Kunduz from the Taliban in November 2001, almost 14 years ago.
The tentative title of the book is:
"Major Sack, From Tora Bora to Trump
"We left Panjshir heading north early on Tuesday, November 27th on our belabored old Mi-24 helicopter, burdened by our satellite entourage and a new load of diesel fuel. As I reported then, 'Once over the Hindu Kush we’ve arrived at the Northern Alliance’s new prize, the city of Kunduz, the last Taliban stronghold in Northern Afghanistan.
Kunduz fell Monday morning after a siege that cost the Taliban and its terrorist allies well over a 1000 dead, most killed by our airstrikes'.
Getting Unstuck
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 28, 2015
We are stuck between our just condemnation of Russia for its aggression in Ukraine and the need for the USA and Russia to cooperate in Syria to alleviate the worst refugee crisis since WWII.It is not impossible to find a way forward.
2 years ago during the General Assembly everyone thought the notion of an Iran nuke deal was farfetched. Guess what, now there is a deal, despite the odds.
The same leap forward can be accomplished in Syria.
-We don't have to be friends with the Russians in all things.
-We don't have to lift the sanctions imposed because of Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Stampede
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 25, 2015
With the violent heart-rending crisis in the Middle East and millions of disrupted immigrants on the move many are looking to the bastion of Sunni believers for guidance. Don't count on it. If you want to see an un-evolved people look at Saudi Arabia and the stampede that killed over 700 worshippers on Thursday.Can you imagine anything so uncivilized happening in Tehran, Jerusalem or Rome? This is a savage kingdom that but for its fabulous oil wealth exists in a neo-dark age where high rollers can live in the lap of luxury even as they deny full rights to women, minorities and immigrants, and spread trouble and chaos around the world.
John Boehner Resigns
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 25, 2015
Now that House Speaker John Boehner has announced he is resigning, his cascading tears yesterday become understandable. He cried because he, as a devout Catholic had strived mightily to have His Holiness address Congress. But no doubt his tears are also of relief that he no longer has to deal with the riven, divided, dysfunctional body politic. Let the next guy decide whether to shut down the government, shooting DC in the foot in yet another ideological temper tantrum, this one over Planned Parenthood. Have a drink on me Mr. Speaker. Thx for your service.
Pope's Address
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 24, 2015
Morning, today we're broadcasting the Pope's address to the Congress live on 77WABC radio at 10am ET. I hope he gets as cordial and enthusiastic a welcome as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayu did during his controversial address back in March 2015. I think all the political hand-wringing over the Holy Father's remarks about hot button topics like climate change and immigration is misplaced. He is not a partisan politician. He is spiritual leader to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics and he is a defender of the poor and beleaguered of all faiths around the planet.
It is his specific role to be compassionate and to preach generosity and inclusion. He is not an office-holder or seeker and should not be treated as one.
A Right Now Solution for Syrian Refugee Crisis
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 23, 2015
Imagine Russia the USA, Iran and Israel on the same side. The great powers carve out a Safe Zone, inside Syria but outside Damascus and temporarily outside the reach of the Syrian government.We do this now.
With everyone gathered in New York the timing is perfect for an emergency gathering.
Don't scatter the Syrian diaspora to the four corners of the earth.
What is needed is a great power coalition. Russia the USA Iran and Israel, plus the UN. The interests of the Sunni community will be represented by the Arab League.
This mighty and ready right now coalition can end the war in a huge and increasing swath of Syria. The powers create the Safe Zone.
The UN facilitates services to those displaced refugees with schools, honest work for appropriate salaries, health care and so forth, mainly security.
Bienvenido Papa
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 22, 2015
“He’s our pope too,” said New York's Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan this morning quoting some of his “Jewish rabbi friends.” Isn’t that why the first visit of Pope Francis to the United States is generating such electric excitement? More than being the leader of the planet’s billion plus Catholics, he is a pope for our troubled world, as concerned about immigration, climate change and income inequality as he is about abortion, divorce and gay marriage.He is less judgmental, more open minded and kinder than we are used to seeing in the prince of the church. He is humble, a washer of the feet of the poor, and he rejects much of the opulence that usually accompanies his high office.
Arriving today in the United States from his visit to Castro’s Cuba, Pope Francis is weathering a storm of conservative criticism and bringing his welcoming message to an American church shattered by scandal and shaken by changing demographics.
Radio & The Five
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 21, 2015
A couple of substantive issues for this morning on radio and later on Fox's 'The Five', including the blood bath this weekend on the streets of Brooklyn and the Bronx NYC.9 were murdered, all black and/or Hispanic and I'll bet you won't hear a word of protest from Black Lives Matter because lives only matter apparently when they are taken by cops.
But let me start you off with politics, especially the most recent CNN poll that shows Donald Trump still leading the field, but down from his high of 32%. Now he’s at 24, which is 9 ahead of Carly Fiorina at 15, whose surging and Ben Carson who's fading at 14. The good doctor is down from 19, but the real loser is Wisconsin governor Scott Walker who’s disappeared off the screen totally, registering less than 1%.
My personal vibe is that Donald will recover his mojo. He had a rocky debate, seeming to lose interest in the third hour, but he still out rates the rest of the field combined on television.
Call Out The Crazies
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 18, 2015
By our surveys, Donald Trump has survived his less than best performance at Wednesday night’s debate to retain his lead. He was great in defusing Jeb Bush and Rand Paul's attacks, but seemed to wilt as the three hour marathon continued and headed into the bushes of specific foreign policy issues.He continues to lead and to attract an increasingly diverse crowd, including increasingly, women and the college-educated.
But among his original supporters, that huge cadre of mostly white mostly working class men, there are some undeniable crazies.
Like the original Tea Party, there are on the fringes of Trump’s current supporters that thin slice of hate mongers and militiamen with weird and disturbing points of view that are distasteful if not straight out racist.
Refugee Swap
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 18, 2015
The Obama Administration has announced that the United States will accept 10,000 refugees fleeing war, famine and peril in Syria. This comes as presidential contenders are pledging to deport millions of undocumented immigrants who came here fleeing war, famine and peril in Mexico and Latin America.This curious exchange of misery has happened before.
In 2008, we began allowing tens of thousands of refugees from war-torn Somalia into the country. Many settled in the area around Minneapolis, which became known as ‘Little Mogadishu’.
At the same time, there was a massive push in the area to deport thousands of mostly Mexican and Guatemalan refugees working in meat-packing plants in nearby Iowa. The job is thankless, bloody and disgusting. The Mexicans filled those jobs because no native born American wanted them.
Who Won The Debate?
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 17, 2015
My thoughts:1- On Donald Trump, who was targeted by most on stage rivals; the billionaire businessman fought boredom and handled most attacks including Governor Jeb Bush’s spirited defense of speaking Spanish, his wife and his brother President George W. Bush. He fumbling certain details, doubtful it matters much.
2- Governor Bush is nice, but was the night's biggest loser. Trump made the former Florida governor seem awkward and nerdy like the smart kid who can’t get a prom date. In Bush’s defense, (and Kasich's) moderation is a hard sell among Republicans generally, and is their general election Achilles' heel.
3- Watching Governor Scott Walker struggle ineffectively for attention was sad. He seemed out of his league almost diminutive, yet he had best line about not needing an Apprentice in the White House, saying "we already have one."
Topless Toddler
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 16, 2015
The Desnuda who brought her topless toddler to work with her in Times Square is a child pornographer. If, for whatever reason a grown woman wants to pose topless for money or ego I’ve got no problem with that, (having done it myself).But using a pre-school child to make a sex joke is just not cool. It’s not liberation or sophistication, it’s a bad joke bordering on perversion.
Barack and Vlad
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 16, 2015
President Obama should swallow his pride and more substantively, his anger over Russia's invasion of Ukraine to engage at the United Nations with President Vladimir Putin over Syria. Russia and the United States are on the same side in Syria. The corrupt and cruel regime of dictator Bashar Assad is the best of our bad choices in Syria. His government and army must be propped up to fight our mutual enemy ISIS and the other Sunni Muslim extremist groups. Once the radical Islamists are degraded and destroyed, we can force Syria to spin off its dictator in exchange for a multi-national peace keeping apparatus that can eventually lead to a more representative government in Syria. Stability there is crucial to all nations. It is the only way to stem the hemorrhaging of humanity, the tens of thousands of fleeing refugees flooding into Europe.
Bailout Puerto Rico/Win the White House
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 16, 2015
Puerto Rico has gone over the brink. It now owes creditors at least 72 billion dollars, far more than it can ever hope to repay. So far Congressional Republicans are resisting any kind of financial bailout for the commonwealth, including permitting the government and public agencies to declare bankruptcy. That reluctance may cost the GOP the 2016 presidential election.
The island is destitute, unemployment is rampant and there are many more layoffs still to come.
Puerto Rico's young people are on the move. The economic collapse is forcing many thousands of them to flee the island and its double digit unemployment.
All these Puerto Rican migrants are U.S. citizens who tend to vote Democratic. Most of them are resettling in the crucial swing state of Florida, many along the I-4 corridor from Daytona to Orlando to Tampa to St. Pete.
You're Terminated
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 15, 2015
In 1976 the first of many times I interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger, he boasted of how he had freaked out competing bodybuilder and reigning champion Lou Ferrigno to win the Mr. Olympia contest. The bodybuilding competition was depicted in what was one of the first reality programs, the documentary film “Pumping Iron” that made both men stars. A swaggering Arnold bragged in the film and on my show about how he had thrown Lou off his game, undermining the confidence of the man who would be The Hulk to win the Olympia title and ignite a show business and political career that reaped hundreds of millions and now leads back to Celebrity Apprentice.
9/11 Changed Everything
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 11, 2015
14 years ago, the living was easy. Erica and I had been together for ten sweet months and we were living in a beautiful beach house in Malibu. She was producing my top-rated CNBC show "Rivera Live," which was broadcast every other week from the West Coast and I was balancing the thrill of our still new relationship with the responsibility for my four children, especially my two young daughters back in New York.The world changed with a frantic 6am phone call from my longtime friend and producer Greg Hart urging me to turn on the television.
Seeing the Twin Towers assailed generated feelings akin to panic and rage. Although my girls lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, several miles from the atrocity unfolding downtown, I was desperate to speak with them and be with them and for hours was unable to do either.
Thousands were dead, injured or disrupted, telephone communications were crippled, school children were being sent home and all New York airports were closed, making it impossible to get back to the stricken island at the center of the world.
The Bradley Effect
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 11, 2015
To those of you who propose the hideously false notion that I must be a racist because I wonder whether Dr. Ben Carson is polling better than he will eventually perform at the ballot box, it is because it has happened before. Please read the following excerpt from Wikepedia:
"The Bradley effect (less commonly the ((Governor Douglas)) Wilder ((or Mayor David Dinkins)) effect) is a theory concerning observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other.
"The theory proposes that some voters who intend to vote for the white candidate would nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate.
"It was named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in voter polls going into the elections."
Big Dog
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 10, 2015
Donald Trump is a cross between the Tar Baby and Triumph the Insult Dog. Punch him and your fist gets stuck in the muck of verbal abuse. He is the first viable candidate for high office who speaks with the casual frankness of a sweaty locker room.
In his view my colleague Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is a “bimbo” because she asked him a few tough questions; businesswoman Carly Fiorina is hard-on-the-eyes (“look at that face”) coyote ugly because she dared call him out on his macho feelings about women, while Trump’s only real rival at the moment, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is just an “ok” doctor. Not to mention that he reduced to rubble noble ex-POW Senator John McCain, referring to him as a un-hero, while former governor Jeb Bush was labeled a crybaby wimp.
Russia Is On The Right Side In Syria
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 10, 2015
The Obama Administration helped unhinge Syria by suggesting that we would support an uprising against the Shiite-dominated government of the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. It was part of the ill-advised "Arab Spring" when our naïve, idealistic, young president cheered on the overthrow of secular strongmen like Syria's Assad, Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya.
We wanted to encourage "democracy."
Instead we got Sunni Muslim extremism, ISIS, anarchy, the oppression and annihilation of minorities, including the attempted extermination of Christianity, the destruction of archeological treasures and an extraordinary tidal wave of refugees fleeing the region's disorder and violence.
Another Idea For Syrian Refugees
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 10, 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu says tiny Israel lacks the strategic and demographic depth to accept the suffering civilians fleeing ISIS and the terrible violence of the Syrian civil wars.He's right on both counts, but how about this idea:
Allow vetted Syrian civilians to resettle in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights in ghost cities like Kuneitra. It is afterall Syrian territory however long occupied by Israeli forces.
The Israeli Army maintains security. They allow international assistance in to help the Syrian civilians.
By acting thusly Israel goes from being part of the problem to being part of the humane solution.
Be Happy Hilary
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 09, 2015
Hillary finally apologized for her use of a private email server, a practice which retired Admiral John Kirby, who's now spokesman for the State Department, says was not illegal although it is discouraged. Call me crazy but I believe Admiral Kirby and agree with his analysis. I've known him since the war began in Iraq and worked closely with him covering the Navy's role in alleviating civilian suffering following Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake.
What I'm curious about is why Hillary is apologizing if she did nothing illegal? The answer is obviously politics and polls. The former Secretary of State is apologizing because too many potential voters feel she is dishonest and untrustworthy. She wants to clear the air so she can reintroduce herself to the American people. Her tawdry reputation has allowed such underwhelming candidates as Senator Bernie Sanders and Vice President Joe Biden to steal her mojo.
So Right and So Wrong
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 07, 2015
Paul Krugman of the New York Times sounds shocked that Donald Trump is right on economics, tax policy and finance. Dr. Krugman grudgingly admits that Trump is also right on campaign financing and the malignant influence of lobbyists on good government.Got news for you Paul. He is right on many issues and dominates the polls for good reason.
All the Trumpster has to do to dominate the actual elections is back off on the crazy deportation stuff. He's head and shoulders above the GOP pack and doesn't need the cruelty vote.
RIP Joan
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 04, 2015
Exactly a year ago the great irreverent outrageous comedian Joan Rivers died from brain damage after a botched surgery on her throat. A dear friend and former talk show colleague, I adored her humor and cherished her friendship. What I find extraordinary is that the outpatient clinic that killed her with a probable overdose of the powerful sedative propofol is still in business.
Every time I see a dirty/funny comic like Amy Schumer or Sarah Silverman I think of Joan, the Queen of the dirty joke told with mock naivete. Long may she reign.
Leader or Loser
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 03, 2015
It was with mixed feelings that I noted the arrest in Baltimore yesterday of a noisy activist, 21-year old Darius Kwame Rosebrough who goes by the stage/street name Kwame Rose. He is charged with second-degree assault, disorderly conduct and resisting or interfering with an arrest. Police say Rosebrough kicked an officer in the face.During my own televised confrontations with Mr. Rose, he seemed to be both sincerely concerned about alleged police misconduct and totally into getting as much attention for himself as he possibly could, timing his outbursts for whenever the camera went live.
Still, there was an aspect of nobility to the kid, even as he made a fool of himself. He was defiant, angry, but more or less sincere.
At one point he said on camera, "We burn shit because we don't own shit."
He was searching for purpose and basking in the attention of the media, and I thought at the time that he would either mature and moderate into the next generation of civic leader or just become another trouble-maker who ends up dead or in jail.
Trump and Hispanic Chamber Of Commerce
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 02, 2015
Morning from NYC where Donald Trump had a potentially important meeting at Trump Tower yesterday with the CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, an umbrella group that claims to represent over three million Hispanic-owned businesses.Apparently, Mr. Trump reached out to Mr. Palomarez following the candidate's incendiary confrontation with popular Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, and a Gallup Poll showing that Trump is by far the least popular Republican among prospective Latino voters.
Tune in at around 10:10AM this morning for my interview with Mr. Palomarez to see whether Trump has modified his radicial approach to alleviating the nation's admitted problem with millions of undocumented immigrants that Trump has been vocal in demonizing.
Favorite Billboard
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 02, 2015
A Black owned business in Memphis sponsored my favorite billboard of the year. It says, "Black lives do matter, so let’s quit killing each other."
Memphis is our third most dangerous city. Heavily African-American it shares that distinction with the others in America's top ten most deadly. They are in order,
1-Detroit
2-Oakland
3-Memphis
4-St Louis
5-Cleveland
6-Baltimore
7-Milwaukee
Bums' Renaissance
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 01, 2015
Rode my bike to work and past four homeless men sleeping on the sidewalk near my office in Madison Square Garden complex and then encountered two drunk/junkies aggressively panhandling outside. This at 7:30AM. With violent crime down or near historic lows in New York, the visibility of this problem is Mayor De Blasio's most obvious policy failure.
Trump on Shysters and "Alien" Killers
Speaking of policies, Bravo to Donald Trump for taking on greedy, unpatriotic, high rolling, crony capitalists who take no risk, game the system and do not pay their fair share of taxes.
But having thus praised Mr. Trump let me hasten to add that his campaign against the "illegal alien murder" wave is bogus.
'Silent Majority'
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 28, 2015
Donald Trump has re-incarnated Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority,” the quietly disgruntled mass of angry, frustrated, mostly white voters whose smoldering resentment of government and society President Nixon stoked into blazing support. Nixon was able to stir sufficient fear of social change to generate energy among the then lethargic conservative base and easily win election and re-election. Back then, in the second half of the 1960’s, this awakened mass was reacting to what many felt were the liberal excesses of the sexual revolution, the anti-war and civil rights movements. Things were changing fast. The kids who made love not war and said they didn’t trust anybody over 30 were having sex and abortions, smoking dope, evading the draft, and taking over popular culture.
Amending The Constitution
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 28, 2015
Republicans say that if necessary we must alter the 14th Amendment to make clear that it does not convey “birthright citizenship” on all children born in the United States, regardless of circumstance. Donald Trump says that the Amendment, as presently construed by the courts, is not fair. Why, he asks, should a child qualify for all the rights and privileges appertaining to “real” citizens, if the kid’s Mexican or Chinese mother came to the country with the sole intent of birthing a U.S. citizen baby?
So, if necessary, his supporters say change the 14th Amendment.
Jump cut to the murders on live television of Alison Parker and Adam Ward the two young journalists slain this week in Virginia.
14th Amendment August 27th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 27, 2015
Good Morning from NYC where I’m thinking about the current political debate over the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, it occurs to me that the furor is focused on the wrong Amendment. What we should be debating is whether the 2nd Amendment really gives even dirt-bag nut-jobs like the Virginia TV shooter Vester Lee Flanagan II, the right to keep and bear arms.
Another thought occurred when I walked from my morning WABC radio show at Madison Square Garden uptown to Fox News around mid-day yesterday. I was greeted outside the building near Radio City by the reassuring presence of heavily-armed NYPD officers.
Trump Hits Close To Home
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 26, 2015
Donald Trump is a swaggering, proud, thin-skinned and arrogant man obsessed with otherwise legitimate issues like undocumented immigrants and Chinese and Mexican commercial dumping in American markets. He is also a man whose incendiary reaction to perceived criticism is raw and brutal. Take a shot at Trump, however justified or fact-based, and the billionaire businessman responds rapidly and with disproportionate, devastating force. On Monday night Trump’s target was my friend and colleague Megyn Kelly who 19 days ago had the temerity to question Trump sharply on his allegedly misogynistic past with women, calling some, including personality Rosie O’Donnell, ‘pigs’, ‘slobs’ and ‘fat’.
Trump August 25th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 25, 2015
My friend and former Celebrity Apprentice boss Donald Trump is giving former Florida governor Jeb Bush the business over Jeb's awkward defense of his use of the term "anchor babies." Thing is, in a way Jeb is correct.
The majority of birth tourism is Asian in origin; relatively affluent, pregnant Chinese (and Russian) women obtaining legal visas near the end of their term, then coming here to give birth to American citizen babies, about 30-35,000 a year.
Of course that number is 1/10th the total of the border universe of anchor babies, the vast majority of whom (300,000 or more a year) are born to undocumented Latinas already residing in the United States.
Breasts August 24th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 24, 2015
Happy Monday from NYC where the Mayor and other officials remain obsessed with ending Topless Times Square. My radio show is based at Madison Square Garden a few blocks downtown. Instead of bare breasts we are enduring a tidal wave of homeless vagrants who this morning circled the entire block around the St. Francis of Assisi Church to get today's free breakfast.
A block away from the church, the new pedestrian mall the city has created around MSG "The World's Most Famous Arena" has become a magnet for those vagrants. Once they've dined courtesy of the church, they sleep on the new mall benches and urinate where and when the need moves them. It is a melancholy scene reminiscent of depression-era Central Park.
The homeless need services. Bare breasts are not the problem.
Paris August 24th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 24, 2015
The best news of the week was the courageous action taken on the Paris train by 3 California buddies on holiday. As you know, led by heroic U.S.Airman Spencer Stone, his National Guardsman wingman Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler, the brave trio of Americans subdued a would be jihadist bent on mass murder.As the train staff trembled and fled, leaving their passengers defenseless, the three men stood and fought. And today in Paris they were bestowed the French Legion of Honor.
Let it be a lesson for all of us. Never surrender to tyranny. Confront the bullies, criminals and murderers. They will show you no mercy. Your fearful inaction will only embolden the bad, crazy and cruel.
Better to die with your boots on.
Ashley Madison August 21st
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 21, 2015
Not being especially doctrinaire about my faith, I do believe that what goes around comes around. And sometimes karma is a bitch. Now millions of high-tech adulterers, including government employees like Assistant U.S. Attorneys and officials at Homeland Security are being outed by a huge hack of secret dating website Ashley Madison.Those exposed include the wretched Josh Duggar, the oldest of TLC's "19 Kids and Counting," who previously admitted molesting teenage girls including his sisters.
Over the years I have seen many hypocrites like the supposedly pious Duggar exposed. There is a special place in Dante's Inferno for those who pretend virtue only to pervert it. Be careful who you will believe in.
Trump's the Favorite August 20th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 20, 2015
Morning, There were dueling political rallies all over New Hampshire last night and the energy and size of the various crowds really are indicative of where the race for the GOP nomination is at this early stage.As you might have guessed, Donald Trump was the stud, all swagger and size, as his crowds easily beat Jeb's by a mile. I know it is early, five months from the first votes, still nothing on the horizon seems about to change the momentum. Trump has the charisma, confidence and the energy of a trained performer, and the others, even including once flamboyant personalities like New Jersey governor Chris Christie, seem cowed by Trump's presence and out-sized personality.
Maybe they're afraid to take him on. In any case, none are going to get personality makeovers in time to make a difference. They're mostly flat and rote. He's all flash and bang.
Alex Rodriguez August 19th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 19, 2015
Yankee great Alex Rodriquez blasted the game winning grand slam home run yesterday…it was his 25th grand slam…the most of any player ever in MLB history. And the fact that he’s also hit 25 homers this year as he turned 40…that he’s coming off a year-long suspension and is playing drug-free is a remarkable accomplishment.And speaking of birthdays, today is former president Bill Clinton’s 69th…so he’s now the same age as former president George W. Bush and leading contender for the GOP nod Donald Trump, who is also 69.
Hillary will be 68 in October…and isn’t it interesting that her age is constantly being mentioned as an issue; but nobody ever makes an issue of Donald’s age? Why is it that ladies get roughed up and guys don’t?
Rough On Hilary August 19th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 19, 2015
Just got off the air on my WABC radio show and it is remarkable how intense the hatred is of Hillary and President Bill Clinton. One caller emailed me, here's the verbate."Supporting the Clintons (murders & rapest (sic) & liers (sic) only diminishes YOUR credibility. Shame on you !"
I was just pointing out that there has never been a finding of criminal misconduct regarding Mrs. Clinton. And that similarly, it is highly unlikely, in my view, that this E-mail gate will produce any finding of criminal misconduct.
Yet the mere mention of her name brings foam to the mouths of many Americans. Now with Trump closing in the national polls, this coming election will be a nail-biter for Democrats.
Coming up on August 18th
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 18, 2015
Coming up on my 77WABC radio show at 10am ET, I'm asking how listeners feel about the multi-million dollar settlements this and other cities dole out to those falsely or flimsily accused, like the Central Park Five who did hard time for notoriously raping a female jogger? After another guy confessed, the five, who were teens when they were convicted, got a total of $41 million, or roughly a million for each year they did behind bars . That didn't sit well with cops or prosecutors on the case or with Donald Trump who at the time of the vicious attack 1989 took out front page newspaper advertisements calling for a return of tough justice including the death penalty.
Trump 45?
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 17, 2015
Did you see the Donald arriving this morning at court in New York reporting for jury duty? It was every bit as dramatic as if the president himself had arrived.And he may well be the 45th president, or at least the Republican nominee. There is a brand new Fox News poll out today that is stunning. Trump is the preferred candidate for 25% of Republican primary voters. In second place with less than half Trump’s appeal is Dr. Ben Carson at 12%. Senator Ted Cruz is experiencing a mini surge at 10%, with former Florida governor Jeb Bush scoring a humbling 9% to round out the top four in the new Fox News poll.
But the harsh immigration policy that is driving Trump’s popularity primarily or most dramatically among white, working class men might cost his party next November in swing states like Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
We thought it would be the war to end all wars…
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 14, 2015
On this day, exactly 70 years ago, after the deaths of tens of millions, including the attempted genocide of the Jewish Race by the NAZI's, the destruction of large swaths of Europe and Asia, after two atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Japanese government finally surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.Unfortunately it wasn’t the end of war, just the end of the last war we really won…which led to the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and now it’s ISIS and talk of re-engaging in Iraq and Syria even as we still fight in Afghanistan…But what I really want to talk about today is the political wars raging right now in this country…And specifically how the Republicans are being suckered into re-fighting the War on Women.
August 13th 2015
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 13, 2015
Good morning, CNN's latest poll out of Iowa has Donald Trump with a commanding lead, mostly driven by the strength of his support among white, working class men, regular Joe's who are fed up with politics as usual. While Trump's 22% is impressive, showing as it does an 8% lead over his nearest competitor, there are three other candidates who appear to be surging, Ohio governor John Kasich, businesswoman Carly Fiorina and neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, who I want to talk about today.
Dr. Carson was here in New York City yesterday, touring Harlem, with an obligatory stop at Sylvia's famed restaurant and taking time to address the statistical truth about the real threat to young black men. It is not old white cops. It is other young black men.
So What Did I Miss?
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 12, 2015
Back after our wonderful family vacation in Northern Italy…Erica, Sol and I had a fabulous time…from seeing Da Vinci’s Last Supper, visiting the World Expo in Milan, taking gondolas in Venice, a boat ride past George Clooney’s house on breathtakingly beautiful Lake Cuomo, and eating enough Caprese salad and pasta to last a life-time.So what did I miss? Aside from the deadly outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease around my old stomping grounds 149th Street in the Bronx, just starting with today’s sports headline, the New York Jets committing suicide, losing Geno Smith their starting quarterback and probably their season in a stupid locker room brawl with a third string linebacker with a history of violence.
Boxers or Briefs
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 29, 2015
You can pity all the other frustrated Republicans struggling for attention in the crowded field. As they release policy statements the media focuses first on fake allegations concerning Donald Trump’s marital rape of his wife Ivana, which both deny. Today’s story is about his reaction when a rival lawyer wanted to pump her breasts during a heated deposition. What’s next whether Trump wears boxers or briefs?
And with all the focus on Trump and the wild, frustrated herd of GOP candidates, especially the continuing stampede by Donald, there has been less scrutiny of how Hillary Clinton has been faring lately in the presidential horserace.
With Friends Like These
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 27, 2015
It's hard when people you are proud to call your friend do or say things that are offensive and/or embarrassing. I've previously spoken out about how my brilliant, former boss on "Celebrity Apprentice" Donald Trump unnecessarily insulted the entire Mexican race including the 35 million Mexican Americans with his sloppy statements implying that all immigrants from Mexico are rapists and drug dealers. Although he has subsequently moderated those statements, he still has some way to go to undo the damage done.Similarly, Trump's terribly insensitive statements about Senator John McCain's revered war record, which gratuitously insulted all POW's was difficult to bear. There too he has retreated somewhat, yet has not clearly apologized to the community of POW's.
Tunnels Vs. Walls
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 23, 2015
Seeing El Chapo's notorious prison escape tunnel makes clear how useless Donald Trump's proposed, multi-billion dollar, nearly 2,000 mile long wall along the nation's border with Mexico would be. Three-stories deep and a mile long, El Chapo's epic clandestine tunnel used by the notorious Drug fugitive to escape his nation's most secure prison, burrowed under fields and farms, even under a busy railroad. In the secret removal of over 2,000 tons of dirt and managing to emerge directly under the one tiny area where it could not be seen by the surveillance cameras in El Chapo's cell, the criminal enterprise demonstrates the immense skill of smugglers and how futile a hugely expensive wall would be in stopping the professional "rapists and drug dealers" Mr. Trump says are pouring over our southern border.
Immigration And Abortion
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 22, 2015
Of the things that truly irk me, one of the most egregious is how old men send young men to war. It is so easy to be an armchair hero when it is someone else who is putting his ass on the line.Another irksome phenomenon is how old men change their opinions on abortion.
The younger and more sexually active we are, the more likely to support the procedure as a kind of last ditch birth control. The older we get, the more likely we are to humanize the fetus and to be more or less repulsed by the whole scene, avoiding thinking about what it entails, often coming to conclusion that at least aspects of it are distasteful and some, like late-term, partial-birth abortions, should be restricted, if not outlawed.
To My Friend Donald Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 20, 2015
You owe all POW'S an explanation. You must apologize and tell them that you didn't mean what you seemed to say equating those who suffered the worst of war--captured and abused by the enemy--to a kind of second-rate GI.Tell us please my old TV boss that it was all a bad joke; that you lost your temper and never intended to insult John McCain's noble service to his country.
A brave Naval aviator, shot down, five years a slave to abuse and isolation in a rotten North Vietnamese torture chamber, Senator McCain is the epitome of a hero.
Mexico City
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 15, 2015
In Mexico City. This capital is tense and angry following the sensational prison break by El Chapo, the powerful billionaire drug lord who busted out Saturday night.With the Mexican president out of country on a state visit to France there is a feeling that the government is helplessly inept and hopelessly corrupt.
From here in the capital, every newspaper is blaming that malignant corruption for the great escape. No way, the feeling goes, that prison officials at the highest level were not involved. Think about it, this notorious drug kingpin who had escaped before, managed to gain his freedom by walking or riding through a mile long tunnel that was not only lighted and air conditioned, but managed to land directly under the one tiny spot in El Chapo's cell that the surveillance camera could not see.
Back From The Abyss
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 14, 2015
"Our quarrel has never been with the Iranian people," said Secretary of State John Kerry as he announced that a historic deal has been reached to "cutoff every pathway Iran has to a nuclear weapon." The deal, according to President Obama is "not built on trust, it is built on verification."If it is as it is being sold by U.S. officials, then this is enormously good news. "This is the good deal that we have sought," adds the Secretary. From his lips to God's ears.
My Best Frienemy
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 14, 2015
My Fox News colleague Eric Bolling and I have much different world views. But generally, we co-exist on our number-one rated cable news channel, which is far more open-minded than most and certainly more fair and balanced than our principal rivals.On the issue of immigration particularly there is real, at times passionate disagreement amongst our team. And that disagreement swelled dramatically during yesterday's "The Five" driven by two events, most importantly, the outrageous murder in front of her father of Kate Steinle, an innocent 32-year old San Francisco woman by a wretched ex-con, illegal immigrant who was free because SF is a Sanctuary City.
Et, tu, Atticus?
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 13, 2015
Hope everyone had a great weekend. The weather was great here in NYC, where Erica and I spent a couple of hours re-watching "To Kill A Mockingbird" the epic film version of Harper Lee's classic novel, which I confess to not having read since college.But Gregory Peck's deeply wrought portrayal in the 1962 film of noble attorney and loving widower dad Atticus Finch reminded me of why I wanted to become an attorney in the first place. To do the right thing. Set in Depression-era Alabama, the story follows Atticus and his two children as he defies the ignorance and racism of the time to defend a black man unjustly accused of rape.
El Chapo & The Donald
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 13, 2015
The elaborate escape from a supposedly super-secure Mexican prison by notorious drug lord 'El Chapo' ("Shorty") will fuel Donald Trump's assertion that our southern neighbor is lawless, dysfunctional and corrupt. Joaquin Guzman was the most important prisoner in their system. He was eagerly being sought by the United States for extradition to stand trial for a host of charges ranging from massive drug trafficking to murder. The fact he managed to escape is already being used by Trump to fuel his contention that Mexico is the font of all evil.
Mexico has severe problems with corruption and crime. There is small wonder ordinary, hard-working, law abiding Mexicans want to leave their troubled nation to come here to live normal lives.
The Right Thing
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 10, 2015
In a nation where division and discord often dominate the news, I confess to feeling almost giddy about South Carolina's collective decision to take down the Confederate battle flag that has defiantly flown on the grounds of the State Capitol for half a century.The bi-partisan, multi-racial, overwhelming vote to take down the symbol of the Confederacy was a vivid declaration of several things:
1-Black lives matter, and so do Black feelings. The massacre by an avowed, battle flag waving racist of the nine martyrs at the Bible study group at the Mother Emanuel AME Church made the flag an enduring insult to the victim's families and the entire community.
Trump's Surge
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 10, 2015
The Donald is surfing a wave of newfound popularity as he rides the nation's anger and frustration over illegal immigration to the front of the GOP pack. His performance so far is shocking to many establishment pundits, but should not be to readers of this reporter's notebook. What I've discovered during the quality time the tycoon and I have spent together on and off the air is that he is extremely competent and confident. He is a force of nature and his enduring success in real estate and television is no accident.His challenge now is to harness his initial voter appeal with specific proposals to fix what he thinks ails the nation. But anger and frustration over criminal aliens will not long sustain a campaign for president. At some point, facts will "trump" emotion.
Don't be a Jerk, Just Say Sorry
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 09, 2015
Yesterday I had a rare argument with my lovely wife Erica. It was about a relatively trivial matter involving which after-school activity would be most beneficial for Sol our almost ten year old. Erica wanted her to get more involved in math and science. Generally, I was leaning more toward physical activities like swimming and soccer.Remember the old movie "Love Story," which had the tag line, ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry?” Baloney.
Sometimes love means swallowing your pride and apologizing, even if you’re not a hundred percent sure you were really wrong in the first place.
Adios Amigo
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 06, 2015
A dear friend and great man died today at 77. Jerry Weintraub was my first agent, guide, mentor and friend for life. He was the most trusted man in Hollywood, a hugely successful producer who was confidante to presidents and to the biggest names in politics and show business. He was kind and loving and he will be missed by everyone who knew him or was touched by his enormous wisdom and generosity. He stepped into our lives many times long after our business relationship ended to offer advice, friendship and tangible assistance and hospitality.
Happy Almost Birthday
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 03, 2015
Happy Day Before our country’s 239th birthday on July 4th, commemorating the day we shook off the harness of oppression and took our place in the family of nations. Now nearly unique in the world, we are a bastion of decency; an integrated society that welcomes the best and brightest from the four corners of the planet to come here to pursue freely the philosophy we call the American Dream.
That’s why everybody wants to be American or at least be in America. I’ve traveled to well over a hundred countries and in every one of them, the preferred destination nation is the United States.
Subway to Nowhere, Bring in Trump
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 02, 2015
Donald Trump began his personal re-invention and march toward civic greatness when he took over rehabilitation of the woeful Wollman Skating Rink, which had languished in a dilapidated condition for a decade. He completed the task in 3 months and under budget. He built soaring office towers where no one believed it possible. He created an entire neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan and made a wonderful golf course out of a Bronx garbage heap.
Now the DeBlasio Administration wants to cut all ties to the Donald because his "remarks were disgusting and offensive and this hateful language has no place in our city."
Ann, Donald and me
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 01, 2015
Ann Coulter and I are locked in rhetorical combat over the truth or falsity of Donald Trump's draconian take of Mexican immigrants. By now everybody knows how the Donald's self-inflicted wound and reckless rhetoric incurred the wrath of most of the American Latino population. His wild generalizations about those immigrants being drug dealers and rapists was hurtful and has caused him no end of political and commercial blowback.When I criticized my friend and former Celebrity Apprentice boss on Megyn Kelly’s great Fox show Monday night, saying that Donald was flat wrong, and that immigrants commit proportionally less crime than the native born, Ann Coulter responded.
Tale Of Two Tough Guys
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 30, 2015
Both are strong, extremely competent men and neither is backing down from controversial issues that would have crushed lesser candidates. I’m talking about Donald Trump and Governor Chris Christie, two candidates for president cut from the same cloth. Both are proud, boisterous and favor unconventional styles that have served them well in their hugely successful public lives.Donald Trump assumed the mantle of his family’s real estate business and used the relatively modest enterprise as a springboard to a sprawling multi-billion dollar worldwide company with extensive holdings in many of the most desirable locations on the planet. He has flamboyantly remade entire neighborhoods, reinvigorated golf as a high-end sport, resurrected or built many of the world’s best golf courses and with Celebrity Apprentice, he’s remained a hit fixture on network television for eleven years.
Frontier Justice Preferred
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 29, 2015
While I am delighted and relieved that no one else was hurt, neither civilian nor law enforcement during the 21 days David Sweat and Richard Matt were on the loose, there is also just a tiny bit of regret that the daring escapees didn’t end up on a beach somewhere in a random non-extradite-able beach in a galaxy far, far away.At least fugitive killer Richard Matt was wasted drunk when he ran into the crack SWAT Team from the U.S. Border Patrol. The preliminary autopsy shows he got hit in the head three times, shot by a semi-automatic expertly wielded by a sharp-shooter.
Amigo, Hágame un Favor
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 29, 2015
My friend-for-life Donald Trump is surging in the presidential polls after his flamboyant and controversial campaign launch the week before last. There is so much to admire about Donald, an incredibly creative entrepreneur who has done more to re-make New York City than anyone in recent history. He said so many great and admirable things during his announcement that he dispelled many doubts and now is challenging Governor Jeb Bush for top spot in the crowded Republican field.But as I tweeted last week to this fine man who treated me so graciously during Celebrity Apprentice, please apologize for your crude and inaccurate remarks about undocumented Mexican immigrants branding them drug dealers and rapists.
Needed: A Presidential Wake Up
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 26, 2015
President Obama has been on a roll lately, since giving that cool breezy pod cast interview following the Charleston Church massacre. By invoking the ‘N’ word and bringing the racial divide into sharper focus, the president is also basking in the Supreme Court’s dramatic 6-3 Ruling upholding Obamacare.But despite what I’m sure will be a great and stirring eulogy by him at services for Reverend Pinckney and the eight other victims of the church massacre this afternoon in South Carolina…and despite the need for the nation to focus on our racial divide, the president has to wake up and smell the gunpowder overseas.
June 25th, 2015
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 25, 2015
Today is about political correctness. Do you feel pressure to toe a certain line? And if you don’t or won’t are you hearing from family, friends or colleagues pressuring you to change your mind? I got a major dose of it during the Baltimore riots when I was accused of not being more sympathetic with a neighborhood trouble-maker who was harassing my live broadcast from the streets of West Baltimore. Just the other day in New York one well-dressed adult black businessman confronted me on W. 36th street to let me know that because of that drama in Baltimore he was “disappointed with me” and that “I wasn’t the open-minded man” he remembered from the 1980’s, the fearless reporter who” confronted the skinheads and the Neo-Nazi’s.”
Baltimore's Coming Disappointment
by Geraldo RIvera | Jun 24, 2015
The black cop who drove Freddie Gray's prison van, Officer Caesar Goodson is charged with 'Depraved Heart' Murder, which does not require intent to kill. The classic example is 'shooting a rifle at a passing train killing a passenger;' or a blind man trying to shoot an apple off someone's head with a bow and arrow and instead putting the arrow between the victim's eyes. You have to know that your action is so reckless that death is almost inevitable.
Stars Bars And Swastikas
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 22, 2015
I know many good, brave people, including millions who had no connection to slavery fought and died for the Confederacy. Along with State's Rights, it is the memory of the innocent fallen, and nostalgia for the traditions and tempo of the Antebellum South that is usually cited as the rationale for flying the Battle Flag of the Confederacy. What do think about this?
A Racist James Holmes
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 18, 2015
What kind of sick monster can be welcomed to a church prayer meeting, sit and appear to worship for an hour, before unleashing terrible violence, a brutal massacre on nine defenseless parishioners, killing three black men and six black women? What deep hatred could motivate so incomprehensible an infamy? What obscene motive could there be to commit this awful act of terror shedding innocent blood before the altar of a loving compassionate God?
Trump And James
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 17, 2015
Let’s talk about two men who profess to be the best in the world, and whom I admire despite their braggadocio. I’ll get to Donald Trump and reaction to his big announcement yesterday that he’s running for president, but first, LeBron James, who played his heart out in the NBA finals, seldom sitting, averaging about 36 points, 13 rebounds and almost 9 assists a game. Alas, it was not enough as my injury depleted Cleveland Cavaliers lost the basketball finals in six games to the surging Golden State Warriors, 105 to 97. The Warriors led by their NBA MVP Stephen Curry and a guy I’ve never heard of named Andre Iguadala, who each had 25 points, just wore down the Cavs who got no help from players like former Knick J.R. Smith who choked almost every chance he got.
So my wife’s struggling, crime riddled, often ridiculed, championship-deprived hometown where I‘m going for Father’s Day will not have what would have been its first championship in any pro sport in more than 50 years.
Jeb Bush Running For President
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 16, 2015
Good morning from NYC, where I commuted in from the far side of the Hudson via 'Belle', my old Hinckley 36 footer. At 7am the big river was flat, the wind still, the sky gray and drizzling. And I was thinking about today's top story as I cruised past the West Side Highway packed with cars. Approaching the 79th Street Boat Basin I kept coming back to a spontaneous moment during former Governor Jeb Bush's announcement for president yesterday when the heckler demanded to know what Jeb would do, if elected, about undocumented immigrants. He was undaunted."By the way, just so that our friends know," he said going off script, "the next president of the United States (meaning himself) will pass meaningful immigration reform so that, that will be solved not by Executive Order."
Baby Shower, Parade and a Good Time Had By All
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 15, 2015
Yesterday’s gigantic Puerto Rican Parade was blessed by perfect weather and hefty exuberant crowds lining 5th Avenue from 44th Street all the way up to 86th Street. It was noisy and happy, and like the 40 or so other Puerto Rican parades I’ve participated in, it was nearly incident free, which is itself an incredible achievement considering there are twenty thousand marching and hundreds of thousands, actually, according to an NYPD estimate more than a million men women and children wearing everything from traditional Caribbean garb to scanty sexy fringy salsa outfits, all lining both sides of the Avenue, happy, proud, and having a great time.I wanted to hook up with my friend the New York Secretary of State Cesar Perales, who was supposed to be marching with Governor Andrew Cuomo, who I did not see and think was a no show because of the bad news surrounding the so far successful great escape of those two slick murderous thugs from the Big house Upstate.
Fixing What Ails Us
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 11, 2015
By now everyone has seen the graphic video of Corporal Eric Casebolt stupidly drawing his weapon on a bunch of unruly black children in bathing suits. The cop resigned Tuesday as a tidal wave of criticism washed over his McKinney Texas police department. See, doesn’t this prove how cops devalue young black lives? Isn’t this a thankfully less violent example of the hostility between black and blue? The tension that has led to bloodshed in Ferguson, Staten Island, Charleston South Carolina and Baltimore?
But then look again at that same video of the cop drawing his 9mm on the bratty kids. Why weren’t they obeying the cops’ demands to cease and desist? Without sounding too crotchety, in my day that kind of disrespect for authority would have been inconceivable.
Why No Black Cops
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 10, 2015
I was at El Museo del Barrio on Upper Fifth Avenue a couple of years ago, for a commemoration of the contribution activist groups from the old days like the Puerto Rican Young Lords contributed to empowering the city’s minorities. One of the speakers was Felipe Luciano, who now works as spokesman for Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, but then was a Manhattan-based fiery community activist.
Felipe made a couple of points involving the burden of the criminal records that young black and brown men often carry from their childhoods; Felipe making the point that he was an ex con himself; and like so many others was therefore excluded from most city jobs. He went on passionately to blame Stop and Frisk specifically for wrecking the chance of so many young men to move up the social economic ladder because of busts for pot possession and other minor offenses.
Panties In A Bunch
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 09, 2015
There is a scorching editorial in today’s New York Post about the spike in gun violence and murder in the big city. So far this year, we have suffered 22 more murders than we did at this time last year. And the obvious question is whether this disturbing uptick in homicides is related to the decline in the police tactic Stop, Question and Frisk (SQF), that was used to such impressive effect during the 20 years Republican mayors ran this town.
The issue is whether the kinder, gentler approach to policing instituted by Mayor Bill De Blasio and the liberal Democrats who now run New York are responsible for the increase in violence.
Living Large
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 08, 2015
Did a well-endowed Inmate Romeo use his biggest asset to engineer Upstate’s Great Escape? That is the lead theory from the New York Post about the scoop behind the epic prison breakout, that It happened because of the size of one of the con’s penis.48 year old convicted murderer Richard Matt, one of the escaped killers from the maximum security Dannemora penitentiary was reportedly a ‘well-endowed’ Romeo. So authorities are questioning a female prison worker who may have been seduced by the inmate into cooperating with Matt and his cellmate 34 year old killer David Sweat.
Love Potion 9
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 05, 2015
An FDA Advisory Panel has approved 'Viagra for Women', a little pink pill for women that could soon rival the little blue pill that has been erecting, extending and enhancing the sex lives of their husbands, boyfriends and other sex partners for a generation.My only caution is when it comes to the tens of millions of dollars in health insurance spent to cover this 'therapy'. The notion that Viagra is a medication for erectile dysfunction is a fraud designed by lobbyists for the drug companies to insure the hugely popular drugs are free to millions of horny men with good insurance policies including most civil servants and unionized workers.
Remember Chris Humphries ?
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 02, 2015
Why can’t I get over the skeptical notion that Bruce Caitlyn Jenner’s journey would never have happened if it didn’t work for his and/or her as the premise for a presumably hugely lucrative reality phenomenon? Maybe my cynical view is rooted in the fact that everything that this clan has ever done in its explosive march to unprecedented fame has been the product of calculation and pre-meditation.
Without being mean-spirited, does anyone really believe that the former Bruce Jenner managed for years to completely hoodwink Kris Kardashian, his perceptive, sharp, cunning, wife and mother/manager of this fabulously successful brood of mega famous children and step-children?
Ghetto Civil War
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 01, 2015
One thing Baltimore has that New York City doesn’t is prompt reporting of violent crime. And in Maryland's “Body Bag City,” the reporting reflects the river of blood that gushes through that stricken community at a historic rate.Three were killed in Baltimore just yesterday, Sunday, the last day of May, making the month the deadliest in Baltimore in 40 years, with 43 killed. 116 for the year. Of the 116 homicides in Baltimore, 103 victims were black.
We’re trying to get the final totals from the Grim Reaper here in New York City, but we do know thanks to the Daily News that in four hours and forty minutes from late Friday to very early Saturday morning, four men, one of them Latino were killed here in New York City.
23-year old Joel Rivera was shot to death at about 11:20pm Friday on Andrews Avenue in the South Bronx. As far as I know, we are not related.
The other victims were all black.
Mansion Murders Solved
by Geraldo Rivera | May 22, 2015
Great police work by DC detectives who thought to check discarded pizza for DNA. It shows the wisdom of the Supreme Court's 2013 decision allowing the collection of DNA from all suspects arrested for serious crimes, even before conviction. The DNA match led to alleged perpetrator Daron Wint,who apparently is an arrogant greedy violent sadistic ex-con who was stupid enough to use his own cell phone pinging all the way from Washington to Brooklyn and then back again to the delight of tracking authorities.
I don't know if Wint's family members and the friends arrested with this alleged killer participated in the savage crime. Those arrested with Wint seem to be at least accessories after the fact and therefore chargeable as suspected felons. But once he gained entry to the victims' home, Wint could easily have subdued the Savopoulos parents and housekeeper by himself and then terrorized them by torturing their ten year old until the husband cooperated by arranging the delivery of the $40,000 in cash from the victim's company.
ISIS On My Mind
by Geraldo Rivera | May 21, 2015
The GOP cannot escape responsibility for the Bush Administration’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq in 2003, displace Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and destroy their national army. But the fact the original sin was committed by George W. Bush does not absolve responsibility of the Obama Administration for turning its back on Iraq.I was on the last combat convoy out of Iraq in 2011 and have a vivid memory of hundreds of Iraqi civilians climbing over the fence of the abandoned U.S. base to steal the vehicles we were leaving behind and pilfer the buildings. And I remember asking where in the world the Iraqi Army was? All that equipment was being stolen by individuals. It wasn’t going to strengthen the government’s hand.
Atlantic City
by Geraldo Rivera | May 18, 2015
Erica, Sol and I had a wonderful time in Atlantic City Saturday night attending a terrific concert Tony Orlando put on at the Borgata Hotel, which unlike much of the rest of the New Jersey shore side resort city is thriving. As is his custom, during his show Tony honored veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam all the way to Afghanistan and Iraq.As I wrote Sunday, we were very proud that my friend of 40 years also gave me his Yellow Ribbon Medal of Freedom award during the show honoring my work as a combat correspondent. It was a wonderful gesture. Sol was especially impressed by what Tony said about my work, at one point looking at me and saying, “Daddy I love you.” Tony is a show business icon with a good and generous heart. He’s a true patriot and I’m proud to be his friend.
Fired For A Lousy Donation
by Geraldo Rivera | May 15, 2015
In 1985, after fifteen great years, I was fired by ABC News. The official reason for my firing was a non-disclosed $200 donation to a family friend running in a non-partisan mayoral campaign in New Bedford Massachusetts.The real reason I was fired was because I was estranged at the time from my boss Roone Arledge. I had complained publicly after Roone spiked a colleague's 20/20 story about the Kennedy brothers’ relationship with Marilyn Monroe. The Kennedy story never ran, I alleged, because of Roone’s relationship with the Kennedy family.
To Everything There Is A Season
by Geraldo Rivera | May 14, 2015
The Jews of Palestine was dancing in the streets of Jerusalem 67 years ago today as the future Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the birth of a new sovereign nation, “a Jewish state in Eretz Israel to be known as the State of Israel.” And so the Jewish homeland became a nation born on May 14, 1948.It was only three years after the end of the barbaric attempt to eradicate the Jewish race in Europe, the Holocaust, during which the Nazi’s killed millions. And there is no doubt that sympathy for the stricken Jews played a large role in the decision by the United Nations General Assembly to partition the former British mandate of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish nations.
We all know that the ink was barely dry on Ben-Gurion’s declaration of independence before all the surrounding Arab nations invaded the new nation in the first of several failed attempts to wipe Israel off the face of the map of the Middle East.
Ball Breakers
by Geraldo Rivera | May 12, 2015
It is the day after Tom Brady, the Super Bowl winning New England Patriots quarterback and perhaps the greatest pro football player in the game today was dragged through the humiliating mud of a four game suspension without pay, about a million dollar hit for, "more probably than not," knowing about a scheme to deflate footballs in violation of League rules.The punishment inflicted on him feels Draconian…Remember he got a four game suspension for probably knowing about the equipment boys deflating his footballs…Initially, the Baltimore Ravens' Ray Rice got just a two game suspension for knocking out his fiancé in the elevator.
Brady's team, the Pats also got hit so seriously it is already affecting the odds of who wins next year’s Super Bowl; the team losing 2 top draft picks, plus being hit by another million dollar fine.
Black White And Red
by Geraldo Rivera | May 11, 2015
A visitor to our planet might be excused for thinking Americans only care about the lives of young black men when they are ended by white cops. Police brutality and the excessive use of force by cops is a real issue. Too many die in sometimes unnecessarily violent encounters with cops. Tasers and body cameras must be more broadly deployed to reduce these abuses and restore confidence.
But the excessive use of force by cops is a small piece of a much broader crisis.
Blood flows in our inner cities, mostly from black men. Nationwide, over 90% of the 2,491 blacks killed were killed by other blacks. In riot ravaged Baltimore for example, there have been 26 homicides in the last month. 20 of the victims were black men. All killed by other black men.
Funeral For A Cop
by Geraldo Rivera | May 08, 2015
They are burying Officer Brian Moore today at St. James Roman Catholic Church in Seaford on Long Island, not far from where the 25-year old still lived at home with his parents. Shot in the face at point blank range by a violent thug who had just served 7 years behind bars for attempted murder and other crimes, the young cop had already distinguished himself in New York’s toughest job. On the force since he was barely out of his teens, he worked mainly in Queens County a half hour’s drive from his family home. In his almost five years of brave service, Brian made more than 150 arrests, earning several medals along the way.
Scrub Thoroughly After Viewing
by Geraldo Rivera | May 07, 2015
In the Greenroom at Fox News the beefed up security caught my eye. Curious as to which high-profile leader demanded the additional vigilance I was disappointed to see Pamela Geller in my shop. She is the fiery provocateur who runs the anti-Muslim hate group which was presenting a noxious Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest Sunday night that attracted two terrorists who staged a violent attack. The attack was repulsed, both extremists were deservedly shot dead by a traffic cop, but a hero security guard was wounded.
The T Word
by Geraldo Rivera | May 05, 2015
Is ‘thug’ a code word for “black people behaving badly?” Has it become a loaded racist expression like the “N” word or has it at least become a racial pejorative, a code word that should be banned from polite society?As someone sensitive to use of words like “aliens” to describe Hispanic immigrants and “Mafia” or “mobster” to describe members of organized criminal enterprises, including but not limited to the traditional Sicilian and Italian gangs, I admit to being pleasantly surprised when America’s first black president described Baltimore rioters as ‘thugs’.
Similarly, I thought black Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was brave also to use the term accurately to describe the greedy, destructive looters who ravaged and robbed their innocent neighbors as they trashed homes and staggered neighborhoods.
Free Stuff Not Free Speech
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 28, 2015
Nobody is talking about poor dead Freddie Gray today. What folks are talking about instead of this man fatally injured during police custody is the looting and mayhem that wrecked his hometown of Baltimore last night. The thugs throwing rocks at cops, setting fires, assaulting innocent bystanders and pillaging stores deserve neither sympathy nor understanding. They were selfish not self-righteous.
They have profaned the memory of Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley and every other unarmed black man who has fallen at the hands of cops charged with keeping the peace.
They have broken the social contract that distinguishes the civilized world from the savage. They were exercising not free speech, but rather grabbing free stuff.
The Problem With Hilary
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 27, 2015
Just 38% of Americans polled by reliable Quinnipiac say Hillary Clinton is trustworthy. 54% say she cannot be trusted. Yet, according to same survey she beats every other Republican or Democrat alternative.Of course that will change if direct evidence emerges that she intervened as secretary of state to benefit donors to the Clinton foundation. Given the Teflon Clinton's track record good luck with finding that. So question becomes, will this election be about character or policies.
Drones Save Lives
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 24, 2015
The good news is that we got two of the worst of the bad guys. Adnan Gadahn and Ahmad Farouq two longtime, high-ranking American renegade al Qaeda operators who together have been responsible for countless attacks of America and American interests are dead. The bad news is the accidental deaths of two innocent hostages killed in the drone strike or strikes in the Tribal Territories of Pakistan disclosed yesterday by the president, who was gracious to accept responsibility and to apologize for the loss of innocent life.
On My Mind April 23rd
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 23, 2015
three fallen heroes all in the news this morning, former baseball greats Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriquez and former CIA Director, retired General David Petraeus. Bonds crushed a record 762 home runs in his 22 years in MLB. He hit 73 home runs in 2001 alone, for the single-season record.
As everybody knows, Bonds fell from grace in 2011 when ravenous federal prosecutors managed to pin a single count of obstruction of justice on baseball’s homerun king stemming from a mushy answer Bonds gave in 2003 to a federal grand jury probing performance enhancing drugs during that period when the doping debate distracted baseball and tarnished the careers of sure Hall of Famers Mark McGuire, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriquez.
Libya On My Mind
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 21, 2015
Let me start this morning with the two recent shipwrecks in the Mediterranean that killed as many as 1,300 men, women and children. As a sailor, the image of all those terrified people grabbing, clawing, gouging and fighting each other and the raging sea trying desperately to survive sticks with me like a nightmare.Those dead would-be immigrants trying to get from Libya in North Africa to Italy in Southern Europe is the severest example of the same situation we see in many parts of the world, including along our own southern border: Economic and political refugees, asylum seekers and just eager immigrants trying to get into the Promised Land.
Obviously the developed world can’t absorb all the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But aside from increasing patrols in the Mediterranean to cut down on the human smuggling, there are things the civilized nations can do in terms of economic development in those impoverished lands.
Slave Patrols Then, Police Killing Blacks Now
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 20, 2015
As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the end of slavery in America, many powerful commentaries are being written comparing the harsh treatment of runaway slaves with the persistent use of deadly force by cops confronting unarmed black men. After reciting the melancholy litany of recent cases, Garner, Brown, Ford, 12 year old Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley in Brooklyn, Rumain Brisbon in Phoenix and Tony Robinson last week in Madison Wisconsin, author Edward Ball wrote powerfully in Sunday’s Times about the past impacting the present. The great-great-grandson of slaveholders, who unlike actor Ben Affleck accepts his family’s dark legacy, Ball describes how young black men who did not have proper papers were regarded as suspect.
Dad's Night Out
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 20, 2015
Yesterday was Dad’s Night Out a chance for the dad’s at my daughter’s school to spend some quality time together just chilling and talking about politics and sports. We got together at Guthries, a tiny gin mill on Park Avenue and 97th Street. And I want to thank Francisco the New York-born Ecuadoran/Dominican who knows how to make a mean Margarita, not to mention Dark and Stormy, and Presbyterian, which is like a Dark and Stormy except that it’s Bourbon instead of Rum. So today, I’m totally hung over. My mouth is dry, my head aches, my physical condition matching today’s gloomy rainy dark foggy windy weather here in the big city. And I want to thank Uzi Ben Abraham, a fellow dad at the school who despite our disagreements about Bibi Netanyahu and Israeli politics was kind enough to get me home. Where I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself fully clothed sleeping with my head on the dining room table.
And today I’m paying the price. So what’s the moral of my story?
First, never have a Dad’s Night Out on a school night. Monday’s are tough enough.
April 17th Musings
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 17, 2015
Morning musings,1- First, on the college that is requiring sensitivity training because someone thought to serve Mexican food during their "Intergalactic Night" a fun seminar on the possibility of Alien life in outer space.
Personally, I loath the term Illegal Alien when referencing undocumented immigrants. It should be avoided by intelligent commentators.
Here, though, it is strictly a question of intent and there does not seem to be malicious intent with this unintentional double entendre. Like the theater group that wears black face in homage to the old burlesque “Negro” theater sometimes it is possible to hurt people’s feelings unintentionally. But this seems a politically correct overreaction to a silly incident.
Iran is not WWII Germany
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 16, 2015
With yesterday's remembrance of the 150th anniversary of the death of the greatest U.S. president Abraham Lincoln and the second anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, perhaps you overlooked today's 'Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day' for the six million European Jews exterminated by Nazis in WWII.Also slaughtered by the Germans were Russian POW's, gays, Gypsies and the physically and mentally handicapped.
The horrific events during WWII were so organized, brutal and banal no discussion of what happened can help but cause tears and head shaking distress that such a thing could possibly have been wrought by a modern educated society like Germany's in the 1930's and '40's, attempting to wipe-out an entire race of people.
She Who Laughs Last
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 13, 2015
Saturday Night Live brought back Darrell Hammond to hit Hillary where it must still hurt…right in the Lewinsky. Comics and critics coming cascading out of the woodwork Sunday…falling over each other to ridicule and blunt any announcement bounce for the former Secretary of State as Senator Hillary Clinton again tossed her hat into the presidential ring this time via social media yesterday.She was immediately chewed up by a corps of conservative commentators led by Reince Priebus, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee…all of whom hit Hillary hard with their first salvo of criticism.
Get used to hearing Benghazi…Benghazi…Benghazi as the GOP tries to breathe new life into the old controversy they hope still smolders around the tragic deaths of our four heroes in that Libyan city more than three years ago.
Manslaughter Not Murder
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 10, 2015
Last night I spoke at the NYPD Sergeant Benevolent Assn Heroes Dinner…which is held every year for the last 106 years….and since 2001, has honored the four police sergeants who died in the World Trade Center attacks. As I sat on the dais I remembered something about that awful day…I remember being stuck in California unable to get back to the City and to my children who were stuck here in Manhattan…I re-lived that frustration on another terrible day this past December when two NYPD cops were executed by a lunatic driven to rage by all the vile hateful anti-police rhetoric that irresponsible race baiters were putting out about cops in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner deaths…And as with 2001, I was stuck thousands of miles away unable to get back in time to help guide the city through this latest trauma.Well I got the chance to talk about the murders of Detectives Ramos and Liu last night as the SBA honored their families along with the families of two other cops, Michael Williams and Dennis Guerra, who also died in the line of duty.
Cameras Don't Lie, Sometimes Cops Do
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 08, 2015
Lesson to crooks and cops. There is video everywhere. If you’re a crook, you may remember the old days, when you could break into someplace or stick up somebody, and have a reasonable chance of getting away with it, even with eyewitnesses because eyewitnesses can be impeached as unreliable.If you’re a cop especially, you could always count on investigators not to mention juries being sympathetic to cops…wanting to believe cops when they explained and excused their use of deadly force because they feared their lives were endangered or because a suspect was grabbing for the cops gun or making a menacing move that justified the use of deadly force as necessary self-defense.
The video out of North Charleston, South Carolina is vivid horrifying proof that like crooks, cops sometimes lie…and as with crooks, video can provide graphic proof that sometimes cops commit murder in the name of law and order.
Duke Wins It
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 07, 2015
There was a civil war within Erica's family circle last night. One of her favorite aunts Gail went to Duke, Erica to Wisconsin. In the nail-biter game they were part of a network of competing alums furiously posting back and forth with every lead change.Watching the game and not hip to the ongoing debate over the quasi-pro status of elite Division One athletes or to the controversy of the players doing one year college ball before then turning pro, 'One and Done', she asked innocently, "Where did all these black players come from? These are two of the whitest campuses in the country."
Everybody Knows That
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 30, 2015
The rage and surprise expressed by reporters and commentators in Washington and Bogota` last Thursday at the official report that U.S. government agents partied hardy with prostitutes in Colombia reminded me most of Inspector Renault in the classic film ‘Casablanca’.When Bogart’s café owner Rick asks the Inspector, a morally ambiguous character, why he’s shutting down Rick’s Cafe, the Inspector says “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” as he is pocketing his winnings for the night.
I don’t mean to suggest that the critics ever used the services of the ladies of the night but to point out that prostitution in Colombia is as much a surprise as the palm trees and fabulous beaches.
Everybody who has ever been to the lovely Spanish-Colonial-era port cities of Barranqilla or Cartegena knows they have Red Light Districts that are well-established with take-out a service associated with all important hotels. Like Bangkok Thailand, Rotterdam Holland or Sparks Nevada sex tourism is one of the mainstays of the local economy.
With the exception of two counties in Nevada, including Sparks, prostitution is criminalized in the United States. But the world’s oldest profession is legal, organized, semi-regulated, wide spread and hugely tolerated in LatinAmerica.
Battle Plan To Defeat ISIS
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 16, 2015
1- Bring back General David Petraeus, architect of the Iraq Surge. He knows Mosul like the back of his hand and he knows…2- The Sunni Tribes, which must again be financially and politically seduced, as they were by Petraeus the last time around during the Surge.
3- ISIS-Occupied Mosul must be cut off by a vastly extended air campaign that makes Mosul inaccessible to ISIS reinforcement. No military traffic however slight can be permitted night or day. Oil pipelines should be blown. Oil trucks should be included on the target lists
War Stories -- Brian Williams
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 02, 2015
I only remember being with Brian Williams once in a combat situation, covering the elections in Iraq in January 2005. Williams, Peter Jennings, and I were flying either in or out of Mosul aboard a C-130. Before takeoff, Williams reveled in the fact that he had beaten Jennings in the ratings every week since he replaced Brokaw as NBC's anchor. Williams and I joked about how neither of us liked the ABC News anchor because he was usually so stuck up. But I also remember thinking how uncharacteristically nice Jennings was being to everyone. It turns out it was his last big foreign assignment before announcing his diagnosis of fatal cancer.
Hip-Hop & Re-Segregation
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 19, 2015
In a wide-ranging interview during the press tour following the finale of Celebrity Apprentice, I ignited a huge controversy when I told Huff Po’s Josh Zepps that I thought "Hip-hop has done more damage to black and brown people than racism in the last 10 years."I then challenged anyone to find "a youngster -- a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx or a black kid from Harlem who has succeeded in life other than being the one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent that make it in the music business -- that's been a success in life walking around with his pants around his ass and with visible tattoos..." Or going around with their faces buried deep inside their hoodies?
Are they graduating high school? Getting into college? Getting a job that pays more than minimum wage? Or are they more likely to end up in prison, fathering children out-of-wedlock and continuing a vicious self-defeating cycle?
Jew-Rican XMas
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 18, 2014
Dealing with how we celebrated the Holiday Season when I was growing up was just the most obvious symbol of our struggle to find ourselves religiously. We were half-breeds and both halves represented strong identities. Dad was not only a practicing Catholic when he met and courted my Jewish mom; he was a lay deacon in the Catholic Church. While he nominally converted to marry mom at City Hall, he never really shed his Catholic identity.It didn’t really matter when we lived in New York’s Lower East Side or later when we moved to Williamsburg Brooklyn. Both those neighborhoods had huge Jewish and Puerto Rican communities. We didn’t have to pick a lane. It was easy to identify with either side because there was plenty of each
Ferguson & Ghettos
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 03, 2014
The Plague of Ghetto Murder.Granted that police reform is necessary Post-Ferguson. But we must not lose sight of the harsh fact that minorities are killing themselves far more frequently than any cop kills.
Example: New York City is on track to record the lowest number of homicides ever. Murders are down from a high of 2,245 in 1990 to just 290 murders through November of this year.
The Denial Dilemna
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 01, 2014
3 black men were killed in Newark New Jersey this holiday weekend by other black men. 9 others were wounded in ten shootings. There was similar black-on-black gun violence throughout urban America over the last couple days, including here in New York City, where four were shot at a baby shower in Brooklyn.Will the president even mention the grim fact of urban violence at today's Ferguson-related meetings with civil rights leaders and law enforcement at the White House; the fact that poor, urban black neighborhoods are committing a kind of suicide?
Ferguson
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 25, 2014
Despite the bizarre television split-screen he shared with images of smoke and fire, the president was right to address the nation last night, urging calm. The epidemic of young black men dying in encounters with cops must stop.In that regard, we should all join the Brown family’s campaign to require police to wear body cameras. Just as ‘dash cams’ have helped remove subjectivity and doubt from traffic stops, body cameras will help both cops and the kids they stop
Bravo Mr. President
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 20, 2014
Bravo Mr. President for having the courage or political will or for doing the hard cold political calculation finally to do the right thing for five million undocumented, but otherwise law-abiding immigrants.Those immigrants who have been here for more than five years, have citizen children, are willing to pay their fair share of taxes and are willing to register for criminal background checks will be able to stay. They can come out of the shadows and live free of the fear of being wrenched away from their families.
O (please) Canada
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 10, 2014
First of all, please quote me honestly and calmly, and try not to resort to the self-serving, often obscene, sometimes racist ranting that your supposedly polite nation has rained down on me since my Facebook post, which alleged that “every Muslim extremist attack since 9/11 has come from the Northern not the Southern border.Tens of thousands of you, including Pam Lambo the Senior Public Affairs Advocacy Officer at your embassy in Washington D.C. angrily pointed out (in her case politely) that the 9/11 hijackers did not come from Canada.
I never said they did.
I said every attack since 9/11 had come from the north not the south
Friday, October 24th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 24, 2014
One note before the weekend: I Love Canada. Nothing in my remarks should be construed as insulting Canada or Canadians. I was a fan of Bob and Doug McKenzie, which is where I got the phrase Great White North. As I remember it referred to snow not race. Anyway, I love Canada. I have seen brave Canadians in Afghanistan. My sister has a house in Canada. My wife spent her childhood there in summer camp and we have many Canadians friends all across the continent. What I wrote was in regard to the relative threat to the U.S. from Muslim extremist infiltration as compared to the Mexican border, which is the obsession of so many here in the States.
Challenges
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 16, 2014
As a traditional buy and hold Dow Jones Investor and a patriot, I woke up today with a headache and the worry that the market was in free fall. Our normally orderly nation seems on the brink of chaos, riddled with self-doubt. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says the world at large is threatened by twin plagues, Ebola and ISIS. With due respect to the president, he must bear part of the responsibility. Ever since the day he played golf before the tears were dry among those mourning the beheading of an American journalist, Mr. Obama has seemed a day late and a dollar short. It took him six weeks before he recognized that ISIS had conquered a huge swath of Iraq and Syria
Another Ebola Case
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 14, 2014
With Dallas reeling and the rest of us watching worriedly, a second health care worker is diagnosed with Ebola. It's scary and the fear is it will be much worse before it gets better. But it will get better, at least in the modern world. Dr. William Schaffner the eminent Chair of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt Medical Center just reassured me that ZMapp, the experimental cocktail of 3 synthetic antibodies is looking very promising in frantic testing and, assuming things stay on track, should be ready for wide-spread distribution by the end of the year. In the meantime, the use of plasma taken from the blood of Ebola survivors also seems to be working to cure the infected
The Ebola Threat
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 06, 2014
1-The threat of Ebola is real and present, and if we don’t crush it in Africa, then the Duncan situation will be multiplied. People infected will lie, cheat, and steal to get here to get life-saving treatment. We need those GI’s to go there and set up huge tents, with haz mat suits and all the appropriate gear. Absolutely no one gets on a plane without a seriously thorough physical and background check.2-Rather than stopping all travel, extreme screening and a massive effort to crush the disease before it gets any bigger is the way to go.
3-The president’s scary words must be believed.
4-A massive effort must be mounted to find a vaccine. This is the highest national priority
Thursday, October 2nd 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 02, 2014
The stock market got crushed yesterday by the huge sell-off of airline-related stocks. The theory is that the Ebola epidemic will negatively impact air travel. Maybe a temporary reduction in flights and heightened screening of passengers coming our way from the hot spots is a good thing. The experience of Thomas E. Duncan gives us little comfort. The first confirmed Ebola patient in the USA flew from Liberia to Dallas. Here's the really bad news: Mr. Duncan was screened and determined to have no Ebola symptoms before he was allowed to board the flight to Dallas
Friday, September 26th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 26, 2014
Attorney General Eric Holder's retirement will leave a gap in the Obama Administration. He was the only one with the guts and standing to confront the state of race relations, the single most egregiously unresolved domestic issue. As the nation's first black Attorney General he deserved better treatment than the blatantly political hatchet job/contempt citation crafted by Darryl Issa, the most blatantly partisan attack dog in Congress.
Wednesday, September 24th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 24, 2014
Like many Jewish families, mine has been distressed by the rise in malignant Anti-Semitism of the sort chronicled today in the New York Times. The excellent in-depth report by Jim Yardley cites the virulent intensity of the hatred directed at Jews in France, Germany and other European nations. The report is particularly welcomed because the authoritative newspaper of record is viewed with suspicion by many American Jews. For historic reasons, and now mostly because of paper's willingness to criticize Israel's unlawful occupation of Palestine, many Zionists have smeared the NYT's ownership as self-hating Jews.
Tuesday, September 23rd 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 23, 2014
Bravo Mr. President. Better late than never. Our Peace In Our Time President has recognized the imminent threat posed by ISIS and other Sunni extremist gangs. With a brilliantly wrought coalition that includes six Sunni Arab nations, he has finally unleashed the might of the United States and has hit the savages who beheaded our countrymen. Death from above. Let the monsters know the consequences of their brutality.
Monday, September 22nd 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 22, 2014
Back from LA visiting handsome, brand new grandson Desi. Got to NYC in time for aftermath traffic from massive 300,000 protest vs. climate change, very impressive turnout. Skeptics point out that the crowd created pollution and piles of trash, still this is shaping up as the issue of the decade. Even 9-year old Sol is concerned. Then we turned up Madison Ave. and got hit by cop-created traffic from UN bigwigs here for General Assembly. It's the downside to living in center of universe. Crazy isn't it about all the security breaches at the White House. Dude sprinted across the lawn, ran up the steps and the front door was unlocked! Where were the Secret Service dogs? If we can't protect the president's family residence kind of scary about other USA public spaces. Last day of summer. Bittersweet, but nice while it lasted. Have a great Autumn.
Scotland: Will you be independent ?
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 18, 2014
There is something on the down low that I suspect is helping propel Scotland's move to split from the UK. Because of obvious sensitivity, the issue is not much talked about in Scotland when referencing today's profound vote on separation. It is the changing face of England. How much of the desire of Scotland to split is motivated by that morphing racial, ethnic and religious reality in the rest of the UK? It is easy to have universal socialism, suffrage and sharing when everybody springs from the same historic roots, like most Scots. Historically, as in Scandinavia, folks don't mind sharing when they're sharing with others from the same family tree.
Tuesday, September 9th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 09, 2014
The shocking image of Baltimore Raven star Ray Rice's now wife Janay Palmer lying unconscious in the elevator door is proof positive of a deep, dark secret in big-time sports. Athletes get a pass when it comes to criminal conduct, especially against women, unless they also take drugs like marijuana. A powerful NFL running back, Rice could have easily killed Palmer, if her head had hit the elevator floor differently. Then it would have been murder, although even that might have been viewed sympathetically by the League. (In the case of the greatest of all Baltimore Raven players, Ray Lewis, it was murder; two murders in fact, although Lewis was allowed to plead guilty only to obstruction of justice in the stabbing deaths in 2000).
Who/What Killed my friend Joan Rivers ?
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 09, 2014
Erica, my wife and I were honored to attend the funeral of Joan Rivers Sunday, watching as the NYPD bagpipers played, and with tears mixed with laughter, New York and the Nation said good bye to our beloved X-Rated court jester. The whole town turned out. Howard Stern, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Donald Trump, Hugh Jackman and a list of notables remembered her outrageous wit. Joan and I were in the daytime talk show business together. She was a brilliant comic who made the world a happier place. Irreverent and energetic, she could make a sphinx laugh. She was feisty, side-splittingly funny and filled with piss and vinegar.
Monday, September 8th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 08, 2014
Short night after Joan Rivers tribute on Fox Sunday. Now I'm back to 77WABCradio and trying to decide what the headline is for this morning. The great immigration disappointment is the story that really troubles me most, the president deciding to kick the problem down the road as millions continue living in limbo. On ISIS, the president seems to have finally found his way, but it was a struggle to wake him to the peril the terror group represents. Now he's got to be relentless in pursuing these savages in their sanctuaries on both sides of the Syria/Iraq line.
Friday, September 5th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 05, 2014
Happy Friday. Hope all's well with you and yours.This Sunday at 9pm ET on Fox News, I'll be reporting on the passing of the queen of outrageous irreverence, my friend Joan Rivers. We'll remember her distinguished career, including the many shows we did together; we'll cover the facts and circumstances of her death, and probe why the hell an 81-year old woman was fully sedated with the powerful drug Propofol at a store front clinic that apparently did not have the ability to resuscitate in the event of an emergency.
Will her death result in criminal charges like those lodged against Dr. Conrad Murray who supervised the Propofol administered to Michael Jackson?
Wednesday, September 3rd 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 03, 2014
Morning, One of the lessons you learn as a street reporter or war correspondent is that you never say, "go ahead and shoot me," to someone pointing a gun at you. That is what Jihadi John did when he decapitated our colleague and countryman Steven Sotloff. 'John' effectively dared the United States to go ahead and shoot ISIS. The despicable, sadistic wretch who cut Steve's head off, on camera, also threatened more brutality if we don't "back off." He will reap the opposite result. By butchering our men, he threatened more than our physical safety, he slandered our national honor. Did he really think to scare off the United States by torturing our countrymen?
Tuesday, September 2nd 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 02, 2014
The beheading of Steven Sotloff is further reason to declare war on ISIS. It is time for a Shock and Awe scale aerial strike against their main bases at Raqqa Syria and Mosul Iraq. We have far better reason for waging this fight than we did in 3/03. To demonstrate that we are not waging war on all Sunni Muslims, President Obama should attempt involving the air forces of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and the Gulf States. If they refuse to help, then their tacit support for or compliance with the extremists will be exposed. Regardless, the United States must defend its national interests, including the right of our citizens not to be tortured and defiled.
Monday, September 1st 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 01, 2014
Questions:Is it anti-Semitic or self-hating for a proud American Jew/Zionist to say Israel's West Bank land grab last week is an arrogant, aggressive, sharp stick in the eye to the peace process? Isn't PM Netanyahu supposedly still committed to the two-state solution? If so, what legitimate purpose is served by expropriation of Palestinian land near Bethlehem to give to settlers from Brooklyn? How will we spin this one?
Did Hamas make us do it?
Friday, August 29th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 29, 2014
Golf. That is what I thought of when the president made the utterly unguarded and alarming statement about our not having a strategy to deal with ISIS in Syria. Why didn’t he work harder over the last two or three months, instead of just hanging with his golf buddies? Even if he didn’t want to tip his hand to the enemy, it would have been more reassuring if our Commander-in-Chief had said something like, “these barbarians have shown they have no legitimate place in the society of nations and the United States and our allies throughout the civilized world, including Muslim nations are being rallied to stop these gruesome murderers before their cancer spreads.” Instead, he seems as if he just hasn't been paying attention.
Thursday, August 28th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 28, 2014
Like I always say, the 2nd Amendment, the provision that gives every American the right to keep and bear arms, is blind and stupid. In its relentless pimping for the gun industry, the NRA has unleashed an avalanche of deadly weapons on this gun-crazy country. Just as protects access to weapons for cops and hunters, it also protects access to weapons for domestic abusers, mental patients, jerk-offs on the no-fly list, all-around dim bulbs, and now little children. As the father of a sweet, smart nine year old daughter myself, the latest example of gross excess is the image of that pony-tailed New Jersey girl accidentally killing her gun range instructor. It is obscene and uncivilized to let a third grader shoot a fully automatic Uzi machine gun. What was she training for, revolution? Invasion? Service in the coming post-apocalyptic social disorder? Stupid, but just another of countless examples of how far into insanity we have let the gun nuts push us.
Thursday, August 28th 2014 Pt 2
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 28, 2014
And speaking of children, you know what else is obscene?The hysterical over-reaction to the 'surge' of unaccompanied immigrant children into this country. Here in New York, our state has the second highest number of these young recent immigrant arrivals (after Texas); 4,244 kids ages 17 and younger, some much younger have been sheltered and sponsored in the five boroughs and surrounding suburban counties. 4,244 kids in a state of about 19.6 million people. These children have had zero negative impact, according various county departments. There has been "no rise in the need for services due to the unaccompanied minors," the spokeswoman for the Suffolk County Executive told Newsday.
Wednesday, August 27th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 27, 2014
Another Reason to Legalize PotErica and I watched the predictable, plodding Emmys together; agreeing that the highlight was irrepressibly saucy Sarah Silverman's busty ebullient victory for her hilariously irreverent HBO special. Aside from her ample bosom, the funny lady was also the hit of the Red Carpet when she flashed her pot-filled Vape pen. She bragged on it, explaining that she has a prescription for medical-marijuana. Since the devices don't emit second hand smoke, the spread of E-cigarettes like Sarah's will speed the necessary end of Marijuana Prohibition. It is past time to recognize that almost every otherwise law-abiding adult has tried pot at least once, and that every adult should have that legal right.
Tuesday, August 26th 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 26, 2014
A Brown-faced Bill Clinton?2,500 mourners crowded the pews of the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Ferguson Mo. yesterday, to remember Michael Brown. The nation's civil rights leadership was all there, including two of the Rev. Martin Luther King's kids, Rev. Jesse Jackson, film-maker Spike Lee and Rev. Al Sharpton.
Rev. Al led the way.
As the nation's prominent black activist, he called on the crowd to do something to fix the epic crisis of cops vs. black men; do something rather than bitch about how bad things are at "ghetto pity parties."
One voice notably vapid throughout the Ferguson protests is President Obama's.
The president's modest approach to All Things Urban was reamed by Prof. Cornell West. The fiery, left-wing Princeton professor who once denounced Obama as a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface," just wrote in a Salon article that the president "posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit."
Monday August 25th, 2014
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 25, 2014
Happy Monday everybody. Hope all's well with you and yours.In the news, they bury Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri today, the unarmed teenager whose death-by-cop is being seen through the prism of race in America.
Folks are increasingly choosing up sides in the Brown and similar cases based on their own stereotypes, revealing the utter depth of the racial chasm in our country.
Some of you were intensely critical of my appraisal/prediction that, in part, because of that race-stereotyping, Darren Wilson, the white cop who shot and killed the unarmed black teenager will certainly be acquitted at trial.
To be specific, I predict Wilson will be indicted, in large part because of political pressure. Then, a diverse trial jury will acquit the cop because the evidence of criminality is at best ambiguous.
The issue of young black men killed in their encounters with law enforcement will then be muted until the next egregious incident on the mean streets of some other segregated community.
Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin: Spinning Tragedy
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 15, 2014
It is outrageous that we only found out now, nearly a week after the fact, that 18-year old Michael Brown, the kid tragically killed on the streets of Ferguson Missouri, met the description of a suspect in a strong-arm robbery of a convenience store obtained from a 911 call received at 11:51am on Saturday August 9. Ten minutes later, at 12:01pm, and just a ¼ mile away, Brown and his alleged accomplice are spotted and confronted by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
No Deportation Without Representation
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 01, 2014
Shame on Matt Drudge. The owner/operator of the world’s most influential news-aggregating website, The Drudge Report has torn a page from the William Randolph Hearst yellow journalism playbook to fan the flames of public hysteria about the surge of undocumented children immigrating to the United States.
Just Do It
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 18, 2014
From a speech at the New York Police Athletic League, whom support a wide array of inner city youth programs
Suffer The Little Children
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 20, 2014
Could you send her back? If it was your call, could you send a tired, dirty, hungry little 8-year old girl, who just got pulled from the Rio Grande River by a Border Patrol officer, back where she came from? Call her Maria. She got here by hitching a 1,400 mile ride on a freight train or on a rickety bus or in the company of an unscrupulous smuggler and she’s just walked across the last 45 miles of scrub and desert on the Mexican side, enduring untold physical and emotional hardship.
Geraldo's Commencement Speech
by Geraldo Rivera | May 30, 2014
Geraldo’s Commencement SpeechDepartment of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Graduation
College of Staten Island, (located on the grounds of the former Willowbrook State School)
May 29, 2014
Once Upon A Time In FARC-Landia
by Geraldo Rivera | May 22, 2014
We were running late, racing hard down a roughly-paved jungle road. Having just passed the last governmentcheckpoint, a rickety bridge where a gun battle five months before left eight dead, including a Colombian congressman, we were now in territory controlled by FARC, for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia.
Jew Rican
by Geraldo Rivera | May 15, 2014
(From my speech May 14, 2014 at The Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey's Women's Philanthropy luncheon)Thank you all. So I’d like to talk about being Jewish in a Puerto Rican family by telling you the story of my Bar Mitzvah. First some interesting background. Lily Friedman, my mom, now 94 and the pride of Siesta Key, Sarasota, Florida met my late dad Cruz Rivera of Bayamon, Puerto Rico in 1939 at Child’s Cafeteria on the corner of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue. He had just emigrated from the island, literally arriving on the weekly banana boat; she was from Newark and was working as a waitress. He was in charge of the restaurant’s Latino dishwashers.
The Civil War Next Door
by Geraldo RIvera | Mar 17, 2014
It is just 520 miles from where I am writing this at my home on the south-coast of Puerto Rico to Caracas, the chaotic Venezuelan capital. That is less than 1/10 the distance from here to Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, which is 5,845 miles. Yet the troubling situation on the shores of the distant Black Sea continues to command far more media and political attention than the massive turmoil in nearby Venezuela just across the Caribbean Sea.
The Crisis Closer To Home
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 03, 2014
Accepting his Oscar for best supporting actor at the Academy Awards Sunday night, Jared Leto showed more understanding than most politicians that dangers lurks around the corner, when he expressed support not only for the protestors in Ukraine, but also Venezuela. Washington is understandably focused on the crisis in Ukraine, where civil war threatens after Russian forces invaded that strategic Central European nation. President Obama and other key leaders are frantically engaged in forging an appropriate response to Vladimir Putin’s flagrant aggression. All our diplomatic energy is focused on managing that critical situation; which is starting to sound like the opening paragraphs of a Tom Clancy World War III Apocalypse novel. But while Ukraine is a huge and urgent problem, as Mr. Leto makes clear, we should not over-look widespread civil unrest much closer to home, in the oil-rich South American nation of Venezuela.
Jose, Meet Ulysses
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 12, 2014
In around 800 BC, Homer wrote “The Odyssey” the epic tale of a man named Ulysses cast adrift on an impossible, storm-tossed adventure. “By hook or by crook, this peril too shall be something that we remember,” Homer wrote. And there is no doubt we shall remember the perilous tale almost 3000 years later of the Pacific Survivor, 37-year old Jose Alvarenga.Heis home now, and like Homer’s hero Ulysses, Jose’s odyssey sounds mythical. In a world filled with grifters and charlatans, we are asked to believe a modest Salvadoran fisherman did something never before achieved, beaten the biggest, baddest ocean, almost bare-handed.
Strange thing is, unlike Homer’s epic hero, Jose Alvarenga’s tale is apparently true.
Smack Is Back, Blame The Pot Prohibition
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 07, 2014
With scores of suburban kids dying of heroin overdoses in recent months in relatively upscale communities like Ocean County, New Jersey, it was just a matter of time before a high-profile celebrity like 46-year old, Oscar-winning actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman joined the ranks of previous celebrity junkies like Lenny Bruce, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Heath Ledger in a body bag.Heroin users don’t usually die from bad dope, they die from good dope; accidentally overdosing when the drug they are shooting is cheap and potent and right now heroin is cheaper and stronger than ever.
Squeezed In The Middle
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 24, 2014
Watching New Jersey Governor Chris Christie twisting in the breeze, and reading a beaten down President Obama’s interview in the current New Yorker magazine, I am reminded of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's caution that in politics as in life, "standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides."The governor and the president aspired to break out of their respective stereotypes and attract broad bi-partisan support. Both, though, have been hobbled by self-inflicted wounds. Christie crashed into Bridgegate. Obama seems lost in the Matrix known as Obamacare. Both proud, powerful men are humbled their natural enemies’ ascendant.
Friendly Fire
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 17, 2014
For the last 12 years I have been haunted by a slanderous hatchet job by a left-wing public radio reporter who worked at the time for the Baltimore Sun. David Folkenflik's December 2001 story essentially accused me of pretending to witness an incident of friendly fire in Afghanistan. As I explained in an on-the-air apology to my audience and via satellite phone from Tora Bora to Folkenflik himself, (he's a TV critic who has never covered combat), I made an honest mistake.In the fog of war, on a day I narrowly escaped a sniper's bullet, I confused the aftermath of a friendly fire incident I covered in Tora Bora, with a more widely reported friendly fire incident several hundred miles away in Kandahar.
The Trouble Between Chris & George
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 10, 2014
Living on the Hudson River in the shadow of the graceful George Washington Bridge a half mile from where I’m writing this note, the scandal threatening to cripple and consume the political career of Republican Governor Chris Christie literally hits close to home. Like gun rights in Texas and Alaska or real estate prices in California and Florida, traffic on the George is part of countless Northern New Jersey dinner conversations.It is also part of the dialogue of national commerce.
This is where I-80 begins its 3,000-mile run west to California. I-95, the all-important East Coast artery connecting Maine to Florida crosses the river here.
The Blockade
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 20, 2013
Fidel Castro sucks; so does his brother Raúl, his successor as ruthless, human rights trampling Cuban dictator. There, I got that out of the way, so don’t hyperventilate for a minute and give me a chance to explain why I think it was perfectly appropriate, indeed smart, of the president to shake Raúl Castro’s hand at the Nelson Mandela memorial services in rainy South Africa this past Tuesday. Further, I hope the handshake is the gesture that accelerates a long overdue easing of the harsh U.S. policy toward Cuba, which since 1960 has been one of unrelenting hostility and confrontation.
Tiempo Malo
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 06, 2013
Jose Cuevas Rivera always picks us up when our family arrives at San Juan Airport. Muscular, confident and energetic, he looks like the professional fisherman he was as a younger man. Actually, with his shaved head, big tattooed arms, pierced ears and ready smile, he looks like a professional wrestler or a Puerto Rican ‘Mr. Clean’.Aside from taking care of our place, since giving up fishing, Jose has run his parent’s small business in Playa Salinas on Puerto Rico’s Caribbean coast. It is a usually thriving seaside bar and restaurant that attracts families of modest means from around the island.
It Is Still The Hoodie
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 22, 2013
George Zimmerman had not even been booked on the latest domestic violence allegations when an avalanche of angry tweets and Facebook postings, literally hundreds of them, crushed my computer. The scolding messages were essentially the same.‘See, we told you he was a murderous creep, how do you feel now about defending him?’ ‘Was his girlfriend wearing a hoodie? Is that why he assaulted her?’ ‘Geraldo you own George Zimmerman now, how does it feel to have helped a psycho escape justice?’ ‘Justice for Trayvon Martin.’ ‘No justice, no peace.’
Detouring Around Never Ever
by Geraldo RIvera | Nov 15, 2013
Desperate to change the subject from the implosion of his healthcare bomb, President Obama has been meeting with religious and business leaders, urging them to lobby their local legislators to pass immigration reform. But he's preaching to the choir. Like the minister or priest who exhorts the faithful, his real target should be the sinner on the sidewalk outside the church. The 'sinners' when it comes to immigration reform are House Republicans, and they’re not interested in another sermon from this president.Having expended his political capital in his Herculean effort to pass Obamacare without a single Republican vote, only to be humiliated by an atrocious website and a broken promise, our president is fresh out of clout.
Remembering The Mean Streets
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 08, 2013
They came in behind me in the narrow alcove between the street entrance and the locked door that led into the four-story walkup apartment on East 7th Street between Avenues C and D. It was the late 1960’s and this part of the Lower East Side of Manhattan aka Alphabet City was notorious as a festering cesspool of drug addicts and violent crime.Further west, toward the numbered avenues, the area was beginning a tentative gentrification that included a new neighborhood name heavy on hope and optimism. The shopkeepers, restaurateurs and the pot-smoking flower children moving in from the suburbs and from small towns across the country called it the East Village.
El Hermano Mayor
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 01, 2013
To say that institutional trust is fragile between the U.S. and Latin America is to understate the undeniable. Even before the world ever heard of NSA spying, after decades of armed intervention and engineered coups, most Latin nations did not trust the American behemoth as far they could throw the Empire State building.Historically, the distrust has been fueled by envy, anti-Yanqui hype and bitter shared history. From at least what President Grant labeled the "Wicked War" of 1846, which ripped the American Southwest from Mexico, and the Spanish-American War of 1898 where the prizes included Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines, there has been deep distrust of official Washington.
Grass Is Greener In Uruguay
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 25, 2013
The dramatic scene in the skies over the Venezuelan jungle is more familiar in neighboring Colombia and Bolivia than in the nation ruled until March 2013 by the late-flamboyant anti-American president Hugo Chavez. A fighter jet, either one of the Bolivarian (Venezuelan) Armed Forces' Russian-built Sukhol or one of its U.S.-built F-16 aircraft shooting down two light planes allegedly smuggling drugs. The head of Venezuela's Strategic Operational Center, General Vladimir Padrino Lopez later telling his nation via state-owned television that the aircraft had been targeted only after "all other means of persuasion had been exhausted."What struck me was the government's obvious pride of achievement in the shoot-down of the dopers.
Mr. Cruz Goes To Washington
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 27, 2013
He is sharp and charismatic, with the flash and bang of a stick of dynamite. But Senator Ted Cruz just blew up in the face of the Republican Party. Here is my take on this week’s Cruz-missile explosion and why it could seriously impact the Republican Party’s aspiration to retake the White House.The Cuban-American junior senator from Texas’ epic 21-hour rant against Obamacare rallied Tea Party Libertarians who flooded the emails and voicemails of Congressional Republicans, like Peter King of New York who dared to be critical of Cruz. King accused Cruz of being "a fraud." King was rewarded with a tsunami of messages he called "vile and obscene" from Tea Party activists stirred by Senator Cruz’ call to battle.
Not This Time. Not In Syria.
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 06, 2013
There was a specific moment in 2003 when I suspended disbelief and decided to back the president as he beat the drums for war in Iraq. My decision to go along with George W. Bush, which I deeply regret, was made despite deep-seated personal skepticism that Saddam Hussein really had and intended to use Weapons of Mass Destruction. The fact that moderate senators like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry also followed the president to war is little comfort.Actually, it wasn’t the president who convinced me at the time that the mad Iraqi dictator could potentially unleash his WMD on the U.S. and the world. It was Colin Powell, when the hero of the Gulf War and at the time Secretary of State gave a speech to the United Nations.
Race & Crime Reporting
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 23, 2013
Conservative media was too quick to jump on the purported blackness of the kids who killed Christopher Lane, the Australian ballplayer shot in the back in Oklahoma. Rush Limbaugh insisted that the shooting was "Trayvon Martin in reverse." "Knowing the answer," Glenn Beck asked rhetorically whether mainstream liberal media bias was the reason for the lack of coverage of the race-angle in the Lane murder. When it comes to black on white crime he assured us, "It doesn't fit the American news agenda."Both Rush and Glenn are correct that a Not So Silent majority of Big Media leans left. The mainstream seems sometimes to recognize no causal factor for black on white crime but income inequality and slavery.
A Bad Idea
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 26, 2013
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course the time was 2:30 Sunday morning, and one of my hard-learned life rules is that nothing good happens at that hour of the deep dark night, especially after a couple of tequila shots, except sweet dreams and maybe an intimate snuggle. Our little house in Edgewater New Jersey with the spectacular view of Manhattan across the Hudson River was quiet, even the dogs were asleep. Hot and muggy out, I had just gone for a moon-lit swim in our little pool on the dock. Drying myself upstairs in the kitchen, I picked up my company-issued Blackberry and checked emails concerning the Saturday night program just aired a few hours earlier on the Fox New Channel.Much of the show concerned the continuing fallout from the dramatic but not unexpected verdict in the Trayvon Martin murder case.
White Hispanic Yellow Journalism
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 19, 2013
Of all the spin leading up to the dramatic but not unexpected acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin, nothing was as disingenuous as the accused being identified as a "white Hispanic." Whether it was created in a feeble attempt to continue the narrative of a white racist preying on a defenseless black teenager, it is clumsy, counter-productive and inaccurate.First of all, what is a Hispanic? The word derives from a region called "Hispania" the collective name for the four 15th Century Christian kingdoms on the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela united the peninsula and expelled the Moors.
Immigration's Stacked Deck
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 12, 2013
They held an emotional two and a half hour therapy session in the basement of the Capitol Wednesday morning, scores of them, and almost all angry old white guy career politicians from safe Congressional districts that apparently could care less about the fact there may never be another Republican president. Led by Representative Steve King of Iowa who has mocked and marginalized his own party leadership on this issue, the goal of their angry get together was simple. They wanted to let the Senate know that no matter how sensible immigration reform might be for the country and for their party nationally, the majority of House Republicans stand implacably opposed to anything that smacks of amnesty for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.Dark & Stormy
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 21, 2013
The phrase, 'It was a dark and stormy night' was originally an example of a badly written cliche. Now Dark and Stormy is an expression mostly used to describe a drink made with Gosling's rum and ginger beer.While I confess drinking several during the just completed Marion to Bermuda Race for Cruising Sailboats, actual dark and stormy nights at sea were in short supply during the 660 mile race. Which was too bad because my old sailboat Voyager, at 52 tons and made of half inch thick aluminum, thrives in bad weather; the darker and stormier the better.
A post race analysis of GPS tracking shows Voyager closing to 2nd place during the blustery weather Sunday and Monday, only to fade and wallow near the end during Tuesday's calm to cross the finish line 12th in the fleet of 34 boats.
Politics Is Not Fantasy
by Geraldo Rivera | May 31, 2013
There is a scene in The Lord of the Rings where my favorite character, the aging, battle-weary Théoden, King of Rohan is confronted with a profound dilemma.Determined to honor his ancient oath and ride to the rescue of his ally the besieged nation of Gondor, he is told that his forces are insufficient to defeat the enemy, evil Mordor.
“No. We can not. But we will meet them in battle nonetheless,” Théoden answers grimly, doomed by honor and destiny to perish in what seems a lost cause. And he dies, but because of his sacrifice the good guys ultimately win.
"Send Them All Back!"
by Geraldo Rivera | May 17, 2013
A nice crowd of about 600 gathered at the Gulfstream Race Track near Ft. Lauderdale Wednesday night to hear me speak. Drawn by a promotion by my local radio affiliate, 850 WTFL, they were fans. Indeed many were intimately familiar with my decades of work on television. Transplanted New Yorkers who relocated to the Sunshine State to avoid winter and high taxes, many had followed me since the Eyewitness News days of the 1970's, or the skinhead brawl and 'Al Capone's Vault' debacles of the 1980's.But familiarity aside most had no patience for what I said that night about the need for immigration reform.
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, I argued, Americans did what we have always done when faced with a profound threat from abroad.
The Yauco Monster
by Geraldo Rivera | May 10, 2013
The initial reports of the crime was hideous and unbelievable, three teenage sex slaves held shackled and imprisoned apparently by three grubby, seedy, horribly abusive middle-aged brothers. The kidnapping and decade-long captivity of those young women in a boarded up hell house in Cleveland is bad enough. How could they rob those girls of their freedom, their youth and this substantial hunk of their lives?When it became clear during Thursday's arraignment that only one of the three Castro brothers was involved, the crime became more emotionally manageable; still, the selfish sadism involved was heartbreaking and outrageous.
Mad Mayor Mike
by Geraldo Rivera | May 03, 2013
Critics allege, and statistics confirm, that the vast majority of those frisked are young men of color. But those statistics make clear that the vast majority of those saved by the policy are also young minorities. "About 90% of our murder victims in our city are black or Latino," said the mayor.His smoldering anger barely contained, and with uncharacteristically blunt, harsh language, Bloomberg's speech aimed special scorn at three great liberal organizations, The New York Times, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York Civil Liberties Union, accusing them of hypocrisy and worse. Focusing on a Times editorial which denounced stop and frisk as a "wildly loathed practice," the mayor made reference to the recent shooting death of a black kid in the Bronx, 17-year old Alphonza Bryant; a murder not even mentioned in the ‘Newspaper of Record.'
Banning Manchurian Candidates
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 26, 2013
The 11 million undocumented living among us cannot get a break. Two weeks ago, they were bursting with optimism, freedom beckoned, liberation from their tense, sometimes terrifying existence hiding in shadows dodging immigration authorities. Then, almost before the ink was dry on the press release announcing the "Gang of Eight’s" long-awaited compromise to legalize their status and let the sunshine in, the Boston bombings changed the conversation."Last week, opponents of comprehensive immigration reform began to exploit the Boston Marathon bombing. ... I urge restraint in that regard," the liberal lion Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said during the opening hearing. "Refugees and asylum-seekers have enriched the fabric of this country from our founding."
A Bad Week
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 19, 2013
The week started ugly, with Monday's Boston Marathon massacre. Things didn't get much better. Just as the airwaves filled with those heart-wrenching images of torn and bleeding runners and spectators and conflicting reports about whether they had a suspect in custody, we got news of the U.S. Capitol being evacuated in the face of an onslaught of poison pen letters to the president and key senators sent by a guy who worked improbably as an Elvis impersonator.Then we got the stunning arrest of the wife of a disgraced Justice of the Peace for the murders of two Texas prosecutors we thought had been killed by the Aryan Brotherhood or the Mexican drug cartels. Not to mention the acrimonious gun control debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate that destroyed hope for meaningful compromise on the issue of background checks.
Tourism Is Not Terrorism
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 12, 2013
Media-wise it was like the return of Elian Gonzalez or an electronic Bay of Pigs. From editorial obscurity Cuba had been hurled back onto the front pages of the world's newspapers and newscasts by Beyonce and Jay-Z, media's royal couple. Even Angela Jolie and Brad Pitt could never have roiled the treacherous waters of U.S./Cuban relations like the pop stars did with their just concluded Fifth Anniversary visit this week.The action/reaction/counter-reaction happened in real time. The video of their smiling, crowded, heavily-guarded tour of Old Havana was still in the news loop when prominent Cuban American leaders unleashed a no-holds barred condemnation that took the celebrity visit as seriously as if it had been a terrorist attack.
Viva El Papa Francisco
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 15, 2013
The roots of Catholicism run deep under the Rivera family tree. One of seventeen children, my father Cruz (like my second son) is named for the cross. Dad was a deacon in the Catholic Church. My sister Irene was a parochial school principal and later a superintendant of diocesan schools on Long Island. And during my youth, my father's side of our vast family was universally Catholic. I bring up my family's experience because it mirrors the larger Latino community in this regard. The near universal adherence to the Catholic religion that existed among our clan into the 1980's has been replaced by a religiously fragmented family many of whom no longer follow the faith of Rome and St. Peter.Like tens of millions of other Latinos, over the last several decades many Rivera's left the church and converted to evangelical Protestantism.
Sequestering Immigration Reform
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 01, 2013
It is as subtle as the meat cleaver or blunt axe the president has been complaining about in his negotiations with Republicans over sequestration, those blind, mandatory budget cuts that begin today. In what seems a bold, blatantly political move, Immigration and Custom's Enforcement (ICE) has released hundreds of illegal immigrants from detention. ICE claims it did that because it fears not having enough money to keep them detained since its budget has now been reduced by sequestration.I can't prove the following scenario actually happened. In fact as you'll see Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary denies any presidential involvement; but I can just picture this imagined conversation happening in the Oval Office.
If I Run (Part Two)
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 22, 2013
"If the election for United States Senator were being held today and the candidates in New Jersey were Cory Booker the Democrat and Geraldo Rivera the Republican… Republicans back Rivera 54-23 percent over Booker."Since I did beat Booker among registered Republicans, that could have been the headline of the Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday February 21, 2013.
Instead, the pollsters choose the more traditional approach. Citing Booker's dominance "among all other political, gender, income, age and regional groups in the state," they write, "If TV personality Geraldo Rivera is just testing the water for a U.S. Senate run in New Jersey, he might find that the water is colder than the Atlantic Ocean in February."
As The Whole World Watched
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 15, 2013
The positive identification Thursday of the killer ex-LAPD cop Christopher Dorner's burned remains ends one of Southern California's most terrifying crime sprees. Matched by dental records, Dorner's charred corpse had been removed the day before from the ashes of a mountain cabin where a furious shootout, the final chapter of this bizarre drama played out in a hail of gunfire and flames. That it happened as the president prepared to address the nation on critical issues including gun violence, made it even more relevant and surreal.For six days, as the whole world watched, the disgruntled rogue officer spread murder and mayhem throughout Southern California. Driven by hatred of the force that fired him five years before for lying, the rogue cop vowed to wage "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" and warned cops connected to his firing and their families that "you will now live the life of the prey."
If I Run
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 01, 2013
A lot will happen between now and the elections of November 2014. But let's just say the stars align and my colleagues at Fox News and Cumulus Media let me run as a Republican for the United States senate seat from New Jersey, my home since 1989.A year and a half from now, my probable opponent would be either the admirable five term incumbent 89-year old Senator Frank Lautenberg or the charismatic Newark mayor 43-year old Corey Booker, fine men and formidable candidates in a state where almost 60% identify as Democrats.
Despite its popularity in the Garden State, their party is the problem. I endorsed the economic platform of Romney/Ryan in 2012 because Democrats were denying the deficit and decrying necessary changes in federal entitlements. Unfettered, theirs is a recipe for generational catastrophe. To pretend the government can just print money is untenable and irresponsible.
Calling All Women Warriors
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 25, 2013
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has lifted the ban on women serving in combat. The president applauded the seminal event; pairing it with another recent landmark, the repeal of the ban on gays in the military. The president saying, quote, "Today, every American can be proud that our military will grow even stronger, with our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters playing a greater role in protecting this country we love." The move will open more than 230,000 frontline combat positions to women, with emphasis on Army and Marine infantry units. And there is overwhelming support for integrating the combat military. Aside from the issue of fairness, it makes sense. The biggest reason the West still trumps the East is that we have freed women and they have not.
Forget Me Not
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 11, 2013
The massacre of the youngsters of Sandy Hook Elementary School was a kick in the guts. Coming on the cusp of Christmas, just as families were gathering for the holiday, the mindless slaughter in Newtown Connecticut filled us with fear, outrage and the determination to do something to change America's culture of violence. Suddenly nothing else matters nearly as much as gun control; not the fiscal cliff, the deal ceiling, not Hurricane Sandy, Benghazi-gate, not Afghanistan, Syria, nor the president's new cabinet, nothing. The fickle spotlight of public attention has fastened for this second on guns and what if anything the nation will do about gun violence.Seizing the moment, long-ignored gun control advocates mobilized; even as the stunned firearms industry and its reliable acolytes at the NRA, the Gun Owners of America and similar groups struggled initially to find an appropriate response to the obscene bloodshed.
Too Little Too Late
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 30, 2012
What does it say about the GOP's outreach to the Latino community that the two distinguished members who finally bucked their party's noxious anti-immigration sentiment have only days left in their Senate careers?Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas and John Kyle of Arizona have represented their border states since Bill Clinton was president. The senior female Republican, Senator Hutchinson assumed office in June 1993. The powerful Minority Whip, Senator Kyl has served since 1994 and his distinguished Senate tenure was preceded by eight years in the House.
Both have been otherwise fine legislators, moderate conservatives influential and fair-minded; but neither has done much since mid-Bush to alleviate the plight of the nation's eleven million undocumented immigrants; many of whom reside in or pass through their respective states.
The Unholy War
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 23, 2012
Growing up the son of a Puerto Rican Catholic father and a Jewish mother was often theologically confusing. But the confusion ended when it came to Israel. Zionist to the core I would die for the Jewish homeland. Like most Jews of a certain age, the notion of a world without an impregnable fortress/sanctuary for the often victimized Jewish race is intolerable. Never again.But that doesn't mean I think the Israel can do whatever it feels appropriate under the banner of self-defense. Five Israelis have been killed by hostile action in the current round of fighting. As of this writing 141 Palestinians are also dead, about half of them civilians, including babies. That is more than 25 to 1, Palestinian to Israeli dead. That fact curdles the blood of even us Zionists.
How The Mighty Have Fallen
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 16, 2012
I met General David Petraeus on a dusty, oppressively hot day outside of Baghdad in March 2003. Our forces had invaded Iraq and were swiftly closing on Saddam's capital city. Hussein's once vaunted army was collapsing, but there was sporadic resistance, snipers and so forth, and the oppressive heat remained a formidable enemy, making any physical activity, including war fighting arduous.In its rapid advance, elements of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division had taken control of a suburban villa owned by one of Saddam's cousins. The villa was abandoned and the swimming pool dry when the troopers secured the property for use as a command and control post in preparation for the big push into Baghdad.
Put Up Or Shut Up
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 26, 2012
This is it, the most important election of our era. Either government is the problem or part of the solution. That is the ideological big picture. But there is something else going on.Given the nation's changing demographic realty, this may be the last time race will not be the defining characteristic of most voters. Even now 60+% of Governor Romney voters will be white, 75+% of President Obama voters will be non-white. And every day, each side's relative strength with its favored racial constituency will grow.
While hot-button social issues like abortion and gay rights, and economic issues like jobs, taxes and the deficit will continue to drive many voters, race will be the most obvious determinant.
It Ain't Over Til It's Over
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 12, 2012
With Baltimore on the verge of elimination, it was wrenching to switch the channel from the Yankee/Oriole fourth playoff game, but duty called; and truth be told the Vice-Presidential debate had its own October drama. And in that regard it was clear that Alex Rodriquez is to Barack Obama, what Raul Ibanez is to Joe Biden. Just like the journeyman Ibanez pitch-hit for the woeful A-Rod in game three when the Yankee superstar couldn't hit a beach ball, and put the Bronx bombers up over the Baltimore Orioles, so too old Joe Biden bailed out his boss when the president couldn't put two sentences together at last week's debate. The V.P. replaced the underperforming president and saved the Democratic Party's chances in November.The V.P. debate could not have been more different than the first encounter between the presidential candidates.
Hungry In The Hood
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 14, 2012
Going to my radio show studio in the dull light of morning, I often pass St. Francis of Assisi Church on West 31st Street, a half block from my office above Penn Station.Only recently feeling the tide of gentrification lifting adjacent, hipper neighborhoods, the church floats in what was the notorious 'Tenderloin' district -- a sea of hookers, pimps, alkies and bruisers on the near West Side in midtown Manhattan.
Since the Disneyfication of nearby Times Square, for the last 25 years the neighborhood has gone legitimately commercial, and is now mostly a collection of small businesses in big buildings on a street that is mostly always in shadow.
Does The GOP Really Want Latino Support
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 24, 2012
Kris Kobach is an affable, Harvard, Yale and Oxford educated 46-year old law professor who may single-handedly be costing Mitt Romney and the Republicans the White House.Since 2010, Mr. Kobach has been the Kansas Secretary of State, a position not generally thought of as a launch pad for national notoriety. His prominence (or infamy) comes from the fact that this highly educated scholar/politician has become the brain of the anti-illegal immigration movement.
Presenting a far more appealing image than say former Arizona state senator Russell Pierce, Governor Jan Brewer or Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Secretary (call me Kris) Kobach is the architect of the harsh and ultimately self-defeating plank in the Republican Party platform on illegal immigration.
Why Not Me
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 17, 2012
I’m borrowing the title of Al Franken’s fictional campaign autobiography to ask the Presidential Debate Commission why I or other Latino journalist was not asked to moderate one of the debates. With due respect to those chosen, while the job is challenging, it is not rocket science.Most big-league journalists including Latinos have the skill set required to enable, facilitate and occasionally provoke the most rehearsed news event of the election season. The focus and the substantive burden should be on the candidates, not the moderators. Their task is to be fair, prepared, and pay attention. There is a certain amount of ring mastering, but the more confident and competent the host, the less need for laugh lines or gotcha moments.
Because of my war correspondent style, I would probably not be selected by the stately Presidential Debate Commission.
Holy City, Unholy Wars
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 06, 2012
From my perch here on the fourth floor of Jerusalem's historic King David Hotel, I'm looking out over this ancient city holy to the three great religions that share Abraham in common. I'm looking down at the Jaffa Gate, one of seven entrances into the Old City cut through the 500 year old wall built by the Turks when this was part of the Ottoman Empire. The sand-colored stone wall surrounding this mile square heart of the Holy Land is still pocked with bullet holes from the fighting that has periodically raged in this unique, deeply spiritual but often violent place. In fact the half mile between the hotel and the old wall was No Man's Land following the Armistice after the 1948 War of Israeli Independence. Then Jordan held the Old City, and would until the Israeli conquest of 1967.The Jews history here in town dates back to King David and his son Solomon about 31 centuries ago.
Legislative Vandalism
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 29, 2012
Let me begin with a quote from a conservative Republican concerning his treatment by Democrats on Capitol Hill."This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree."
Substitute "Congress" for "Senate" and what Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said during his contentious confirmation hearings in 1991 could easily apply to what House Republicans, joined by 17 Democrats, did Thursday to Attorney General Eric Holder.
Bravo Obama
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 22, 2012
It was probably a cold political calculation. I can see the president cloistered with his crack team of political advisers, whispering about how Republican senator Marco Rubio was about to do something President Obama and the Democrats have been unable to do, pass at least a watered down version of the DREAM Act.The president: "Maybe we should let Rubio do his thing, then the Republicans will be on record as supporting illegal aliens."
David Axelrod: "Mr. President with all due respect, we can't let the GOP do something for Hispanics that we've been promising since 2007."
The president: "You're right, what do you have in mind?"
Stop, Frisk, But Don't Bully
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 15, 2012
Stop, Frisk, but Don’t Bully"Just as I came out of the subway at 116th Street and Lexington Avenue, I saw my son being frisked by these two cops," the mom of a 21-year old, college bound, black high school student recounted her own deeply emotional experience with New York's controversial Stop-and-Frisk program."I ran over yelling, 'keep your hands off my boy!' I almost got myself arrested."
Happily, her encounter ended happily. No contraband was found on her son and apologies were exchanged all around.
A counselor for disabled children, she was one of three hard-working, African-American mothers who happened to be at a dinner at my New York apartment.
Prep School Jungle
by Geraldo Rivera | May 11, 2012
Doesn't everybody have a gay bashing bully story from high school? That is when casual cruelty is at its peak in otherwise normal youngsters; when we practice marginal truancy, toss beer cans out the window of speeding cars, utter snide remarks, snap bra straps, make prank calls to the fire department and persecute outsiders.Choosing to remember my gay bullying story in heroic terms, it goes like this: fellow vigilantes from the high school wrestling team and I beat up a tough guy non-wrestler who was creeping out our smallest teammate, the tiny, bony, effeminate, but game 115 pounder who was like the team mascot.
Details are hazy, and it might have been members of the football team protecting the honor of an embattled water boy, but broad strokes, some version of that half-century old incident happened; I recall it through the dust of history like most street fights and boxing matches since.
Alleged Illegals
by Geraldo Rivera | May 04, 2012
Cable news and talk radio are making a killing demonizing undocumented immigrants. In terms of ratings, few issues resonate as reliably. Since the fiery period 2006-2008 when Congress first seriously contemplated rational immigration reform under the leadership of senators John McCain (R-Az) ((yes, that John McCain)) and the late Ted Kennedy (D-Ma), but then ran from the issue in the face of furious backlash, ample file footage exists in every news outlet's video library of young Latinos jumping the border wall or wading across the Rio Grande.The story is therefore easy and cheap to illustrate.
Mean Streets Meet Stop & Frisk
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 24, 2012
I took an emotional ride on the time machine Saturday night in the city, a flashback to the days when New York's ghetto life pulsed with anger, resentment and a feeling that change was in the air. The event that stirred up the old memories honored the late author and poet Piri Thomas at el Museo Del Barrio. Piri died last year in California after a long career that took him from hard-core, thug in prison for shooting a cop to redemption and eventually prestige as the first, best chronicler of Spanish Harlem from the inside out.El Museo is an impressive institution at the upper end of Museum Mile on 5th Avenue, and on Saturday it was packed with a sold-out crowd of young, mostly Latinos eager to hear poetry and reminiscences about a man they had learned about in school.
Not Out Here In Bushwick
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 27, 2012
Jose from Brooklyn stunned me with his call to the radio show. "Puerto Ricans are citizens, what do we care about immigration," he asked disdainfully?I had been on one of my broadcast rants about the need to have compassionate, comprehensive immigration reform when I took his call. Expecting a Kumbaya moment from a supportive brother calling the show from the hood, instead his remarks stopped me short. I stuttered something about all Latinos being brothers.
But he cut me off saying, "not out here in Bushwick," referring to the heavily Puerto Rican and Dominican Brooklyn neighborhood, which has experienced an influx of Mexican and South American immigrants in recent years, many of them undocumented.
Costa Concordia
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 20, 2012
Having run aground literally scores of times in dozens of countries over the last half century, I know that mistakes happen at sea. But aside from the old days, before electronic navigation made sailing safely a no brainer, every time I’ve hit bottom since has been because I wasn’t paying attention to where my vessel was at the time; or, importantly, I was in a state of altered consciousness (i.e., drunk or recklessly showboating).There is simply no excuse for the captain and crew of a modern vessel to smash into a prominent rock that is certainly on the both the electronic and paper charts the Costa Concordia is legally required to have on her bridge. No excuses. No explanations. There are no uncharted rocks of the size that vessel hit in the Mediterranean Sea. Those waters off the coast of Tuscany have been precisely marked for two hundred years at least.
Joran Meet Justice
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 13, 2012
Justice was delayed, but not denied and Joran Van der Sloot will spend a 28-year hunk of his remaining adult life in a harsh prison in the high Andes Mountains of Peru. Able to evade justice for the murder of 18-year old Natalee Holloway during the Alabama teen's senior high school trip to Aruba in 2005, the hulking, degenerate, pimp and gambler, will instead go to prison for murdering a 21-year old Peruvian woman in 2010.Having befriended Natalee's family shortly after they arrived on the Dutch-owned Caribbean island of Aruba to begin the desperate, agonizing, ultimately fruitless search for their missing teenager, I share their belief that the arrogant Van der Sloot murdered her. In the years since, I chronicled the ebb and flow of their frustration and disappointment as Joran slipped out of one legal jam after another.
Su Padre Es De Mexico!
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 13, 2012
Who Knew?Mitt Romney's father, former Michigan governor George Romney was born in Mexico. That's shocking right? Even though the story has apparently been out there for months, I never heard it. What is even more shocking is that the admission came from the virulently anti-illegal immigration presidential candidate himself. Perhaps in an effort to beat to the punch an investigative report by the excellent Mike Taibbi on Brian Williams' "30 Rock" program Monday night, on Sunday afternoon Mitt Romney suddenly mentioned Latino immigrants in a context other than 'Round them up. Sort them out. And send the illegal ones back where they came from. He admitted in passing that his dad was born there.
Are You Threatening Me
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 13, 2012
Sitting at the bar in Paolo's Restaurant at 92nd Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan Saturday afternoon, December 10th, I was shocked by the tone the conversation with my old ABC News colleague Lowell Bergman had taken. He was heading to London and had urgently requested that we get together before his afternoon flight from JFK. I remembered Lowell as a brave, competent, but hugely self-righteous old school investigative reporter, who famously produced the Mike Wallace expose of the major tobacco companies for '60 Minutes.' Al Pacino played him in the movie version of the saga, 'The Insider.'
Although I hadn't seen the now 60-year old veteran reporter since he parted ways with ABC back in 1982, I recognized him immediately.
Presidential Arithmetic
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 06, 2012
Trust me on this, everything the Republicans are doing to select a candidate is meaningless. Barack Obama is the once and future president. The reason is arithmetic. Ask Karl Rove. The demographic makeup of the nation requires the GOP to win at least 35% of the burgeoning Hispanic vote. Right now, if they're lucky, they're on course to match John McCain's paltry 29%. And if the candidates keep up their radical, incessant immigrant-bashing they'll get less than that.A perfect example of Republican tone-deafness is the cancellation of the Univision debate that was originally scheduled for January 29th.
War Dog
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 16, 2011
For someone who considers himself a patriot, as I do, it is extremely difficult not to rally behind a president when he beats the drums of war. So it has always been. We can disagree about domestic policy, but when the nation’s leader says we are threatened from abroad, the majority of Americans suspends misgivings or even gnawing disbelief and gives the man in the Oval Office the benefit of the doubt.Our war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was the classic example. It was funky from the get-go, and I should have known better. Instead, I concentrated on chronicling the heroic efforts of our stressed Armed Forces as they followed goals that vacillated from attempted conquest to force protection to nation-building and finding a respectable way out.
Bold But Dopey
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 09, 2011
"Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash' unless it's illegal." Newt Gingrich in Iowa, 12/1/11, defending earlier remarks at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard that 'truly stupid' child labor laws should be suspended to allow very young poor children to work.It is doubtful that Newt Gingrich has ever spent quality time in a 'really poor', inner-city public housing project. He probably has more first-hand knowledge of the hallowed ground under Pickett's doomed Charge at Gettysburg in 1863 than he does about low-life in high-rise poverty in New York or Chicago in 2011.
Fist Bumps & The Gingrich Surge
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 02, 2011
Eric Bolling and I fist-bumped when we ran into each other in the news room Wednesday morning. As always with the smiling, stylish businessman and broadcaster it was friendly.Still, I had to vent.
"I felt like jumping through the TV screen when I watched you yesterday on "The Five," I told my Fox News friend and colleague.
"Why?" his expression asked.
"Deport them all?" I continued incredulous, referring to his harsh suggestion that we should simply arrest and evict the 11 million plus undocumented immigrants.
Buy A House, Get A Visa!
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 18, 2011
It is not exactly an invitation to "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore" or the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Nor should "the homeless," and "tempest-tossed" also mentioned in Emma Lazarus' epic Statue of Liberty poem feel welcome.But a new bipartisan bill proposing an immigrant visa to those willing to buy homes in America deserves consideration. That is, if our do nothing Congress ever gets around to considering anything more meaningful than the reaffirmation of "In God We Trust" as our national motto.
The Civil Majority
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 11, 2011
What goes around has come around in Arizona. Russell Pearce, the chief architect of SB1070, the Grand Canyon State's mean-spirited, ill-conceived, provably self-defeating anti-immigration legislation has been driven from office.So anti-immigration hard-liners beware. Harsh and divisive immigration scapegoating will not be tolerated by voters. The immigrant punching bag will hit back. Russell Pearce is out. Reason and civility are in. Bien hecho (well done) Mesa Arizona.
In a special election reluctantly scheduled by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, 64-year old Russell Pearce the powerful president of the State Senate, was recalled Tuesday by the voters of his suburban Phoenix Arizona district.
Not So Sweet Home Alabama
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 07, 2011
"It's not the same Birmingham, Alabama," the black driver said proudly as we passed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. We were speaking about how far the city and state once automatically associated with Jim Crow racism has evolved since the September 13, 1963 bombing of the landmark church by members of the local KKK.The perpetrators of that hideous crime deliberately ignited their massive device as a Sunday school session was going on in the church basement. The explosion left many terrorized children and teachers badly injured; four girls, Denise McNair, who was 11; Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carol Robertson, all age 14, were crushed to death.
We The People
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 23, 2011
My friend and lawyer Leo Kayser III invariably carries a small, frayed copy of the U.S. Constitution around in his inside jacket pocket. At the slightest provocation, he whips out his little black book and brandishes it overhead as if he was William Jennings Bryant, who Leo sort of resembles; (short, prominent belly, bald, bad ideas well-argued). Then, peering over the top of his glasses, Leo quotes thunderously from the well-worn booklet containing the government's founding document, the fingers of his free hand often stabbing the air in cadence with his recital of the sacred text.Also a lawyer, but bereft of my own carry around copy of the Great Compact, I still argue with equal vigor; often agreeing on individual rights, (we're both libertarians), but disagreeing dramatically on the proper role of the federal government and the separation of powers between Washington and the several states.
High Rise Anxiety
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 26, 2011
Covering hurricanes is usually like covering War-Lite. There is peril, drama, heartbreak and high adventure, but the inherent risks are hugely reduced by the fact no one is shooting at you.And there are no big picture surprises. At a certain point you know you’re either going to get hit or missed, because no other natural drama unfolds with such slow-motion predictability. You can’t say you were surprised.
They are not like serious earthquakes, which in places like New York, Washington or Philadelphia only happen on a Tuesday and then only every other century or so. Neither are hurricanes like rogue tornadoes or the sudden eruption of long dormant volcanoes that slash and burn with no warning but the sirens.
Anthony Reports To Parole officer
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 26, 2011
Fox News can report exclusively that Casey Anthony has reported to probation today; according to her lead defense counsel Jose Baez. In a telephone conversation with me this evening Mr. Baez would only describe the location of the probation office as being "somewhere in the State of Florida;" the exact location will be kept secret to "everyone but her specific parole officer," according to Mr. Baez."She reported. She told the officer she understands the conditions of her probation" on the check kiting cases. "And she was told the date for her next appearance."
Bring Them Home
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 12, 2011
The most powerful military unit ever assembled, we watched the 101st Airborne Division march off to war early in 2010. All four brigades went to Afghanistan for a year-long deployment just completed; 24,000 of our best combat troops, all descendants of the legendary World War II heroes of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.On the bright summer day their new commanding officer, Major General John F. Campbell assumed command, their ranks, disciplined row upon row first filled the parade ground at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Passing in review, they were awesome; an inspiring sight the memory of which still fills my soul with pride and patriotism.
Race & The Debt Ceiling
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 05, 2011
Geraldo At Large Race and the Debt Ceiling
The deep dark secret underlying the Kamikaze debate over the debt ceiling is that it is as much about race as it is about competing political philosophies. The nation is roughly divided in half; the have's that pay taxes and have not's who do not. Most of the have's are white; most of the have not's are not. When the have's say they are sick of paying for bloated government, they are saying in effect that they are sick of paying for a vast social safety net that disproportionately protects black and brown people. They are not racists, but the shrink government movement championed by the Tea Party has a racial impact.
For example, everybody got hit by the Great Recession; but the impact on black and brown communities is far more severe.
Baez
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 15, 2011
It is deeply unsettling how so many are lumping the lawyer with the bad news. "The jury made the right call, period. Anyone who took the time to review the evidence would have made the same decision,"Jose Baez told me Wednesday night. Enduring the severe backlash cascading from the shocking Casey Anthony acquittal, the 42-year old New York-born Puerto Rican attorney is in the midst of the second toughest fight of his life.
It's a shame that a person can be acquitted of a crime and be shunned by society that's not the purpose of the criminal justic system that's not the purpose of the Constitution."
Not Guilty
by Geraldo Rivera | Jul 08, 2011
Acquitted child killer Casey Anthony will be a free woman next week, according to court officials; free to hopefully disappear until the sharpest public animosity has eased.Right now, the crowd outside the Orange County Florida Courthouse is in a foul mood. Not only are they filled with anger at Casey, but also at anyone connected to her dramatically successful defense.
They are also mad at me for being the bearer of bad news.
Many of the protesters are angry that I suggested Casey was a "good mother" on O'Reilly's show on Tuesday soon after her devastating, breath-taking, totally unexpected acquittal on all child murder charges.
Sailing To Orlando
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 24, 2011
For the past week, the world has been off my radar screen; literally. The only things on my sailboat's radar screen have been the bright green blips occasionally indicating other vessels within the 16 mile sweep of Voyager's relatively antique radar set or the less defined spray of smaller dots showing intense rain squalls in the area.At night, aside from those ghostly green images glowing from that radar screen, there is nothing but the plunging boat and the big bad black ocean and sky. It is exhilarating, humbling and scary, especially when the wind is howling, the sails are straining and tons of water rushes over the low side of the heeling sailboat as it cuts through heaving seas a couple hundred miles from the nearest land.
Juanie Cochran
by Geraldo Rivera | Jun 03, 2011
That is what some reluctant admirers are calling accused tot killer Casey Anthony's relatively young and inexperienced Latino defense attorney Jose Baez. With just three years experience and a handful of meaningful trials at the time he got this huge case of a mother facing the death penalty for allegedly killing her two year old, the office of the Kissimmee Florida based defense attorney is topped by the slogan, 'Where Justice Begins.' It is next door to the county jail, which is good for business, and offers bilingual consultation.His earlier apprenticeship spent in the public defender's office discounted, his journeyman experience put commentators in a bad mood from day one.
With Friends Like Him
by Geraldo Rivera | May 13, 2011
Barack Obama is the first Latino president. Aside from the fact he could easily pass for Puerto Rican or Dominican because of everything from his complexion to his easy nature and physical grace, he was largely elected by the Latino community. Two out of three Hispanics voted for him, providing the margin of victory in key states Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia, Florida, Colorado and elsewhere.Given the breath-taking surge in the Latino population, I said confidently in November 2008 that if the community continued to turnout and vote for Obama and other Democrats at the same ratio, "there may never be another Republican president." At least until the GOP moderated its position on immigration reform.
Another Great Escape
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 29, 2011
This is a story of two gut-wrenching escapes that crippled our grueling war against terror, perhaps irrevocably. I want to return soon to Latino-themed topics, but the significance of these critical events for our nation can not go unnoted.Perfectly executed and separated by almost ten years, history will view the two escapes as bookends of our futile effort in Afghanistan. I’ll remind you about the first event in a minute, the second happened Monday near Kandahar when almost 500 captive Taliban fighters, including some hardened leaders tunneled out of a maximum security facility right under the noses of their probably complicit Afghan guards.
There But For Fortune
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 22, 2011
In war coverage, the difference between anecdote and tragedy is razor thin. Viewed from home, it all looks like a Bruce Willis film; the bullets and missiles cutting through the air near a reporter's head in battle are enormously entertaining as long as they don't hit. Even on the killing ground, there is an almost festive aspect to a near miss. "That was close," is often uttered with a nervous smile; grim humor substituting for crippling fear. Especially back away from the front, a kind of denial prevails; a jocular back slapping that is often slap happy, hail fellows well met, so near yet so far, fortune favors the brave, no guts no glory.Then someone gets killed and anecdote and cliché collapse into mourning.
Libya's Lawrence
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 15, 2011
Erica laughed when she told me about the Jon Stewart "Geraldo of Arabia" parody that he aired last week following my coverage of the fighting in Libya. "He doesn't know how much you'd love that!" She was right. I had just landed at JFK from Cairo and was soon pleasantly surprised that the normally snarky Stewart was respectful in his jokes. But I'm no Lawrence. Having read Michael Korda's current biography of legendary T.E. Lawrence, hero god of the Arab revolt, architect of modern Arab political geography, masochist and raconteur, and having this morning re-watched David Lean's spectacular movie for the 80th time, Lawrence was far more ambitious.It is not that I would lead the Libyan revolt. I just know that this one is badly managed.
Sympathy For The Devil
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 08, 2011
Loathing their master, I admit to feeling sorry for the Gaddafi force attacking east from Brega toward Ashdabiya in the Libyan civil war. This is no longer the overwhelming armored column seeking to suppress the eastern rebellion. This is the desperate remnant of a battered army.
Far from their western base, their supply line stretches along a single coastal road for 300 miles. Pushed from behind by the hysterical urgings of their mad maximum leader, they face death from the giant Allied air hammer above.
Still they attack.
Brega II
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 01, 2011
Looking back at the events of yesterday I now have certain clarity that the Libyan rebel army is the most ill-disciplined, inexperienced and unreliable I’ve ever seen in a combat situation. Their level of incompetence is so shocking the very notion of heavily arming them gives me nightmares of dudes walking around with machine guns looking to settle personal scores that have nothing to do with their revolt in the desert.When we got caught in that cross-fire yesterday, it revealed that what this mob needs is a few good Marine Corps drill sergeants, not more or heavier weapons.
Picture this: in front a fortified enemy position; Gaddafi loyalists have dug in behind the brick or cement walls of the town’s university.
Brega, Libya
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 01, 2011
A few miles past the west gate of Ashdabiya, the crucial crossroads town about 100 miles west of the rebel stronghold city of Benghazi there is a grim reminder that war kills from every direction. It’s the scene of that friendly fire tragedy that happened late Friday night in which 13 rebel fighters were obliterated by one of our allied aircraft. The charred remains of several vehicles are just twisted wrecks standing guard over newly dug graves fifty feet from the road. The road is gouged as if with a giant pick axe and it is covered with a thick layer of carbon from the super-heated explosions of the precision missiles that sadly wasted those cars; but which have also saved the liberated parts of the country those drivers were fighting for by wasting 25% of Gaddafi’s entire armored corps so far. He can’t win now. That main coastal road connecting this country is a highway of death for anything armored.Libya
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 01, 2011
In Libya after crossing the surreal Egyptian border. Between their arrival and departure buildings, a kind of No Man's Land has developed. Outside the buildings, crowded around the entrances scores of young black Africans push and scramble and yell for admittance. Wearing woolen caps, hoodies and soccer jerseys the mostly undocumented men are desperate for temporary travel papers. The bulk of them hail from the nation of Chad, which borders Libya to the south.For years, after making war on their country, Gaddafi has seduced them; luring them here to oil-rich Libya with the promise of jobs. Now they are stuck by their host's upheaval.
Cairo
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 01, 2011
The further they are from the fighting, the more old men call energetically for war. It is as if they feel political bravado will make them seem brave. Now these armchair warriors are demanding that President Obama announce a plan to remove Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from power.It is not enough that our forces, without suffering a single casualty prevented a massacre of "horrific scale" in the Libyan city of Benghazi.
Now the long-distance machos in Washington want the boogeyman boss dead or gone, without regard for what it might take to accomplish that admirable goal.
The President Was Right To Go
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 25, 2011
He didn't call it off. Despite partisan griping about the First Family's taking a ‘vacation' in Brazil, Chile and El Salvador at the same time the wheels were coming off in Japan and Libya, the president stuck to the plan: a five-day, three-nation Latin American trip just concluded. Any other weekend, it was the kind of trip that would decorate television news with extravagant scenery and tales of vast economic and social potential. But last Saturday and Sunday weren't any other weekend, not with our cruise missiles hitting Tripoli, and radiation being found in the milk and spinach of Tokyo. Still, he stuck it out when he had ample excuse to shut it down, gamely visiting iconic sites in Rio with his adorable family, including Copacabana Beach, a favela slum, and the Christ the Redeemer statue that always gets destroyed in disaster and alien invasion movies.
Japan Tsunami
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 18, 2011
Even before the shaking stopped, I recognized it. "Earthquake," I answered my speechless wife Erica's wide-eyed, open-mouthed, but unasked question about what the hell was happening. It was the evening of December 27th, 2010 and a 5.4 magnitude shaker had just hit central Puerto Rico, about fifteen miles away, giving us a short sharp series of significant house-rattling jolts. Once things settled down all I worried about was whether the shaker would spawn a tsunami that could swamp our tiny, low-lying mangrove island home just off Puerto Rico's south coast.Nothing came of it, but that moment of doubt and fear of what the mighty ocean might have in store came sweeping back this past Friday morning when I turned on the car radio on the way to work, and heard about the historic, gigantic 9.0 quake that struck Japan overnight.
Poisonous Mutterings
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 04, 2011
One grumbles about "the Jewish thing," blaming a cabal of Jewish reporters for his bad press. After a chance, late-night encounter in a Paris nightclub, another snarls at people who are or who look Jewish, "I love Hitler!" and, "Your mothers, your forefathers" would all be ‘gassed!' And in Hollywood the third does the guttural throat-clearing pronunciation, mockingly gargling the name ‘Chaim' to insult his Jewish boss. No it is not a sleepover for neo-Nazis. It is three of the highest profile celebrity icons of the modern-era letting us see how close to the surface anti-Semitism can be, even in famous smiley faces.Wikileaks founder Julian Assange went off the tracks in a rambling mid-February phone call with the editor of Private Eye magazine; he was complaining about a story that alleged Assange was pals with a Holocaust denier.
Dream Stealers
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 04, 2011
One of my family's treasured memories and one of my proudest achievements is sailing Voyager around the world. That's why I bought the old ketch in 1995; to fulfill that ultimate dream of anyone who has ever sailed beyond the breakwater into the open sea.We departed Marion, the charming Massachusetts seafaring town on Buzzard's Bay in the summer of 1997; crossing the Atlantic, and through the Straits of Gibraltar. By the time we crossed the long Mediterranean and passed through the legendary Suez Canal, it was 1998. The first high drama came a week after the canal in the Gulf of Aqaba when we were run down by an Egyptian gunboat after making an unauthorized stop at one of their islands off the Sinai Peninsula near the Egyptian/Israeli border.
La Calle Sesame
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 18, 2011
In September 2011, Sol Liliana Rivera our beloved five-year old will be among the four million other American children beginning kindergarten. Like the other members of her high school Class of 2023, she will nervously say good bye to her even more nervous mommy and daddy and take that giant step into the rest of her life. Stripped of the entire hi-tech, I-pad, interconnected world that will put all human knowledge at her little fingertips, much of what she experiences in school will not be that much different than what you and I faced at that hinge in our personal history. She will love some teachers, others not so much. There will be classes that captivate her and others that bore her. Some kids she meets will be nice, others mean. She and her classmates will be by turns attentive, restive or rowdy, eager or stubborn, brave or crying, "I want my mommy!"
Tin Pots & Us
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 04, 2011
Ask any Latino over 50; the Mubarak types were a dime a dozen South of the border. You could say we made the mold: the stereotypic strongman military officer who crushes democratic opposition, ditches the uniform, assumes the presidency, then rules forever or until his son can take over; most with the decisive support of the United States. Just since 1945, we backed 18 Latin American tin pot dictators. I interviewed a bunch of them over the decades, beginning with my first foreign assignment in 1973, a general who made himself president of Chile Augusto Pinochet. He's best remembered for herding his political opponents into football stadiums before disappearing them, bombing his own presidential palace and killing his one-time friend the democratically elected president Salvatore Allende. Pinochet then ruled with our backing from 1973 to 1990.
Latino Teen Pregnancy
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 28, 2011
"High School Pregnancy Pact Revealed! 90 girls either pregnant or have just delivered!" Stripped of that headline, the melancholy story of Frayser High School in Memphis is way too familiar. As we discovered last weekend during a ‘Geraldo-At-Large' probe of that high school in Tennessee, with its overwhelmingly poor, largely African-American student body, this urban district is coping with an epidemic of babies having babies; 26% of Frayser's girls becoming pregnant while still in high school, contrasted with about 10% of all teenage students nationwide.And while proportionally, more black teens get pregnant, 58% according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy; Latinas, at 53% are rapidly closing the gap.
Jeb, Bill & Me
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 21, 2011
Complete with finger-pointing and veins bulging, Bill O'Reilly and I had a memorable, televised confrontation over illegal immigration a couple years back. Downloaded hundreds of thousand times since, the clash was as close to a fist fight as I had ever been without a punch actually being thrown. Angry and filled with righteous wrath, Bill accused me of wanting border "anarchy." Just as mad, frustrated and also self-righteous, I accused him of trolling for a "cheap political point." Others here at the network accused me of "running for King of Mexico!" And from that night on, my pro-immigration reform stance put in the peculiar position of being at odds with a majority of my own viewers; one of the few times that has happened in more than four decades in the news business.
So What Happens Now
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 14, 2011
Despite calls for civility, and reduced decibel politics, the debate rages loudly over whether accused mass murderer Jared Loughner was inspired, motivated, instigated and/or encouraged by the acrimonious political climate in Tucson and the rest of the country; or, was he simply an aberrant, insane, psychotic, sociopathic nut job who would have acted out violently even if he lived in Cape Cod or San Francisco?My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the ultimate answer will be both. He's clearly crazy; but as the record shows, he was also obsessed with targeting Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords ('my assassination' he called the pending attack); and had been obsessed with her since 2007.
Spanish Republicans
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 19, 2010
On 'At-Large' last weekend, the Reverend Al Sharpton (a chronically under-rated civil rights leader and old friend), and I pondered an interesting question: should people who consider themselves progressive applaud the election of minorities who are conservatives? It came up when Reverend Al and I were talking about the sweeping victories in the mid-term elections of Hispanic Republicans, most prominently Florida's Senator-elect Marco Rubio.Right now, the 39-year old Cuban-American is the Latino golden boy; he's standing astride the big stage after first driving Florida's popular governor Charlie Crist from the GOP before the Senate primary, and then crushing Charlie and the affable, but ineffective Democrat, Miami-area congressman Kendrick Meek in the general election.
The Latino Rising
by Geraldo Rivera | Oct 15, 2010
America is changing color in real time, and I'm not talking fall foliage. The just concluded U.S. Census estimates the population of Hispanic/Latino Americans surging toward fifty million. It is the nation's largest ethnic group. More broadly, the United States already has the second largest Latino population of any nation on Earth, trailing only Mexico and larger than Spain. Already more than 16% of our nation, one in four Americans will be ethnic Latinos by 2040. By the end of the century, if this trend holds, the country will be majority Latino.That demographic tsunami does not sit well with many otherwise well-meaning Americans because it carries the threat that these newcomers will change the country; making it something other than the beacon of individual freedom and liberty it has always been.
50 Highs & Lows From 40 Years In News
by Geraldo Rivera | Sep 03, 2010
Four decades in the news business. If I may say, that is an incredible run in a dynamic, exotic, wonderful, often important but frequently stressful and sometimes dangerous business that tends to wear out people more quickly. There aren’t many still standing who started in that tumultuous period during which the civil rights movement had collapsed into urban chaos; the endless war in Vietnam was tearing the nation apart; Richard Nixon was president, and the deaths of four students at Kent State University at the hands of Ohio National Guardsmen was accelerating the alienation of young people across the country and self-styled rebels like me who weren’t trusting anyone over thirty.
Which Is Worse, Illegal Aliens Or The Gruesome Oil Spill ?
by Geraldo Rivera | May 28, 2010
What does it say about us as a nation and of our national leadership that we applaud the emergency deployment of the National Guard to assist in sealing our southern border from undocumented Mexican immigrants, at the same time scores of miles of the Louisiana Gulf Coast go unprotected from the billowing waves of oils now washing on shore? Which is the true calamity, and which is the product of well-intentioned citizens being mislead by hyper-ventilating politicians trying to out hard ass the next by being the toughest on illegal aliens?As I have documented in two recent books, Mexican immigrants have been crossing the southern border since our conquest of Mexico and occupation of its former national territory in the American southwest in 1846.
Down But Not Out In Edgewater
by Geraldo Rivera | May 21, 2010
Looking out at my trusty old sailboat Voyager riding comfortably on her mooring in front of my home, just down stream from the George Washington Bridge in Edgewater New Jersey, the fact hit me that I wasn't working on a weekend afternoon. Since 20001, Saturday has been a show day for 'Geraldo At Large', and this one is an especially pretty late-Spring day on the Hudson River, so I'm feeling guilty about missing work. But I've done the unthinkable; I've called in sick.Sick days aren't part of my nature. In forty years of hard marching, field reporting out beyond the wire from some of the grimmest places on the planet, plus the often nerve-jangling experience of doing studio and location shows by the thousands, I honestly don't remember ever taking a sick day off.
Afghanistan Trip
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 16, 2010
Just back from my seventh wartime trip to Afghanistan since November 2001, there are some clear-cut comparisons. First, Kabul the capital is a vastly different city than it was when the war started. It is more than twice as big, five million now as compared to under three million then, and it is dotted by modern mid-rise buildings, festooned with billboards and other indicators of a vibrant business community that uniquely exists behind the tall piles of sandbags and legions of machine-gun wielding guards who patrol in front of virtually every shop, restaurant and government office. If Afghanistan has any hope of a relatively normal future it is in its resilient capitalism; its business community, which is largely fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit of ex-pat Afghanis mostly from the United States with some money from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf.
The Big American Flag
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 13, 2009
The big American flag flying over the sprawling New York Presbyterian Hospital complex in Washington Heights opposite my Edgewater New Jersey home was straight as iron, pointing left to right. A Nor-Easter was stiffening the banner, rustling the trees of Jay Hood Wright’s picturesque little park around the base of the buildings, including the famous Little Red Lighthouse and riling the great river below.Weather is more personal and dramatic when you live on a big river like the Hudson. It has heft, especially when the wind blows down from the north. Wind from that point of the compass is channeled by the Highlands near West Point, by Storm King Mountain and the Palisades, and by the time the breeze reaches the George Washington Bridge and enters New York Harbor it is sharp and wet. Pushed by tide and by that wind, waves, two, three footers run down to break on the shoals and docks on the Jersey side.
Fort Hood Massacre
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 06, 2009
The massacre at Fort Hood Thursday afternoon curiously caused me to flashback to my childhood, rather than my experiences as a war correspondent. After my family moved during the 1950's 'Ozzie and Harriet' era from Brooklyn to West Babylon Long Island, becoming the neighborhood's first Latino family, my dad used to say a little prayer whenever there was a particularly notorious crime. "Please God that the person responsible not be another Puerto Rican." Fighting discrimination and trying to overcome post-World War II-era discrimination as well as our new neighbors' hesitation to welcome our urban brood into their suburban midst, dad saw every act of infamy or notoriety committed by someone who looked like us or who had a name like ours' as an impediment to our ultimate integration.
He's Back
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 07, 2009
It won't change much for either of them. The former governor of Alaska may stay marginally more in the public eye with her Twitter account, although she has lately been ignoring even that. But while Tweeting will help her in booking a likely and lucrative national speaking tour and perhaps land a cable news or radio talk show, (and I would love to have her as a colleague), it will not increase her remote chance of running successfully for national office. Tweets aside, the essence of public service is serving and whatever the promise of her dramatic and dynamic early career, it has been severely undermined by the resignation. Hard conservatives can insist her move was an inspired ploy to frustrate her petty political enemies, which she has in abundance.
Two Hurricanes & A Funeral
by Geraldo Rivera | May 01, 2009
Like the coming of the president to the Cape and islands and the approaching hurricanes, the death of Senator Ted Kennedy was also widely forecast. Nevertheless the passing of the last son of Camelot had a deep impression on most Americans. Drafted off my boat by Bill O'Reilly for a last minute live-shot on the senator's life and times, I remembered on air how in 1973 a young Teddy was a young Geraldo's first interview on my first national show, "Good Night America." O'Reilly ran a clip of the old interview as I noted how our conversation then, 36-years ago, and my last conversation with the Old Lion in 2008 had been about the same thing, the need for compassion and justice for migrant workers.
ICE Immigration Raids
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 20, 2009
An eruption of deadly ambushes, street shootings, home invasions, assassinations, kidnappings and decapitations has brought chaos to Mexican border towns from Juarez to Tijuana and apprehension and worse to American cities near the line. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon deployed his army in 2006 to dismantle his nation’s all-powerful drug cartels, “over 8,000 casualties have been violently claimed in cartel hot spots across Mexico,” according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. And the violence isn’t staying south of the border. According to federal and state authorities, a dangerous and deadly epidemic of kidnapping-for-ransom has hit Phoenix since 2006, over 370 in 2008 alone, making it second only to Mexico City, as the kidnapping capital of the world. In every Arizona case, both the victim and the suspect is a criminal alien connected to the Mexican drug trade.Secretary Chertoff, Call Off
by Geraldo Rivera | May 30, 2008
Driven by the most savage talk radio and cable news anti-immigrant propaganda campaign in our nation's history, the Department of Homeland Security has unleashed an unprecedented crackdown on undocumented workers. In an effort not seen since the panic unleashed by the Great Depression, federal law enforcement has been targeting technically illegal workers who have been long tolerated in industries like meat packing, poultry processing and agriculture. In the terror created, fruit trees are being cut down and fields lie fallow, for want of traditional workers.Many hundreds of otherwise law abiding, hard working, family men and women have been arrested in recent weeks under circumstances more appropriate to operations targeting al Queda.
Shame On Chertoff
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 18, 2008
It was pathetic, overblown and deeply disrespectful of the pope. On the same day last week the Holy Father and President Bush issued a joint statement affirming the need to treat immigrants humanely, preposterously over-dressed, swat-armored federal agents were arresting 300 of them in raids at five chicken plants. Officials denied the timing was intentional, and claimed the lightening, simultaneous assaults came only after a one-year long investigation.Let me get this straight, a one-year long investigation; to discover that many, if not most workers at poultry processing plants are Mexicans or other Latin Americans here illegally?
Iraq Five Years Later
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 21, 2008
March 2007On assignment with the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan in March 2003, we were a week late getting into Iraq. By the time we got there, the intense 'Shock and Awe' aerial bombardment that almost killed Saddam Hussein was over. It would have ended the war on the first day. But he escaped; the first of many missed opportunities that negatively altered the course of the war.
The next was the failure to secure the huge caches of ammunition discovered on the road to Baghdad, artillery shells and other high explosives that would later be used with such devastating impact when improvised as roadside booby traps.
"Her Panic; Hillary's Alamo"
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 29, 2008
from my book, 'His Panic'She is not the first to make a last stand in San Antonio and as dire as her peril, it was worse last time around. In 1836, 189 brave souls perished there after holding off the entire Mexican army for almost two weeks. Given the role the Battle of the Alamo played as one of American history's pivotal moments, it is perhaps ironic that most of the residents of the city more closely resemble the attacking army than the mission's heroic defenders.
Now Hillary is entrenched in the "Alamo City," the state's second largest with 1.3 residents.
Here Comes "His Panic"
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 22, 2008
On Tuesday February 26th, my book about immigration and the Latino American experience is being published. Called "His Panic, Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S.," it is one of my proudest achievements because it exposes how the hysterical anti-immigration propaganda campaign that has infected our nation's political dialogue is based on lies and distortion, false statistics and race-baiting.The book predicts an election year uprising among Hispanics finally sickened enough to make a stand against candidates and news organizations that have spent the last several years trying to get the country to turn her back on our noble immigrant tradition. One of the first to fall was Mitt Romney.
Parwan Province Afghanistan
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 07, 2007
Salang TunnelOf all the public works projects completed here in Afghanistan with US and foreign assistance over the last six years, none was more impressive to me than the strategic Salang tunnel. Originally built in 1964 by the Soviets, during their ill-fated invasion to rescue the local communist government and take over the country in 1979, they used it to help move their tanks and heavy equipment down into the heartland. Cut into the mighty Hindu Kush Mountains, the tunnel is located about 65 miles north of Kabul, and quickly became the most vital passage connecting this rugged country's north and south, cutting travel time from the 3 days it used to take to drive around the mountains to just a few hours.
Kite Runner Hill
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 06, 2007
Kabul, AfghanistanWhen I got to Kabul just after it was liberated in 2001, one of the first things I saw were the thousands of kids flying their brightly colored, handmade paper kites. Now, American movie goers are getting that same look inside Afghanistan’s history and culture with the new movie called Kite Runner, based on the best-selling novel by Khaled Hosseini that just opened last week with the gala Hollywood premier. The film portrays the lives of two Afghan boys, one a member of the upper class who manages to escape the Taliban and move to America. The other gets caught in the grip of the radical fundamentalist thugs who ruled this poor nation with irrational violence and the most extreme form of Islam on the planet between 1996 and 2001.
The Serena Hotel
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 05, 2007
Kabul, AfghanistanOn Wednesday morning December 5th, my first here in the Afghan capital, I was awakened by the sound of sirens. The phone rang in my hotel room a couple of minutes later and it was Akbar Shinwari my old friend here in Kabul telling me that there had just been another suicide bombing, the third in the last eight days. Shades of Baghdad in the bad old days before the surge, a bomber, or some at the scene said, a pair of bombers had targeted a group of Afghan soldiers waiting to catch a bus. By the time I got there, although the bodies had been cleared, chaos still reined.
Bagram II
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 04, 2007
We're about to accompany the Bagram-based Provincial Reconstruction Team up to the Salang tunnel that once monumental wreck destroyed in one of the many different Afghan wars, whose rebuilding is said to symbolize a new Afghanistan. Before we leave, let me tell you a little about the team I travel with, veterans all of my various adventures.There's my younger, taller, better looking brother Craig, the senior producer/reporter who's worked with me in the news business since he was 17. Except for the thirteen years he was on his own as a reporter for Bill O'Reilly's alma mater 'Inside Edition' Craig's been at my side through thick and thin for virtually his entire adult life. A terrific journalist with balls of steel, incredibly (to me), Craig's 53 now. He's married to the much younger Cordelia Bowe Rivera, a beautiful woman who is also a talented tv producer and the mother of their two kids, Austin 13, who's already taller than me and Olivia, 9 who's cute as can be.
Bagram Air Base
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 04, 2007
Outside Kabul, AfghanistanFlying into Kabul, this country's sprawling, dusty capital first provides one of the world's most spectacular sights, the soaring, seemingly endless Hindu Kush mountains. Sharp peaks, snow covered and breathtaking these 15-18,000 foot giants are mere half-sized foothills leading up to their awesome cousins the Himalayas a thousand miles east. The aircraft an ancient 737 owned by a bare bones operation called Kam Air banks sharply left to avoid them, then dives into the brown haze that covers Afghanistan's principal and really only modern city.
Baghdad Airport
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 03, 2007
About to leave this battered country, I'm struck by the fact that it widely defied my narrow expectations. While Iraq remains war-torn, the streets no longer run red with blood, the air isn't being split by bullets and the streets aren't erupting in violent blasts; at least those combat cliches are no where near as true as they were until just a couple of months ago.Sure there is the occasional boom in the night and even the odd rattle of gunfire, but trust me after nine visits since the invasion of March 2003, Baghdad and environs are far better and safer than they were before the surge began.
Violence is down to a level that is a fraction of what it was during the year-long religious war which began with the destruction of the Golden Dome of Samarra in early 2006.
Sadr City, Iraq
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 01, 2007
The worst neighborhood in Baghdad remains Sadr City where on a single day in October there were nine separate bombings. Now, here as elsewhere in this slowly recovering capital, our GI’s have learned to fight with concrete, lining the roads with the massive barriers to prevent snipers and I.E.D. attacks, those wicked booby traps that have been the cause of most of our casualties.This hotbed of radical Shiites is still a nest of vipers, where rogue elements within the community have so far refused to go along with the ceasefire declared by their own religious leaders.
With a teeming, dense and largely impoverished population of at least 2.3 million of Baghdad’s seven million residents our basic military strategy has been to isolate what is still the dark heart of the Shiite resistance.
Al Rasheed, Baghdad
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 29, 2007
The predominantly Sunni area around the Doura market has been Al Queda’s last stronghold in Southeast Baghdad, a grim and dusty enclave where in February, 553 sectarian murders were carried out, the bodies dumped sometimes among the few remaining open air stalls or the train tracks and road that runs through it. By November, the total number of homicides for this entire community of over a million was down to 30, a lower rate per capita than say Philadelphia.As in the rest of this battle-scared capital the principal difference has been the imposition of U.S. Army law and governance, and an unprecedented battle for the hearts and minds and pocket books of the Iraqi people on a scale not seen since the Marshal Plan poured millions of U.S. dollars in to rebuild post World War II Europe.
Baghdad
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 27, 2007
Iraq is a graveyard for optimism, but it is hard not to feel at least a tremor of hope after spending an afternoon like I just did, in a Baghdad neighborhood that was once one of the deadliest in this blood-soaked country. It is called Ameriyah, and to give you an example, last May 14 American soldiers were killed there in a series of attacks, seven in a single day. Al Queda was everywhere in this predominantly Sunni neighborhood, its death squads terrorizing the minority Shiites, imposing strict Islamic law and killing between 15 and 20 civilians a week.In a single month this summer, authorities found 70 bodies there.
Amman
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 26, 2007
There is a bar in the "Cinco de Mayo," which passes for a Mexican restaurant in the Intercontinental Hotel here in the Jordanian capital. It provides a fascinating look into what the war in neighboring Iraq has wrought in this little kingdom . The food is more Arab than Mexican, the margaritas suck, and aside from the occasional local, usually a driver or fixer, the vast majority of patrons are hard, tough, white guys between 35 and 50 with hair closely cropped or shaven completely. If you didn't know better you could mistake this crowd forneo-Nazis or simmering British soccer fans.
They are mostly private security contractors or truck drivers or construction trades workers coming or going from the war-torn country next door.
Amman, Jordan
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 25, 2007
En route to Iraq through the capital of this small, but important and moderate Arab nation whose King Abdullah has played a helpful role calming this region's turbulence and anti-Americanism. Like his dad, the late great King Hussein, Abdullah is reasonable, progressive and modern.Like Mubarak in Egypt, but unlike so many others in these parts, the King accepts our aid, without resorting to deceit, treachery or double dealing.
Now he's in the States for President Bush's Annapolis peace conference, which is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, but which is already being handicaped as a non-starter by long-time observers of the Mid-East scene who learned long ago that around here optimism is usually crushed before the ink is dry on any purported agreement.
And So It Goes
by Geraldo Rivera | Apr 20, 2007
Sorry I've been so long away. Life gets so busy with so many public and private events competing for center stage in the heart and mind that it is easy to avoid doing the optional in favor of doing just the mandatory. And the less I write the more things pile up that I want to write about.Let's start with the death of the incomparable Kurt Vonnegut. Along with Rand, Forester, Tolstoy, and Tolkien, Vonnegut's writings helped shape my world. Ostensibly a comedy and filled with scenes of aliens, abductions and time travel, 'Slaughter House-Five' was at its heart as vivid and eloquently anti-war as 'Paths of Glory'. 'The Sirens of Titan', 'Cat's Cradle', and 'Breakfast of Champions' were also deceptively gentle excoriations of militarism and pretension.
Marathon, Florida
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 30, 2007
Saturday Night Live had a funny bit last night mocking the preoccupation of the news business with the Anna Nicole Smith story. They even mocked my old friend and highly regarded CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.I don't make any apologies for the extensive media coverage. It follows, rather than creates audience interest. And in this intriguing case, there's plenty to grab your attention. But after last night's show that we did on location at the Marathon, Florida home Anna Nicole stayed during her pregnancy, which included the chilling testimony of the housekeepers who saw her enormous stash of dope and needles, I've reached a personal conclusion.
GOP Immigration Extremists
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 16, 2007
Until the last election cycle, Republicans had a reasonable chance of becoming the permanent majority party in this country. But in the lead up to the November 2006 elections, the GOP was hijacked by extremists on the immigration issue.Led by candidates like Arizona's J.D. Hayworth, the party essentially adopted the position of the Minutemen and similar radical groups, which promulgated a wildly exaggerated portrayal of a tidal wave of brown people overwhelming our southern border, running loose to rape, steal and murder on the streets of our cities. It is no accident that various hate groups have declared common cause with the Minutemen. Similarly, it is no accident that these various activist anti-immigration groups scarcely mention our long, undefended border with Canada.
Anna Nicole Update
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 09, 2007
If a person tumbles down a staircase and dies as a result, the cause of death is say, a broken neck. But whether that person slipped on a banana peel or intentionally jumped or was pushed makes all the difference between an accident, a suicide or a murder. That, I think, is what's going on in the Anna Nicole case.On the verge of announcing the cause of Anna Nicole's death February 8th in the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, most likely from an accidental drug overdose, on Thursday, the medical examiner delayed his ruling pending the receipt of new evidence.
Investigating that evidence, the local Sun Sentinel newspaper reminds us today that a friend of Anna Nicole asked him to secure her belongings if "something ever happened" to her.
Homeland Security Heist
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 09, 2007
Given the historic reluctance among conservatives to expand the size of the federal government, one of the most ironic developments since 9/11 is how that catastrophe created the opening for perhaps the most egregious example of government waste, fraud and abuse ever, also know as the Department of Homeland Security.With politicians from both sides of the aisle waving the flag, and perhaps hiding behind it, the bureaucrats, lobbyists and contractors sucking on the federal breast have stolen or wasted billions according to the General Accounting Office, making the Department of Homeland Security sometimes seem like one huge, get-rich quick scheme.
Enterprise, Alabama
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 02, 2007
Listen to Kayla Todd, one of the injured students describe what it was like when the twister hit her school. "The lights flickered off and they told all of us to just get down and the next thing I know everything-debris is flying everywhere. One hall the roof is completely caved-in and as far as I know, one of my friends was up under it and I'm just worried that she's not okay. But its just-it was so scary."Marisa Yunanian is another injured student survivor of Thursday's killer tornado.
"I was watching through a near-by glass doors and window and I could see it getting darker and darker and then trees started flying and things started hitting the roof and the door. And then it all came at once and we all just covered our heads and prayed for it to be over..."
Notes On A Circus
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 23, 2007
Jack, a neighbor of mine over in New Jersey drove up as I stood outside, welcomed me home from Iraq, and then proceeded to blast the media for its obsession with those twin blonde disasters, dead and alive, Anna Nicole and Britney Spears.Jack, who’s kind of a typical every man, was especially scornful of the living twin, Britney, accusing her of being a grossly negligent mother. He didn’t fault Anna Nicole as much as he excoriated reporters covering the travels and travails of her dead body, especially with so many, much more important issues out there worthy of discussion.
Feb 17th Baghdad Update
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 17, 2007
Camp LibertyBaghdad, Iraq
February 17, 2007
"I made Baghdad the top security priority," said President Bush Friday. "In other words, it is important in order to achieve our objective that the capital city of this grand country be secure. And I sent reinforcements to our troops, so they can accomplish that mission."
The key is Baghdad. That's why the embattled President and our military commanders chose this blood soaked place to make our stand, to surge our forces in an aggressive effort to curtail the wretched violence, disrupt insurgent activity and deny the extremists the safe haven some of these neighborhoods have been providing.
Operation Law & Order
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 14, 2007
Even as Congress continues its passionate debate over President Bush's surge of additional troops into Baghdad, Wednesday was the first day of what military leaders here in Iraq are calling Operation Law and Order...nine separate operations in every virtually corner of this war-torn capital.Working with the newly reorganized Iraqi Security Forces, Stopping traffic, setting roadblocks, searching and clearing various trouble riddled parts of town, The First Cavalry, supplemented by units from the Stryker Brigade and the 82nd Airborne swarmed the city in operations designed to disrupt insurgent activity and deny the extremists the safe-haven some of these neighborhoods have previously provided.
Back To Iraq
by Geraldo Rivera | Feb 10, 2007
My dear mother called me yesterday, with some heartfelt advice. "Don't take any helicopters when you're in Iraq." For the last 37 years, Mom's watched baby brother Craig and I go off to war, (he's 52!) comforted by the fact that we've always come home in one piece. But on the verge of this latest trip to Iraq on Monday, she, like every other mother with someone over there is worried about the enemies new found ability to shoot our helicopters down. A couple of days ago, the insurgents posted raw video apparently showing one of our choppers being crippled and destroyed, apparently by a rocket although that's not certain.The crash of the Marine Sea Knight on Wednesday was the sixth by a U.S. helicopter since January 20th, at least four of them shot down by the bad guys with a total loss of 27 of our troops or private security contractors.
Last Day Of Fox Network Show
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 26, 2007
So today is our last day on the station you're currently watching. After a couple of weeks off, on February 10th the show is moving back to the Fox News Channel where it was the highest rated, weekend news show on cable. And while we'll be live and doing the same solid reporting, with much of the same team, I can't say I'm not saddened by the change.As they say in 'Dreamgirls', we are a family. I've been like the crazy Dad and head cheerleader. Our executive in charge Nancy Duffy has been the strong, but loving mom. Some of our professional kids are moving on to other shows. And parting is such sweet sorrow.
Celebrity Rehab
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 25, 2007
Let me start by saying I've never been in rehab, although I'm fairly certain counseling and therapy are legitimate tools to help some people control their demons. But I also have no doubt whatsoever that for increasing numbers of celebrities in trouble, rehab is being used as damage control. The latest example is that potty mouth from 'Grey's Anatomy'.43-year old Isaiah Washington has just announced that he's seeking psychological evaluation at a treatment center, whatever that means, following the scorching controversy over his use of an anti-gay slur to describe gay co-star T.R. Knight.
If sincere, which I doubt, seeking help would be a good thing because the dude is apparently carrying some heavy, psychological baggage.
Role Models For Girls
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 24, 2007
When I came into the office this morning, all the young guys were gathered around a computer watching the Internet's latest rage, a subscription based website called parisexposed.com. And I have to tell you that between that and the new Dakota Fanning movie featuring a child rape, what's a dad to do? The Paris website begins, "you've seen Paris Hilton the way she wants you to see her. You may have even seen Paris Hilton the way her boyfriends have seen her. But nobody has seen Paris the way she sees herself."
England Prostitute Slayings
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 23, 2007
"Am I next?" With those words in her journal, one of the dozens of prostitutes alleged murdered and dismembered by a man accused of being Canada's largest ever serial killer, worried that she would be his next victim.If ever we needed evidence that prostitutes need some kind of protection, it's on grisly display up in Vancouver.
Rick Frey's sister Marnie is one of dozens of relatives, family members, and friends of slain and mutilated prostitutes allegedly victimized by Robert "Willie" Pickton. Rick is attending Pickton's macabre trial. "I didn't hear too much," he said outside the packed courtroom. "I left as soon as it got under my skin. I can't handle that stuff."
The Worst Of Times
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 22, 2007
It is the worst of times in Iraq. With most Americans disapproving of the way the President’s handling the war, this has been one of the bloodiest weekends for American forces over there…a total of 27 GI’s dead in just two days, and at least 78 Iraqi civilians killed by two nearly simultaneous car bombings.For the President, the orgy of bloodshed in Iraq could not have come at a worse time. With a confrontation with Congress looming over his plan to surge more than 20,000 additional forces into bloody Baghdad, a recent poll shows that the war in Iraq has become our country’s biggest worry, and that 2/3rd’s of those surveyed disapprove of the way the President is fighting it.
Missouri Kidnap Case
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 17, 2007
The Kirkwood, Missouri miracle that saw two young kidnap victims returned to their families this weekend is the best ending to a crime story since Elizabeth Smart was rescued from the weirdoes who kidnapped her several years ago in Salt Lake City. And as with then 14-year old Elizabeth, one question many have is why these children don’t attempt to escape even when they have the chance?"It happens to prisoners of war, they do what they have to do in order to survive, It happens to women that are rape victims, if someone got in your apartment and kept you there for nine hours you would probably do what that kidnapper said to do, he broke this boy down psychologically, this boy was terrified…”
Thoughts On The "Troop Surge"
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 12, 2007
The President went on national television last night and made a stunning admission that since the dramatic elections a year ago, we've been going backwards not forward in Iraq."We thought that these elections would bring the Iraqis together," he said. "But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq -- particularly in Baghdad -- overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made."
In what seems a last ditch effort, given the impatience of the American people about the war, the President, following the advice of our best general, David Petraeus, told us all last night that he's has decided to double the number of troops providing security in bloody Baghdad, and to beef up the under manned Marines in the wild western part of the war-wracked country.
NY Gas Smell
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 08, 2007
On this rainy, gloomy Monday, millions of New Yorkers got a scare this morning when a pervasive smell of gas permeated most of midtown Manhattan. As thousands evacuated offices, including ours, news operations speculated on everything from a massive leak at the main refineries and pipelines located across the river in New Jersey, to a terrorist attack.On a dreary, humid, gray day, in which the mild weather continues well above normal for January, the rotten egg smell gave many people headaches, made others nauseous, caused officials for a time to suspend train traffic from New Jersey, and led thousands to evacuate their buildings or take other extreme measures.
Everyday Heroes
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 04, 2007
In a world that can be selfish and hard, one of the most positive, life-affirming things is courage; the fireman who runs into the burning building, the lifeguard who saves the drowning child, the soldier who sacrifices everything for his comrades. And in some way, it's even more inspiring when the hero is just an average Joe; a regular guy who when push comes to shove, does exactly the right thing.Wesley Autry is a 50-year old New York construction worker who faced a life and death decision Tuesday. On his way to drop off his two little girls and head to work, he watched in horror as a young man apparently suffering a seizure fell off the subway platform and onto the tracks, a 370-ton train fast approaching.
Death Comes In Threes
by Geraldo Rivera | Jan 03, 2007
Hi everybody. Happy New Year. You know, they say death comes in 3's, and over the holiday week, the world witnessed the passing of three leaders who could not have been more different - an accidental president, a sadistic tyrant and the godfather of soul.On this National Day of Mourning, the President and First Lady, three former Presidents, four former First Ladies, including one who would be president, members of the Supreme Court, the Cabinet and more than 3,000 other dignitaries gathered at Washington's National Cathedral to pay their respects to Betty Ford and to honor her husband - the pleasant and trustworthy man who never expected to hold the nation's highest office, but who steadied the ship of state, at a time when it was battered by war and Watergate...A superb athlete who ironically suffered the slings of comedians who ridiculed his supposed clumsiness...Gerald Ford will be buried tomorrow on the grounds of his museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
A Father Of Girls
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 19, 2006
I got an I-pod shuffle from an old friend for Christmas. He knows my family and me so well; he filled it with relevant songs. One hits so close to home, it's going to be my ring tone, it's 'The Father of Girls' by Perry Como. And it goes,"When you're the father of boys,
How you worry,
But when you're the father of girls,
You do more than that,
You pray!"
Prostitutes Murdered In England
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 13, 2006
It may be the world's oldest profession, but it's also one of the most dangerous. Even as cops in New Jersey seek the serial killer of four hookers in Atlantic City, British police are dealing with someone they fear may be a new Jack the Ripper."Everybody will have a view on working girls and prostitutes, but we mustn't forget these are young girls, they've got families and our thoughts go out to their families."
As Stewart Gill, the Detective Chief Superintendent of the Suffolk Police explains how five nude bodies have been discovered clustered in a small, remote area in Eastern England; the entire nation is gripped with the terrible memories of monsters present and past.
Iran Holocaust Deniers
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 13, 2006
What if a country run by a nut job got its hands on nuclear weapons? That's the scenario sending chills through world capitals when they think of Iran. And perhaps never has its nuttiness been more obvious than its so-called Conference to Debate the Nazi Extermination of Six Million Jews.Americans will be proud to know that we were represented by former Ku Klux Klanner David Duke, the smarmy racist who's charge that the Nazi gas chambers never really existed would just make you gag if it wasn't so insulting to the almost six million who died. His main point, "The Zionists have used the holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and cover up the crimes of Israel."
Princess Diana
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 11, 2006
One of the reasons some many of us refuse to believe that a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, killed John F. Kennedy is that we just can't believe that a loser like Oswald could have destroyed the magical dream of Camelot.It's the same with Princess Diana. How could the gracious and elegant lady and her boyfriend Dodi die at the hands of a drunk driver?
Perhaps their glittering lives deserved a more fitting conclusion, but wishing won't change the fact that a driver, three-times over the French drink drive limit was the man principally responsible for their untimely deaths.
What's Bugging Me
by Geraldo Rivera | Dec 04, 2006
This was a quiet, family weekend; walks by the river with the dogs, shuttling the big girls to their various events, and spending quality time with baby Sol, our 16-month old who's the only one who'll watch football with me. The bad news about quiet weekends though, is that there's plenty of time to read everything, and get angry with a lot of it.Like the almost pointless prosecution of the war in Iraq, which the president refuses to call a civil war despite the fact the UN Secretary General and almost every other world leader recognizes it for what it is. This weekend ten more GI's died, bringing the total military casualties to 2,889.
National Meth Day
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 30, 2006
It is the war America can't win, and I'm not talking about Iraq. I am talking about the War on Drugs. After thirty-five years, about the only thing that's changed is the drug of the moment, and right now its Meth.The President declared today National Methamphetamine Awareness Day...and the Attorney General went on live television to recognize the sorry fact that nearly 12 million Americans...almost five percent of the population above the age of 12...have tried the powerfully addictive drug, which averages about 600,000 users a month.
Celebrity Weddings & Divorce
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 29, 2006
Even if it goes smoothly, divorce is one of life's most melancholy events. Those of us who have been through it know how sad the process can be. In some ways, it's like a death in the family; there's the admission of failure, the conflict and tension over money and property, the heartbreak and emotion of comforting the children and reassuring them that they're still loved.But given all that, why don't we feel bad for Pam and Kid?
Let's face it some celebrity weddings are just silly.
Kramer Gone Crazy
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 21, 2006
In this day and age when you mention racism, people tend to roll their eyes impatiently, as if it was a passe, been there, done that topic. But then you hear someone like TV's Kramer spontaneously spewing vile and hateful words, and you have to wonder how deep the poison still is."You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger, look, there's a nigger!"
Apparently provoked by two hecklers who happened to be black, Michael Richards, Seinfeld's buddy 'Kramer' exploded in a tirade of racial epithets that were stunning in the intense hatred they revealed.
Justice & The Race Card
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 17, 2006
On Cape Cod yesterday, a garbage man was convicted of the rape and murder of a fashion writer stabbed to death in her home. The grievous crime was aggravated by the fact the woman's two-year old daughter was left alone for 36 hours. And when a concerned ex-boyfriend found her, the hungry child was trying to breast feed from her mother's dead body.The victim, 46-year old Crista Worthington was white. The perpetrator, 34-year old Christopher McCowen is black. Arrested only after his DNA was found in the victim's body, he admitted beating her, but claimed the sex was consensual...and that another man actually stabbed her.
Dems Clean Up
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 08, 2006
The Democratic wave that washed over American politics last night swamped several Republicans who tried to use the issue of illegal immigration to scare people into voting for them. I delighted to say they got their butts kicked.The rejection of the politics of reaction was evident almost everywhere, especially in Arizona where big, blustery GOP congressman J.D. Hayworth and conservative Republican candidate Randy Graf both basically adopted the hard-line, anti-immigration position advocated by vigilante groups like the Minuteman, and in their campaigns had railed constantly against our porous border with Mexico, and urged no mercy for illegals.
USS Intrepid
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 07, 2006
The sun, the moon and the stars were all in alignment here in New York, yesterday. Unfortunately, nobody checked with Ole Man River. And so the USS Intrepid, the World War II era aircraft carrier scheduled to be moved, never left her dock on Manhattan's West Side. The ceremony began with Senator Hillary Clinton saying "Let us wish it a safe and successful journey."It's a good thing Hillary's re-election campaign went better than her attempted sendoff. Despite the presence Monday of both New York senators, two former mayors, and enough veterans and military brass to launch an invasion, Intrepid wasn't going anywhere.
Religous Hypocrites
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 06, 2006
Almost fifty years ago, Burt Lancaster brilliantly portrayed a populist preacher named Elmer Gantry, a morally corrupt womanizer who realizes that his so-called religion brings unlimited opportunities to score money and babes galore.Created in a 1927 novel by Sinclair Lewis, the fictional Gantry's hypocritical misuse of religion is mirrored in real-life by whore-mongers like the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart...and crooks like the Reverend Jim Bakker...both of whom used their television ministries to score chicks and live lavish lives, all while condemning so-called sinners.
But at least these tricksters didn't use their pulpits to accumulate political power and openly campaign against people whose life styles they condemned in public while emulating in private...like the Reverend Ted Haggard did, before he admitted to 'sexual immorality' after allegations about sex with a gay prostitute and crystal meth use.
Racist Violence
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 03, 2006
Violence by skinhead gangs is on the rise again. This alarming surge reverses a downward trend that began with a law enforcement crackdown on the gangs whose violence reached its peak in this country back in 1988. That's when I met up with them. The confrontation started with a question from the audience on my old daytime talk show exactly eighteen years ago, November 3, 1988.It ended with what became the most famous brawl in television history.
A woman from the audience asks white supremacist John Metzger why he can't just live and let live? He responds by calling one panelist a "kike", and another, civil rights leader Roy Ennis an "Uncle Tom". Ennis walks over to Metzger, who shoves him. Ennis responds by getting Metzger in a chokehold.
Negative Politics
by Geraldo Rivera | Nov 02, 2006
Next Tuesday's election day, so by Wednesday our televisions will finally be free of the vicious attack ads that have polluted the airwaves since the campaign season began. Maybe its because the race is so close. But seldom if ever has politics been as low down and dirty as this time around.Here's how ex-president Clinton summarized the GOP attack ads.
"If you elect the Democrats they'll tax you into the poor house, and on the way, you'll meet a terrorist on every corner, and when you try to run away, you'll stumble over an illegal immigrant."
Sailing Book
by Geraldo Rivera | Mar 30, 2005
Sailing came into my life relatively late, in my 20's. Coming literally from the wrong side of the tracks, a post-war, working-class development north of the L.I.R.R. tracks in West Babylon, the feeling growing up was that sailing was reserved for the privileged kids from towns like Babylon on the Island's South Shore. Like the tastes of champagne and caviar, I wondered what sailing would be like, envious of the dashing preppies with sun-tanned grace, blonde sisters and waterfront homes.
A Personal Crossroads
by Geraldo Rivera | Aug 13, 2004
An friend recently asked me for a couple of thousand words on a key crossroad in my life for a book he is compiling of similar stories from other well-known people. Here it is.
