to give you clemency, right? the first time that i applied for clemency, i was denied in 2011. i applied again, i was denied in 2013. and then the clemency initiative came, the clemency project 2014. there was a list of criteria. i knew that not only did i meet that criteria, but i exceeded that criteria. so hope is around everywhere like electricity. my family, my sisters go to white house, they do a candlelight vigil with my big petition with all of these suggests, and they re praying signatures, and they re praying. i m selected to be one of the six prisoners in an ad campaign for smart justice. from the aclu s smart justice campaign. so my face was already getting media attention. and at the end, i had 270,000
these are terrible people, and we have to get tough on those people because we can have all the blue ribbon committees we want. but if we don t get tough on the drug dealers, we re wasting our time. just remember that. we re wasting our time. and that toughness includes the death penalty. what do you think of that, angela? plain and simple, it s cruel and unusual punishment. donald trump is completely out of line like so often. he s completely out of line on this. he s also completely misled on where things are, where the discourse is in criminal justice discussions and on criminal justice reform. everyone knows at this point that folks are pulling away from the death penalty. and when we re talking about coming out of the obama administration where there was a clemency initiative at the department of justice to help get folks out of jail who had non-violent drug offenses, for
clemency initiative at the department of justice to help get folks out of jail who had non-violent drug offenses, for him to come and say that it is time for us to give drug dealers the death penalty is outrageous. it s also a huge distraction. what is he going to do about these doctor who s are prescribing opioids and have not suffered any punishment and were getting paid by pharmaceutical companies to do so? there are a number of people in my community as well as others who have suffered at the hand of drug overdose, et cetera, but i don t think any of us are calling for the death penalty for people who have been involved in drug dealing. the president also laid some of the blame for the opioid epidemic on sanctuary cities calling them safe havens for terrible people. is that a fair statement? look, i m against sanctuary cities, and i think that they need to abide by the federal law and enforce the law. having said that, i don t think it has much to do with the opioid crisis, whi
national tv, because why? well, because, you know people ask me, what do i think about trump and him carrying on president obama s clemency initiative. and i jokingly used to tell them, if trump had the authority, he would probably put me back in prison and everybody else that president barack ob a obama, because it seems like he s reversing everything to try to make it seem like barack obama was never president. and i m part of obama s legacy. and i feel that i mean, he has shown the kind of target na [ inaudible ] in our country through twitter and other media outlets. and i fear that if i say the wrong thing about not the best connection. let me cross my fingers. i want to hear more from you, jason, but the connection is not awesome. so laura, let me pivot back to you and say, have we heard any reaction from the former ag, eric holder, knowing his policies are being reversed?
he has made clemency and communetations a priority. he wants to bring it in line with more laws now. as we saw on the graph, he has given commutations more than 11 of the past presidents combined. the total is 1,176. wolf, with only a few weeks left in office, there are still 13,000 pending petitions for commutations. we know that we expect more commutation announcements before the term, but there is really this sense of urgency among sentence reform advocates that president obama won t be able to get through all of these and trump s administration will not carry on the clemency initiative. i suspect that s absolutely correct. pamela, thank you. jeffrey, thank you to you as well. coming up, donald trump says he knows things that other people don t know about hacking. u.s. officials say digital fingerprints give them growing