This is a rush transcript from "The Five" June 9, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Welcome to THE FIVE. You are looking live as the funeral procession for George Floyd is underway in Houston, Texas. And that is the city where he grew up. Taking him to his final resting place at the Houston Memorial Gardens Cemetery, it was an emotional day for family and friends, as around 500 mourners gathered to pay their respects.
We have all of THE FIVE standing by for our thoughts today. But let's first go to Alicia Acuna who can give us an update on the memorial today, Alicia?
ALICIA ACUNA, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Dana. The more than four and a half hour service concluded within the last half-hour. And as you mentioned now, folks are starting to make their way in the procession, the 12-mile procession to the cemetery today. George Floyd was remembered not only as the man whose death launched a movement but a human being who left behind family and friends.
The Fountain of Praise Church filled with 500 people. The number of people limited due to Coronavirus. The 46-year-old black man who lost his life under the knee of a now former Minneapolis police officer was honored for the work he did in Houston's third ward housing projects with troubled youth, and as a loving and fun uncle and a good friend, and man who died in a moment of great injustice.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They rejected him for jobs. They rejected him for positions. They rejected him to play certain teams. God took the rejected stone and made him the cornerstone of a movement that's going to change the whole wide world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACUNA: Dana, his casket is now being taken to the Houston Memorial Gardens for what will be a very private ceremony. He will be laid to rest next to the burial site of his mother, Dana?
PERINO: Alicia, thank you. And sources now telling Fox News that President Trump will soon have a list of potential reforms guarding policing that could be implemented. John Roberts is at the White House with more on that, John?
JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Dana, good afternoon to you, as we watched the hearse and the funeral procession there in Houston here in Washington, D.C. And Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, Jared Kushner and Jeron Smith, who is the president's domestic policy advisor, just returning from Capitol Hill back here to the White House where they met with South Carolina Senator Tim Scott about potential policing reforms that could be implemented in the wake of the terrible tragedy with George Floyd.
This would be, I'm told, a combination of legislative and executive actions. Senator Tim Scott is running point there in the Senate in terms of what might happen up on Capitol Hill. And here at the White House, the executive action will be taken in conjunction with the Department of Justice to see what could be tweaked in terms of police reform without going through the legislative process.
Mark Meadows stopped to talk on the way out. He said Senator Scott gave us some really good input. We're hoping to move forward in a meaningful way. Priorities for the White House, Mark Meadows had, were letting the stakeholders make the priorities. And hopefully -- hopeful we can be responsive with real legislation or action. We want to let our actions speak louder than words.
The president has, in the last couple of weeks, been criticized for not coming out and addressing the nation on this issue. But the president prefers to let actions speak more than words. And what he's been doing is for the last couple weeks, he's been putting his efforts into policies that could potentially go into to place to prevent something like the George Floyd tragedy from happening in the future.
Now, what the president wants to do here is seek a balance. I'm told that there could be some crossover with some of the Democratic proposals that we saw floated from the House yesterday. Though I'm told that the crossover probably would not be too broad, but what the president really is seeking here is to be able to protect communities while at the same time not tying the hands of police. So he is going to work together with federal officials.
He's going to work together with mayors, community leaders, as well as law enforcement. And we saw the roundtable yesterday with law enforcement leaders, including the National Police Union to try to come up with some ideas that everybody can be comfortable with that still allow police to be on the streets. And the numbers that the president believes they need to be in.
But at the same time, make sure that the community is protected from potential bad apples in the police department and that there's a greater engagement between police forces and the community. The president said yesterday that one of the things that really has to happen here is police departments need to rebuild trust or build trust if they don't have it now with the communities that they serve to make sure that people can live together to a greater degree of harmony than they clearly are now.
As you see, the people lining the streets there in Houston as the hearse makes its way to the burial plot where George Floyd will be buried beside his mother. So a lot happening here in Washington. Dana, we don't know how quickly it's going to happen. There has been some suggestion that maybe we will get the ideas later on this week. It may not be until next week. We'll see.
PERINO: John, thank you so much. Let me now bring in Jesse Watters, Juan Williams, Brian Kilmeade, and Dagen McDowell, as we continue to see there on your screen the funeral procession of George Floyd as he goes to his final resting place. It will be next to his mother, the woman he cried out for in his final moments.
Juan Williams, if I could start with you, reflections on today or on what we just heard about news from Washington about some possible bipartisan agreement about some potential police reforms.
JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Thanks, Dana. So I think it's been a very emotional day for the family. And it was really the family that spoke about George Floyd at the funeral in such personal ways, to talk about a poor kid who grew up in the projects in the third ward in Houston. The kid, who, you know, was so big, known as Big George or Perry.
And, you know, started Jack Yates High School in Houston. That's a very human picture far away from all the news and noise and all the protests. What we see is a human being. And I think it was -- it's so appropriate that we focus on the fact that there's a man there who lost his life in an unfortunate manner. In response to your question about all that's going on, I think, you know, there's so much arguing sometimes about this slogan, de- fund the police.
And I think you see, as John Roberts just reported, that this idea of reforming the police has tremendous power and is very popular, even extending to the White House now in terms of what steps can be taken in order to make the policing more effective and prevent acts of brutality. So I think that we are in a moment where we can start to see that maybe this is something that's much larger that, you know, as they said at the funeral.
George Floyd was known to almost no one outside the family and friends before now. But he has started a movement and his name will be remembered.
PERINO: Dagen McDowell, maybe talk a little bit about that family. And of course, they shared their grief with all of us today. And I know that you are no stranger to grief. I mean, people are -- life is hard and we lose loved ones. This one playing out on the world stage and the family coming to the podium today to really talk about him and how they loved on him and be willing to cry in front of all of us.
DAGEN MCDOWELL, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: When you lose a family member in such a violent way, it's like any other -- it's unlike any loss anyone could experience. But funerals are about healing. It's not just to remember the life of the person who passed. It is about showing up and starting the healing process, particularly for the family. You show up. You go. You pray for them.
You offer your unwavering support, this day and in the days and weeks and months to come. But this is not just about beginning the journey of healing for George Floyd's family. It is also about healing for our nation and really around the world. I am sure millions of people watched this funeral today, and it is about remembering. There's a higher power guiding us and saving us.
And hopefully, remembering this day and watching that funeral. I watched every minute of it. We are a different nation tomorrow and next week and next month. And we will do what's right in George Floyd's name. We will do what is right for one another.
PERINO: Jesse Watters, let's get some of your thoughts today.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Well, it's a good reminder that the last two weeks have really been about George Floyd. As Juan said, it's not about cliches or empty slogans. It's about justice for Floyd and what can we do for that. How do we end racism? It really has to do with people's hearts, not what they chant or how they light something on fire and how we attack each other on television.
It's really about your heart. And what do people want in this country? They want to be treated fairly and equally under the law, no matter what their skin color, no matter what car they drive, what they look like, where they have been born, what political party that they're from, what religion they are. But they just want to be treated equally. And if we can start there, that's a very good start.
The other thing is people want respect. The police want respect. They don't want to be cursed at. They don't want to be hit. They don't want people running away. They don't want people resisting. But the subjects themselves who are being pulled over, they really want respect, too. And when you come in and you're a police officer into a high crime area, whether it's white or black.
A lot of the times when you pull people out of the car, you detain them in handcuffs. You don't make an arrest. You just detain them in handcuffs. Maybe you even make them lay down on the ground. They do that with white people. They do that with black people. Police officers do that to protect themselves because they don't know what's in the car, if someone has a weapon, who this person is.
They do that for their own safety, for everybody's safety. But it's easy to see how, if you're at an African-American person in this country, and if you live in a high crime area and you are innocent and you haven't done anything wrong and you are constantly being pulled over and told to get in the handcuffs. You're just being detained. And lay down on your stomach.
After a while, that's going to build up. So the police officers, they need to use some sort of de-escalation tactics without putting themselves in danger because they are scared, too. These are really tough areas sometimes. And they are in these tough areas because they love these areas. They want to help people. They don't want to hurt people.
The police officers in this country have saved so many more black lives than they have taken. And I think it's just important to what we talked about yesterday, this idea of community policing, getting to know people, getting to know the community, and trusting and rebuilding that trust. And that could go a long way before we get the idea of, you know, bigger internal affairs departments.
Or better use of tasers or mandatory body cameras, things like that -- that can happen later. But I think first we just need to respect one another and treat each other equally.
PERINO: Beautifully said. Brian Kilmeade, obviously, you're a person that's written about history in America, has dealt with this issue of racism over and over again. And a lot of people at the funeral today said they do believe that there will be change after the murder of George Floyd. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts and reflections on that today.
BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I have a lot a lot. And I'm just going to try to stay focused. Number one, this is the conversation I thought we were going to have two weeks ago. But the protests became riots and the violence became overwhelming. And the police became the story. And law and order became the issue because they just overwhelmed, which was the loss of a life that I think 96 percent of the country thought was egregious, horrific.
And there needs to be justice for that police officer who's now sitting in prison probably for the rest of his life, and a million-dollar bail. And the three others, we can litigate it. Let's see what happens. But this should've been the focus. And as I watched Al Sharpton speak, he's talking about slavery 250 years ago. And he's named after a slave master.
And he goes to one grave and they're not even his family. He's not even buried there. Those are white people that -- the black people will bury at a different direction. And you talk about history, the project I'm working on over the next two years. Looking at Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and I'll tell you.
When you -- as much as prideful as I am of America, I am so horrified about the firsthand accounts of what it was like being black in America and a slave in America. It's everything as bad as you've been reading and seeing in the movies. When you get the account from people who lived in the 1800s, the people who were slaves like Frederick Douglass, escaped to and then fought hard with Lincoln to do the best we can to make our country better.
You see how far we've come. But you see the scars are still there. And we are going to go back to wondering for people that aren't racist, like everyone that I met at Fox and everyone on this panel right now. I want to know what we can do to get past this. Because every time something goes wrong, we want to blame the cops or we want to blame whoever is in the middle of this.
I am wondering, as a country, how do we move past it and let people know who are watching, no matter your color, no matter your ethnic background, that we agree with you, that we think you're all equal. We will do our best to let you know that we feel that way. And there is a minority of people who feel as though they are better than you because of the color of their skin and their ethnic or religious background. But that's not the majority in this country.
PERINO: Brian Kilmeade, thank you, everybody, thank you. We have a lot more to come. You're watching the funeral procession of George Floyd. It will continue, and we will be right back on THE FIVE.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: Welcome back. You are looking live at the funeral procession of George Floyd in Houston, Texas, a very emotional day for his family and his friends, Floyd's death igniting a nationwide debate over police reform. President Trump set to unveil a series of proposals as soon as this week. While many of the Democratic Party pushed back against calls to de-fund the police, the movement facing blowback across the political spectrum.
Top Democrats trying to distance themselves from it, including presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't support de-funding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness, and in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: But some leaders like the Minneapolis City Council president continue to call for dismantling the police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the idea of having a police-free future is very aspirational. The commitment (ph) is clearly a long-term commitment. Our police department has been in place for 150 years. We cannot take 150 years to solve this problem. But we absolutely will need to build up those systems of public safety as the highest priority, as the very first priority, along with getting more accountability in our police department today.
WATTERS: All right. Dana, what kind of political position does this put Democrats in, who were, you know, I think nationally trying to distance themselves from the de-fund the police movement. But you have a very, very vocal minority of people on the fringes that are screaming pretty loudly about this and are not backing down.
PERINO: It's very interesting. So Speaker Pelosi, when she was asked about it yesterday when they introduced the Democrats ideas for reform on policing. She was asked about it. And she said, well, that's a local matter. But that's -- it's -- that's -- it's not just a local matter. I mean, they basically -- they painted it on the street of Washington, D.C.
And they are having to answer these questions for a reason. They obviously would prefer that they didn't have to deal with the fringe coming up with this idea to de-fund the police. But you're actually having conversations now. I heard a couple of podcasts today where I -- because I wanted to understand. What do they -- do they really mean that there would be no police? And this idea for example, that you would have a social worker respond without any protection to a domestic violence call.
I can see that you wouldn't want to escalate things, but what if the domestic violence call is in fact violent and you have to protect the police officer or the person that is being victimized? I mean, a lot of this -- it doesn't make sense. You pull on the thread and it's not there. I do think that there will be some progressives who will get frustrated with the Democratic establishment and the prospective nominee, Joe Biden, for not taking them seriously.
They are going to try to water down, as we said yesterday that they don't really mean to de-fund the police. Like, some of them actually do. But I think in the long run, the police departments are not going to be de- funded. They might be reformed. But I think cooler heads will prevail in the end.
WATTERS: Yeah. I would agree with that. Kilmeade, do you think that Joe Biden risks being pulled really far to the left, because he really does have to cater to this de-fund the police movement. And he's having some having some trouble kind of articulating exactly what that means. Could he get bogged down in something like this?
KILMEADE: Jesse, there's no question about it, or should I say Watters. There's no question about it, because we see people going way to the left. And everybody else is not going to way to the left, tried to bow out of it artfully like Nancy Pelosi. But the one thing Joe Biden has, and even the Washington Post pointed out today, is he has got a past.
And in this past, he's tough on crime. And he's not really worried about people's economic circumstances or the situation with the color of people's skin. He came out with that crime bill. He was behind it. He campaigned on it. He was proud of it. And he was running on it until he got the nomination now. And he suddenly says to himself I hope nobody has Google to see where I stood on this for the last 40 years until recently.
So I think he's got a huge issue. The other problem I have is Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles, have already made moves to de-fund the police. So you're not happy with their performance. So let them perform with less, less people, less equipment, less financing, worse uniforms, maybe worse guns. So let's take a look at these cities.
New York City, shootings have increased 18 percent, burglaries 31 percent, carjacking 64 percent, good to know carjackings back, Minneapolis, carjackings up 45 percent, homicides up 60 percent, burglaries up 28 percent. And we know what goes on in Los Angeles where the police union came out and said are you kidding me? We got 10,000 policemen here.
We are overwhelmed. And now, you're cutting our budget and calling us killers. So thanks a lot. There is a reality and there's rhetoric. The reality is there's not going to be a person in this country who is going to want to be a cop after a while. There's not a lot of glory in it these days.
WATTERS: That's right. And as you can see there, the funeral procession is exiting off of the highway. And we're going to stay close on that and keep you posted on what happens as George Floyd is going to be laid to rest in a little while. Juan Williams, just picking up on what Kilmeade just mentioned. Does bother you at all that some of these things came out of this legitimate movement that are so silly?
You know, I looked at some of the fine print with the de-fund the police. They are talking about decriminalizing prostitution, you know, sending a therapist to a crime scene, really, really ridiculous things. Does that take away from this movement, in your opinion, when you add that to all the looting and the violence that took place?
WILLIAMS: I think that's a distortion of this moment. I mean, you know, to my mind, if we are on THE FIVE were discussing left-wing Democratic politics, I think we would say Bernie Sanders could personify that. And what did Bernie Sanders say today? He is not at all engaged with de-fund the police. He thinks that's not a good idea. He said a non-starter.
And what Bernie Sanders is saying is we have to find more effective ways of defining what we mean by policing. That is Bernie Sanders' far left Democratic politics. You are hearing much the same from Joe Biden, from Nancy Pelosi, from the mayor of Minneapolis. You know, everybody is saying we have to respond to the George Floyd situation. But it's not about saying, oh, there's not going to be any police.
Instead, people are thinking about, well, how do you do this more effectively, because if someone has a mental health issue, sending someone with a gun might not be the best way to deal with it. It maybe the case that that person becomes violence, at which point you do want to send a police officer, but again, is it the case that we want to strengthen something like mental health services or for drug addicts, they want to strengthen drug treatment programs.
This is a kind of more sophisticated way and not putting police on what is really -- should not be police work in the country. So I think that there's -- it's important to understand that even as you can, you know, sort of caricature de-fund the police and make it an argument. It's a distortion from the reality of the kind of conversation.
Even the kind of legislation that we are seeing on Capitol Hill where they are talking about no chokeholds, not allowing people -- not allowing the police just to no knock just rush in your house. And in the case of Breonna Taylor, kill her. Or, you know, increase data on use of excessive force by police so we that can properly, as a society, track what's going on and not allow the police to be belittled or charged with things that are not fair.
This is all part of making us better. And I don't think that it's fair to just say it's all about some loons on the left. As I said, even the people we would identify as the far left are not embracing this.
WATTERS: Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to reconcile, because, you know, this is the fine print from the Black Lives Matter movement. This is what the city council from Minneapolis is saying they want. This was ground zero. So I'm not distorting it. I think we're just reporting what's kind of bubbled up from this movement. And what has bubbled up, as you say correctly, is very, very fringe.
Dagen, you know, we talk a lot about Joe Biden. And we talked a lot about Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi. The president obviously has to release some reforms pretty soon within the next couple days. How do you think he's handled the last week or so?
MCDOWELL: At some point, the American people need to hear from President Trump in a carefully-worded message of -- to use a word I used when we started the show, of healing here. But also, what are you going to do in terms of police reforms? Juan mentioned mental health. Congressman Will Hurd wrote an editorial a few days ago in The Wall Street Journal and pointed out that 10 percent of police calls and more than one quarter of fatal police shootings involved person with a mental illness.
Yet, most states only require officers to undergo less than eight hours of training in handling these situations. But very often, when money is funnelled into mental health services like here in New York City with ThriveNYC, which is run by the mayor's wife, she and the mayor spent $1 billion on that mental health initiative and couldn't even account for the number of people it helped or even how they helped them. So again, that's what happens when people start talking about we're going to take money from police departments and move it into social services.
New York already tried that experiment. And the murder rate 30 years ago was more than six times higher than it is right now. It was only the addition of 6,000 police officers by Mayor David Dinkins at the time, and then the introduction of rigorous policing and responsibility and accountability through CompStat.
But locally, what is very dangerous and it's happening in New York that's going on is the dangerous fallacy that crimes are victimless. That's the message that was sent by the bail reform here in New York. If you go down the list of crimes where people are arrested and don't have to put up any bail, it's changed slightly, they've tried to tweak it.
But if you go down the list of crimes, try aggravated assault of a child under the age of 11. You don't have to put up bail. And then you also have in San Francisco, the new D.A. there eliminating cash bail and stop prosecuting what they call victimless crimes. Guess what, every crime has a victim.
If you get punched in the face in New York City and sent to the emergency room, there's no bail for that perp. There's no bail for that criminal. If a store gets robbed. There's no bail for that criminal. That's got to change and that's where the danger lies. It is in how local authorities the most progressive of the left are handling crime in this nation.
WATTERS: Yes, I would agree with that. We're monitoring the funeral procession of George Floyd. Stay with THE FIVE.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KILMEADE: All right, you're looking live at the funeral procession of George Floyd in Houston, Texas. It was a long moving processional today. President Trump preparing though as well to unveil a series of police reforms in the wake of Floyd's death. The whole world watched. All the networks carried, especially us.
The President working with both Congress and the DOJ to come up with a set of proposals that will prioritize protection for communities without tying the hands of police. It's talking about making something bigger than just this funeral, something to change the country. Senator Kamala Harris pushing back on calls from the left defund the police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST, ABC NEWS: You saw what President Trump said yesterday slamming Democrats saying radical left. Democrats are behind defunding the police. How do you respond to that?
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA): Well, it's just it's creating fear where none is necessary. We have to stop militarization of police. But that doesn't mean we get rid of the police. Of course not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KILMEADE: And that was Kamala Harris earlier. And that's what's going to be happening after we'll be debating this. But right now, we're seeing the casket of George Floyd being taken from the hearse into the horse-drawn carriage, to the final resting place, which will be right by his mom.
This where he grew up. He went to Minneapolis. He actually went to college -- sports scholarship. After two years, came back and has settled over in Minneapolis where this whole incident had taken place. A fine athlete in his day. And now people were talking about his life all day and what his life meant, what it's meant to his family.
Now, I'll tell you, under any circumstances, as we see the casket being pushed in, this is extraordinary circumstance. Under any circumstance, to go through the funeral of a loved one is trying. And it is a great tribute to that person's life when you have a long funeral, when you have a long procession, and when you have multiple memorial services, but is also emotionally taxing.
I mean, how many times you got to recount, how many times you get to recalibrate, how many times you get to look back at George's life, what he meant to you, what he meant to others, and also in the bigger picture, now what he's meant to the country. I mean, you have people from other countries in front of U.S. embassies and in front of their own cities demanding reforms in their own countries, citing what's happened in this country because of the way George lost his life.
And we're also as I just mentioned before, as a just segue to, we were -- we're talking about law enforcement, the changes that could be made, the things that we could learn from. And in extreme circumstances, you have a movement in Minneapolis, and movement in New York City, and movement in Los Angeles.
As one mentioned earlier, maybe it's fringe but it's actually happening in three major cities to cut back on police funding and put it into different programs. As you see, a final salute to George Floyd himself. And as he's going to be brought to his final resting place.
So Dana, as we -- as we look at this happening taking place, the whole world is watching. The whole world's watching. This is not just an American story anymore.
PERINO: So, you know, through history that you -- there are -- there are times when an event that seems maybe not that significant at the time then actually becomes a moment that fuels change, so Rosa Parks comes to mind. You know, her decision that day to not go to the back of the bus, then is the story throughout history that is representative of something.
And what I heard today from the family members and others at the funeral was that they truly believe that George Floyd's name will be remembered because they do believe that there will be change. And what we heard at the top of this show is that Senator Tim Scott has been tapped by Senator Mitch McConnell to help the Republicans move forward to find some bipartisan agreement on some police reforms.
And in a quick conversation with some Republicans on the Hill, they do believe that this is actually possible. So I mean, obviously, partisan politics in the middle of an election year can sometimes upend those things. But I feel like when people are all suggesting that they do believe that this is a moment, a time where something could change, that we'll look back on this, hopefully, and recognize it as one of those times.
And if I could just say one other thing about -- as we watch this funeral procession. George Floyd, as we've mentioned, is going to be laid to rest next to his mother. I spent a little bit of time yesterday listening to some interviews of people who had come from many states away to be there for the public part of this memorial. And over and over again, they said that they were so moved by the fact that George Floyd called out for his mother in the last moments of his life. And there are mothers who said it really spoke to me, sons who said that meant so much to me, fathers who said they could understand it.
And I also think, Brian, that one of the reasons you see this from around the world is that mothers and our reverence for mamas is an international universal feeling. And so, I think that feels very poignant right now that in this horse-drawn carriage that he will go where he wanted to be, which is next to his mom.
KILMEADE: And Juan, his mom just passed away a couple of years ago. The brother said, you know, we would just get over my mom passing away and now this strikes the family, and the family unit often sustains people during this time. And in, in the African American community, they are looking on in this right now and they're reaching almost into one family.
Well, I was encouraged by what Dana actually started her remarks about is that there is -- there's not a sense of I'm going to go to my corner and I think this, and I'm going to go to my corner and I'm going to think this way. I think there's an opportunity for some common ground here.
And even though the Democrats started writing legislation on their own without dealing in Republicans, if there is some common ground, do you believe this far out of election, we are months away, there could be something done towards criminal justice reform or policing reform?
WILLIAMS: Brian, I, you know, I was just taken, you know, emotion about what Dana said about mothers. I just thought she was on the money. So, I just wanted to say that I think that it is so universal and so significant in terms of how people speak about George Floyd's death.
I mean, obviously, people say, you know, they're reminded -- remember Eric Garner and I can't breathe. But in this one, I hear from so many people about that mother themes. I just wanted to underline that.
And the other aspect of this in terms of what you're saying, Brian is, there's more of a national consensus than I've ever seen. And I think it's reflected in the polling. There was polling from ABC News earlier this week that said, close to 60 percent of Americans. So that's Americans who are liberal, and conservative, black, white, Asian, Latino, say that the police are more likely to use excessive force when dealing with black men, or black people in general, but black men I think, is what we're really talking about.
And they object to this. They think it's time to change this. And you hear this of course, in stories from people like Senator Scott, the only black person who is a U.S. Republican senator. But do you even hear it from his colleague, Lindsey Graham, the other South Carolina senator, who says we've got a problem.
You hear it from Mitch McConnell. And a lot of people think Mitch McConnell never says anything about racial issues in our country. Mitch McConnell said, you know what? We've got to look at this. We've got a problem here.
So to me, I do you think that there's the opportunity when you have such widely held consensus. The issue would be, does it hold? You mentioned we got an election coming. Partisan politics is going to start throwing mud balls. It already has. But I'm hopeful. I choose to be optimistic because I think that the American people having witnessed this and justice are truly moved and truly have some emotional feelings and want to do better. We want our better self to be reflected including in the actions of our police department.
KILMEADE: Yes, so hopeful, Juan. I like that. So let's go over to Jesse. Jesse, you talked about a hopeful moment too. I also think they did in the big picture if we're looking holistically, I love law enforcement to be at the table because they have no interest in being the villains in this.
Oftentimes, if you -- I remember the Baltimore situation in particular, with Freddie Gray, they talked about how few families were in nuclear families there are in Baltimore, the father and the mother. Is there any way to get back to rebuilding the family, the family in America again, and start instilling some of those values, so law enforcement doesn't end up being one of the parents?
WATTERS: I think that should be a goal for all communities across this country. And we saw what happened with some of the violence in the second term of the Obama administration. You had the Ferguson effect where after these very, very hot racial shootings, the police pulled back, because they didn't want to be put into a position where they were second-guessed. And in an attempt to save a life were then vilified for policing too aggressively. And crime rates skyrocket all across the major cities in this country, including homicides, and no one wants that. Black people don't want it. White People don't want it. Hispanics don't want it. The police don't want it. Nobody wants that.
So to Juan's point, we are at a consensus. And that's a good thing. And that I think it speaks to the fact that we've come so far as a country from the founding to the Civil War, all the bloodshed there, to the Civil Rights Movement, to the I Have a Dream speech, to Barack Obama being elected President of the United States. We've gotten to this moment now, where there's a horrific, unjust murder of a black man in handcuffs on the ground and the country is so outraged by it.
Then it just says that this country is not as bad as people paint it to be. I mean, if you put -- if you put black and white people at a baseball game, at a football game, at a bar or restaurant, in the train station, no one has a problem with each other. We all like each other. It's just that when we get into our corners when something like this happens, and we don't know each other, we don't see each other, we don't talk to each other. You know, everyone's on pins and needles now, because they're afraid to say the wrong thing.
And now silence means you're complicit in violence. So, people don't know what to do. People feel helpless. So, I just think we need to talk to each other and recognize the fact that we're all in this together as an American people.
KILMEADE: Dagen, it's tough to follow that up, those pretty comprehensive look of where we're at right now. That's my hope is that we have these constructive conversations where it's not well, blame this community, blame the -- blame the police officers, blame this party, blame this president, blame the past president.
The minute that happens, people just go and they just say, OK, I am not going to say anything. I'm just going to believe what I believe. Do you think this might be different?
MCDOWELL: Let's hope it's different. But ultimately it comes down to your, your local community. It's the relationships that individuals have in a town or a city with one another, in their church, with the police department. We were all talking about kind of the community relationship among between police and the people who live in these towns. That's what it's ultimately going to come down to.
And then the states, it's the state's duty under the Constitution, the right to protect the residents and citizens but also the duty to protect the right the residents and the citizens. That's where -- that's where -- and if you listen to the Democrats and the and the Republicans on this who are in leadership, they're really on the same page just as a nation was horrified at the murder of George Floyd. We're on the same page at how to prevent more of these tragedies from happening in the future.
KILMEADE: Absolutely, Dagen. Thanks. And by the way, Tim Scott just wrote me back. I asked him more about the bill he's working on. He says he's got grant hours and more reporting as well as training around de-escalation. Also, better record keeping locally to see officers' records making more public, funding for body cameras and duty to intervene grants.
So, I think this a lot of this stuff overlaps with what I've already read Democrats are working on. Keep your fingers crossed as we continue to watch this emotional procession. More George Floyd's funeral procession coming up. Stay with THE FIVE.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WILLIAMS: We're continuing to monitor the funeral procession of George Floyd in Houston, Texas. As you can see, his body now being taken by a team of horses to his final resting place. Meanwhile, in other big news, even more confusion about how the coronavirus spreads. The World Health Organization is doing a 180 after making this stunning claim yesterday about transmitting the virus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARIA VAN KERKHOVE, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, WHO: We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They're following asymptomatic cases, they're following contacts, and they're not finding secondary transmission onwards. It's very rare.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: The WHO now forced to walk back those comments this morning. They're saying now that as many as 41 percent of the population could have the virus without displaying any symptoms.
Dagen, I got to tell you, this is like what am I to think? So Dagen, is it that they just don't know that this is evolving that this is science? What do you what do you make of this?
MCDOWELL: I don't know, Juan. I don't speak or read idiocy. So, this is why we're defunding the World Health Organization. This is not -- the WHO has done this repeatedly. Just in April, the WHO said antibodies had not been shown to provide any immunity to the coronavirus, to COVID-19. 12 hours later it had to reverse itself.
And then this this is my favorite gem from the who Joe that helped unleash this deadly virus on the U.S. and the world. Preliminary investigations conducted by Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human to human transmission of the novel coronavirus identified in Wuhan, China, January 14, A week later reversed course.
By the way, that's about the time my friend who lives here in New York City contracted it. This organization is literally deadly.
WILLIAMS: So Brian, you know, we're all humans. We're all worried about the virus. This erodes trust, at least that's the way I'm thinking. What do you think?
KILMEADE: Juan, there's so many things, it's hard to keep it clear between the mass issue, between it's not going to spread human to human, between oh my goodness, if it gets on any countertop or chair, don't touch it or else you're going to -- you're going to get the virus, then all of a sudden it's very rare to be able to pick up this virus by a countertop or touching anything.
Really? Which one is it? Don't wear a mask, or wear a mask, everywhere we're not going to serve you. Really, OK. Now asymptomatic, you really can't get it from someone asymptomatic. Hours later, they walk it back. But the walk back makes no sense.
And this is it. I'm OK with doctors and scientists being wrong. I am not OK with destroying people's livelihoods because we're counting on them to be right. And we gave you 15 days, you ask for 30, then 45 days. We're in day 100. And a restaurant can't open in most -- in most states in this huge city called New York City and Los Angeles.
You can't go to a gym. You can buy liquor but you can't buy a postcard. This is -- you can go to the post office and go to a supermarket but you can't buy cleats. Who made up these rules? We're going to look back and say how did the American people become such sheep because they continue to make us feel like idiots because we listened to them and gave them credit?
And I just think about all those small businesses that are never coming back, that you pour yourself in for 100 hours a week to make a restaurant work, and then it's destroyed because some guy in a -- with a stethoscope says you better shut it down or everyone's going to die. And it turns out, it's just not the case.
WILLIAMS: Well, I mean, I can't -- I can't agree with that because I think we've got a hundred, you know, thousand people dead so something's going on. But, you know, Jesse, to me, Dr. Fauci, in an interview that aired today said, this is not even over. He said, we're just getting through the beginning, that there's more to come.
Again, I am a little bit -- I hope the audience has a clearer view than I do, but I trust Fauci, but here he is saying, we're not even at the beginning -- we're just at the beginning, I should say.
WATTERS: Well, maybe the audience usually has a more clear -- no, I'm not going to say it, Juan. The WHO should be really named the WTF --
WILLIAMS: I gave you a clear shot.
WATTERS: I mean, WTF, WHO. Like they got it wrong on China, transmission, hydroxychloroquine, the antibodies, pretty much everything. But the left wants to fund the WHO and they want to defund the police. You see how it works? And if you think about it, the WHO has probably been more deadly in 2020 than the police in the United States, so go figure.
I think what we need to do because this is such a political organization, we need to make a new international health organization and appoint Dr. Siegel to be the president of it. That's when we can get through the woods. And then Brian can --
WILLIAMS: Dana, again -- is that right from Dr. Siegel? Dana, when I looked at the numbers before the show, it said that since the start of June, there have actually been an increase in the rates of infection in 14 states and Puerto Rico. As I was saying earlier, 109,000 people have died, 1.9 million reported cases of people contracting the virus.
So if that's the case, and we have these conflicting indicators from the scientists, where are you? What are you thinking?
PERINO: I feel like there has just been an absolute collapse of the ability for our major institutions especially in public health to communicate clearly to the public. I feel that if they don't know the answers to some things that that would be more understandable than having all of these flip flops. It's like John Kerry in the 2004 election. I can't keep my head straight on.
My mom went to the grocery store for the first time in four months today because she finally had the confidence. Colorado is opening. She's able to be able to go. They have to do a better job because Americans will not stand for this again.
WILLIAMS: Dana, thank you. Thank you for being with us. SPECIAL REPORT, it's up next.
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