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TRANSCRIPT

WEIS: Hello everyone, I’m your host and co-producer Allison Weis and welcome to The Daily Orange’s opinion podcast You Op To Know. Tonight we have Conservative columnist Joey Pucciarelli to discuss his column “Kavanaugh is innocent until proven guilty”. Welcome Joey!

PUCCIARELLI: How are you doing?

WEIS: Great! So how did you get involved in the Daily Orange, and why did you want to write the Conservative column?

PUCCIARELLI: So I originally was a newspaper and online journalism major, and I got involved with the DO writing hard news stories on campus. As I transitioned outside of journalism and got involved with PR, I still wanted to be involved with the DO. Im really passionate about politics. I kind of landed in the conservative column. I feel like the conservative viewpoint is kind of underrepresented in the college campus so I felt like it was my duty to step up and let that viewpoint be shared with our college community.

WEIS: Why did you choose to write this column specifically?

PUCCIARELLI: I mean it was something that I saw floating in the news everyone was talking about it. It was highly debated I knew it was going to be a hot topic. I saw Gillibrand and Schumer were involved. New York Constituents ought to know what their senators are doing. It was time for some of their hypocrisies to be held accountable and I wanted to share that.

WEIS: Is it about “not believing women” or is it about a man who is innocent until proven guilty?

PUCCIARELLI: I think obviously it’s a little bit of both. Dr. Ford delivered an amazing testimony. I don’t want to be in the place to ever discount her story and what she has been through, however we are in a country where you’re innocent until proven guilty. Looking at the facts it’s clear that it’s unverifiable, there’s no corroborating evidence there are things that don’t match up. A lot of people want to overlook the facts, and that’s not okay. Especially for someone who has lived such a righteous life for so long who’s had 6 FBI investigations and no red flag has come up, he just had another FBI investigation. There so many things going for Kavanaugh that are quickly overlooked, and so many things that are wrong with Fords testimony that are overlooked. That’s something that needs to be considered. Her accusations were absolutely something to look into, there was a red flag. Could it been investigated further, perhaps, but what is there to investigate. Until someone can answer that question for me I don’t see the it playing out any differently.

WEIS: What does Kavanaugh’s confirmation mean for the future of American politics?

PUCCIARELLI: I’m scared and a lot of people should be too. This sets a precedent whether you are angry at the situation whether you are happy. I think everyone should be disappointed with how things got.  I think a lot of people who are capable and who are upstanding citizens and deserve positions in our government will think twice about stepping into the spotlight now. I really do. I think it sets a harsh precedent for people to make those decisions to lead our country. Whether or not it was dirty i think is undisputable. It got out of control. They rolled with it to delay and drag out this process. There were some things there that needed to be looked at and red flags that did deserve to be dragged out. Again, I do think we can all agree this investigation could have happened a couple months ago in late July when Diane Feinstein, for the people that know, had the allegations. I think they could have been raised then and could have taken the proper amount of time to investigate Kavanaugh.

WEIS: There was an organized walk out to Kavanaugh on the SU campus, what were your thoughts on this?

PUCCIARELLI: I think it’s awesome I love activism even though I may disagree with what they’re protesting about, it doesn’t matter. If you have a message you got something you have to get off your chest if you’re passionate about something. It doesn’t matter whether I agree with you or not you got to get your voice out there It’s what I’m doing. It’s what you should be doing too. If you disagree with me I hope you tell me, and if I disagree with you I’ll be telling you too. Not in a rude or anything like that, as long as we’re respectful of each others opinions that’s how we’re going to get progress. I heard them loud and clear there are still some things I’m learning about the situation. I’m still collecting facts and working my way through the whole thing. I heard them. It was a great protest I am glad people are getting their voices out. I love the women leaders coming out and they’re being heard. That’s for sure.

WEIS: Was there anything you didn’t get to discuss in your column and wish you could go deeper on?

PUCCIARELLI: Yeah, there’s a Catch 22 with writing for the Daily Orange we’re small and we have to represent Syracuse. I’m not writing for the NYTimes, so I can’t get too national with it would have loved to talk about this on the national stage. I would have loved to talk about the dirty plays with the Democratic leaders and get into more of the dirty politics that are at play here. That’s something I would have liked to get into. Just to flesh out how things went down truly. What’s not just on the surface but what’s going on truly. I think that’s something people overlook.

WEIS: Thank you so much for joining us this week Joey!

PUCCIARELLI: Thank you for having me.

WEIS: Stay tuned for next week’s podcast where we will begin discussing more of our columns. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to submit a letter to the editor at [email protected]. We’ll talk to you next week!

Published on October 11, 2018 at 4:10 pm

Contact Allison: [email protected]