The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is Keeping America First with Bishop John T. Cotes and Reverend Jeff Jemison on FCB Faith. Happy to be here today. We have an exciting guest, as all of our guests are exciting, and they are doing things that are most helpful to all of us to become more knowledgeable about what's going on in our city's, states, and country. Today we have doctor Robin Armstrong out of the great State of Texas. Dr Armstrong resides in Galveston, Texas. Good morning, Dr Armstrong, How are you today. Good Horney, I'm doing well. Thank you good. Please tell us a little bit about what's going on there inter state of Texas. What are you doing there? Tell us a little bit about yourself. So I was I actually live in Friendswood, Texas now, which is in Galveston County. I am a Galveston County Commission was just elected to that two years ago. I have been active in politics for about the last thirty years, and I have currently served on the Republican National Committee representing Texas, and I've been there for about twelve years now. So I'm kind of a senior member on the Republican National Committee. And then I've a medical doctor as well. In fact, I'm in the hospital now seeing patients, and so i have a medical practice that I owned, Armstrong Medical Group, and we've got about twenty physicians in ps and PA's and so we take care of folks in the hospital, and we have a nursing home practice as well. So those are the things. I'm married to Martha Armstrong for twenty seven years. He's also a physician. And I have four boys, two in college and one in high school and one in junior high school. So that sums up everything in about thirty seconds. Doc Armstrong, I tell you, I think that you're a great rule model for all of us. And during this happens to be Black History Month right now, and we're celebrating that. And I'll tell you that you have a beautiful family and all of you are very athletic, your boys are, And tell us a little bit about since this is Black History Month. You're physician, you have a great medical practice, also very actively involved in your community. Tell us a little bit about your boys and their athleticism. Well, my oldest is running track in college right now. He's at UT Arlington and he's an aerospace engineering major, and so he's studying hard and running hard. In fact, he has a track meet I think tomorrow or actually it's Saturday at text A and M and in College station here, and he's at Texas A and M. Awesome, he has a track meet there. He runs at UT Arlington, but his meat is in A and M in College Station. And then I have a second son who is who played football in junior college and he's not playing anymore. He's at University of Houston's economics major. And then I've got a My other younger sons are actually athletes as well. So all of them run a lot and keep us pretty active. Now did they get that? Does that come from their dad? Were you active? Or tell us a little bit about yourself, your background? I tell you so, Yeah, I ran track and played football in high school. But but I was not nearly as fast as my sons are. They run a lot faster than I did. But but yeah, so they they they certainly did not get it from their mom though. So he's about she's about five foot one and not super athletic. But okay, so that's awesome. It's good to know that our children can do much better than us. They can excel a little bit further than us than we do actually in sports and so farth that can relate to that. I know that you're you've been involved with different issues locally. Tell us about like I've heard that you're involved with the Safe Streets crackdowns and we're living in the time right now where crime is pretty rampant in the country and folks are just concerned about solving problems and issues talk. Can you talk about that a little bit, the Safe Streets crackdowns? Yeah, I think that certainly what we've seen in the in the in in certainly inner city, in urban areas, you know, we see crime at a at a significant you know, high I think a lot of some of that's related to you know, illegal immigrants coming in committing crime. Some of that's related to just just long term crime in the inner city that we've seen, especially in the black community. And I think that I think that it's so important to have obviously police officers, you know, community policing, police officers that have relationships with people, but that we also have a strong system of justice to where you know, we are putting you know, we're putting criminals behind bars, you know. I mean, I don't think that we can compromise on that. And I think that one thing that I see that a lot of African Americans are seeing in the communities is they want they want police officers who are are fair and impartial and who are cared for the community. And they also want police officers to get you know, the bad guys off the streets and so and so. When when that's done together, I think that that that that we could see a significant drop in crime. And also obviously the drug drug epidemic that's taking place now, cracking down on the car tails preventing drugs from coming into our communities as well, I think that's vitally important. And I think that that just having programs where where kids you know, see examples. You know, we're working on bringing some boys and girls clubs into our communities to where you know, kids have opportunities to to to do other things. You know, we look at school choice opportunities, and so I know that that's a big issue here in Texas right now that our legislators trying to get past where kids who are in failing schools or schools that are failing them because they can't keep them safe, or or schools that are failing them because they're not educating them. They can move schools and go to a private school. And so I think those are those are all it's kind of a multifactorial approach to to to dealing with crime in our communities, Educating our kids, educating our parents, giving our kids more opportunities to go to safe schools and schools where they're going to be uh educated in an excellent way, and then having that police effort as well, getting criminals off the streets, stopping the drugs in the streets, you know. And so I think that those are those are ways that I see that have been effective, you know, here in our area, and and and then and then I'm sure they're working other areas as well. What we've seen also, Oh. Go ahead with you being there in Texas and dealing with the illegal immigration, uh, the immigrants coming across with drugs. How real is that? Because the narrative sometimes on television is that, uh, it's not it's not accurate. It's it's they're playing it up too much sometimes. Can you tell us is that real? How is that a real problem? Well? Absolutely, it is a It is absolutely a real problem. I mean, we see it on our border in Opaso, we see it on our border in Brownsville and Harlingen. Uh, we see it. We see it taking place on our border all the time. And so it is it is a very real problem. And and you know, we see drug trafficking across the border. We see sex trafficking across the border. We see kids coming across the border without their parents, and those kids are are ultimately destined to be sex trafficked. We see, you know, they have you know, what they call this might be a little graphic, but they have rape trees where they rape young girls who are coming across the border and they throw their underwear on a tree. That is something that exists here in Texas. We see this. And so what's happening across this border and our having our border not secure is a humanity, humanitarian crisis that that that thank god, you know, President Trump is is working on and and and we've seen significant decreases just in the last two weeks when President Trump came into office. And it's helping our drug problem, it's helping our our problem with trafficking of kids, it's helping this problem where these young ladies are not being victimized by by criminals and gangs and cartails when they come across the border. And so it's really helping a lot, and I think it's gonna certainly have an impact in our communities because we have less drugs in our communities with stopping the drug flow from the cartails as well. I agree, for the last four years, we heard over and over, we saw that the border was closed and that we were lied to, and then we were told that it was closed while all of these things kept coming in to our country into cities where African Americans live predominantly, and just devastating cities, adding to the problems that already exists to the extent that folks have to leave the cities, vacate their homes, go to other suburbs as opposed to being able to just live in a safe city that coupled with the local crime by legal citizens. So it's so good to hear you who shed light on this, and you're right there on the ground close to the border where these problems are existing. Let's talk a little bit more about your role as a county commissioner. And then also I know that you're Faith Engagement chairperson for the rn C. But let's talk about that before we run out of time. Get absolutely. And so as a county commissioner, what we do in Texas here we have four county commiss here's in a county judge which is not a real judge but just sort of someone who helped manages our meetings and everything. But five folks who actually are basically the legislature for the county. And so what we do is we deal with the county's budget. We have about twelve hundred and thirteen hundred employees and we manage that. And so I was elected to that in twenty two and so I'll be up for election again in two years. And so it's been a great it's a it's a great position, and you really have a lot of impact in the local community with the position, and I really like it. I made up working with folks in the community all the time. One of our biggest budgetary outlays is the county jail, which is about seventy million dollars, and so we have to house those inmates and everything. And so it's so criminal justice is a big deal in our local governments, in our County. And so we're fighting a lot of those battles you talked about, say streets earlier. We're fighting a lot of those battles trying to make sure that that that you know, our streets are safe so that so that the kids can exhale and and and access opportunities where they're available. And so so it's it's a great position. I really really enjoy it. And and it's it's a you really get to have a significant impact on people locally, and so that's what I like most about it. Okay, So doctor Armstrong is Faith Engagement chairperson for the r n C. Can you talk about that a little bit, uh, the importance of it and what what do you do? What do you do it with Faith Engagement Chair. With So, as Faith Engagement Chair was appointed actually by na Na McDaniel, who's the outgoing chair, and then and then Michael Michael Wattley actually appointed me to that as well. Again and so what we do as Faith Engagement Chair nationally is try to engage faith groups to get more involved and more active and so and so the irony is that in doing that we actually interact with a lot of African American churches because what we found is that is that you know, in some of these churches culturally, you know, these folks are very conservative. You know, they don't believe in you know, abortion up through nine months. They don't believe in this trans you know movement that's been taking place and you know, boys and girls locker rooms and boys and girls sports. They don't Most African American churches don't believe in this stuff. And so we've been able to interact a lot with you know, some of the cultural, culturally conservative African American churches, and and we've been able to do a lot of things in regards to that. In Harris County, which is where Houston is, you know, we actually elected African American astor to the city council who actually is a Republican because talking about safe streets and talking about the crime epidemic that we see in in the urban area which is Houston, and he was able to win election because he said, look, I care for my community. Houston actually elected three Republican city council members, which is almost unheard of. But what happened is is engaging them based on the faith aspect and engaging them culturally with these issues. That we agree on. We've been able to win a lot of those folks over some of the commercials that we used. We sort of helped to organize this in faith engagement is to say, we had African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jocelyn Nungree who's gotten a lot of national attention her daughter was killed by an I legal immigrant. We actually had a lot of people, multi racial people, and they did commercials for us and they said, you know, look, we don't care who you vote for for president, but we want you to vote out of office soft on crime Democrat judges because what we're seeing here is that a lot of these folks have been are let out of let out of jail locally and they go out and commit other crimes and murder peoples. So we were able to get a lot of African American support as a result of that effort, and so we're doing that nationally as well. We're going to be involved in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race that's coming up in April. It's going to be a big race where we can take over the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, which is huge, and so we're going to be involved in races in New Jersey and races in Virginia that are coming up in November of this year, and so these are having an impact. And if we activate and motivate people of faith to get out and vote, then we believe that as Republicans will do quite well because a lot of folks are are in those positions of of of leadership, and we see a lot of faith people who are who are drifting over to the Republican Party. We've seen that for some time and that's happening now and it's going to happen more and more, I think in the future as the Democrat Party actually becomes more and more extreme on these cultural issues. Oh thank you so much, and you're right on spot on. We thank you, doctor Armstrong for being with us, and we're going to continue to stay in touch with you. I like to have you back as time goes on and we continue to grow this party and make it a broader party, attracting more and more people to it, and as we make our country stronger. Thank you again, Dr Armstrong, and we hope thank you to our audience for being with us today. God bless you all.
