On Monday’s Good Morning America, ABC co-host and former NFL player Michael Strahan sucked up to socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick to lead the city’s Department of Corrections who’s been tasked with not only closing Riker’s Island, but reframing prison time for the dangerous and violent as patients “in our care” in need of “rehabilitation” while suffering from mental health crises.
Following two fluffy teases, Strahan boasted in the last half-hour the show would “turn down to one man’s hopes and changing the system” and stating he “sat down with Stanley Richard, the newly appointed Department of Corrections Commissioner here in New York City and Stanley is breaking barriers as the first formerly incarcerate person to be appointed to the job.”
“Beyond these gates is a jail known as one of the world’s most dangerous, Rikers Island. There have been complaints of neglect, abuse, and overcrowding...Stanley Richards, the new commissioner of New York City’s Department of Corrections, is tasked with improving conditions,” he gushed.
WILD: Yesterday on ABC's 'Good Morning America, Michael Strahan sucked up to Zohran Mamdani’s pick to lead the city’s Department of Corrections, who wants to reframe prison time for the dangerous and violent as patients “in our care” in need of “rehabilitation” while suffering… pic.twitter.com/68hTStNrtF
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 23, 2026
This gave way to flowery back-and-forth about “reform” and “possibilities” in the prison system:
STRAHAN [TO RICHARDS]: There have been task forces and independent commissions, the oversight bodies that have called for, you know, fix the problem at Rikers to no avail. Is reform even possible there?
RICHARDS: Oh, absolutely. So, I don’t see the dysfunction. I see the possibilities. Will it be hard? Yes, step by step, decision by decision, strategy by strategy.
Of course, Strahan focused on the time Richards spent at Rikers: “After losing his mother at age 10, Richard says he searched for a sense of belonging and purpose, finding it in gang life, a path that led to repeated arrests for drug offenses and robbery, ultimately resulting in a four-and-a-half year prison sentence.”
Asked about why he’s the right person for the job, Richards said he’s “learned.... could be a facilitator of hope to help people understand that they don’t have to live the life of cycling in and out of jail in prison.”
Richards then flirted with the far-left’s dream of prison abolitionism under the guise of reform and viewing criminals as health care patients (click “expand”):
RICHARDS: So, I see my work as bringing my experience to bear on a system that has been forgotten, and that means making sure that when the judges decide that someone needs to come into our care, we can center our work on dignity, humanity, normalization and reentry, making sure that our officers are valued and cared for and elevated.
STRAHAN [TO RICHARDS]: Yeah, because it seems to be when you think about it one side against the other, here you’re trying to show humanity to both sides.]
RICHARDS: To both sides. If I don’t see the humanity in our offices, how can I see it in the people in our care? If I don’t see the humanity in the people in the care, how can I see it in my community?
Strahan joined in on promoting the soft-on-crime mentality: “He sees the corrections system that across the country is failing its inmates, one that is too focused on punishment and not enough on rehabilitation, leaving little room for growth, hope, and change.”
Richards cited letting inmates decide what food they’re served and gardening classes as examples of how prison sentences could be of better use, telling Strahan the public fails to understand “the entire system.”
“[B]y the time they get to jail or get to prison, we probably missed multiple opportunities to intervene on the school level, on the mental health level, on the drug treatment level. The country’s pursuit of punishment has created a system that misses those opportunities,” he argued.
Sounding like a true Democratic Socialist, he lamented people “demonize” those behind bars and that the public has made it “easy to justify the pain and suffering and punishment we inflict on them, but if you see them as your brother, your sister, your cousin, your community member, you see them based on the humanity.”
Americans like Laken Riley were unavailable for comment.
Here was the only sort of pushback or allusion to Americans supporting law and order:
STRAHAN [TO RICHARDS]: People say, well, there’s people who have done some heinous crimes.
RICHARDS: Accountability should be a centerpiece of our justice system. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be accountable.
Here’s some actual pushback, courtesy of the New York Post back on March 30 (click “expand”):
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to mindlessly free perps held at Rikers is a carbon copy of the de Blasio-era drive that immediately sent crime rates soaring; New Yorkers have zero reason to expect a different result.
(....)
And the folks who’d get sprung are not the low-level offenders that the “criminal-justice reform” crew always pretends.
As veteran Queens prosecutor Jim Quinn notes in The Post, 95% of those now jailed at Rikers awaiting trial face felony charges, mostly for murder or another violent offense.
(....)
The last few years should have taught the whole city that a relatively few recidivists are responsible for nearly all major crime; keeping repeat offenders off the streets is vital to public safety.
(....)
Yet Mamdani has made Richards the first ex-offender to head the city’s jail system; he says he’s working to “responsibly” reduce the number of people in custody by expanding supervised release, work release and alternatives to incarceration: Watch out.
The interview concluded with Richards emphasizing prisons need to better incubators of “providing people with the tools that when they get out, they could have a place to live and get the resources they need[.]”
Someone tell that to the victims of sex offenders.
Back live, Strahan said that, along with Rikers having to be shut down by next year, Richards told him “60 percent of the people incarcerated at Rikers had mental health issues, which guards aren’t trained to deal with,” so guards need better training and pay.
Co-host Robin Roberts was enamored: “Well, I hope that people really listen to his perspective because he has one unlike many in that position.”
“He’s an example. He’s been on both sides. He’s been in Rikers, and now he’s on the outside in the law enforcement side,” Strahan replied.
Exit question: Since ABC sucked up to a pro-criminal mindset, when will they do a puff piece with, say, Angel Moms?
To see the relevant ABC transcript from June 22, click here.
