In response to President Trump‘s takeover of the Washington, D.C., police force and his impending deployment of the National Guard, “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough argued Tuesday morning that Democratic politicians have adopted the “wrong” approach.
Despite crime numbers being lower in D.C. this year than last, Trump has repeatedly complained about the city’s crime rates. According to Scarborough, Trump is not the only person he has heard criticize the overall safety of the city.
“In Washington, D.C, I’ve got friends that worked in the Biden White House, I have friends that work in the media that say they don’t feel safe walking three blocks,” Scarborough remarked. “Why can’t Washington be fixed, despite what the crime numbers say? Because people aren’t feeling it.”
The MSNBC host went on to slam Democratic politicians for citing crime statistics in response to concerns about the quality of life in D.C. and other major American cities.
“I mean, if people feel unsafe in Washington, D.C., and they tell you they feel unsafe and they give you specifics about how they or their friends were held up or beaten up, don’t give them crime statistics,” Scarborough argued. “No! That’s not how you show people you understand what they’re going through, what their children are going through, what their families are going through, what their co-workers are going through. That’s wrong, wrong answer.”
Throughout the Tuesday segment, Scarborough repeatedly referenced the quality of life in New York City and how mayors like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg lowered the city’s crime rates over the course of many years and transformed it into a place where residents felt safe to walk the streets at night again. The “Morning Joe” host, in turn, asked how that could happen in Manhattan and not Washington, D.C.
“Even at the height of COVID when people were talking about defunding the police, you actually had — in real time — city council members in New York City and some of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no. Don’t defund the police. Fund the police!,’” Scarborough observed. “I’ll just say, I think it’s a real challenge for the Democratic Party to understand that — that quality of life.”
During the segment, “Morning Joe” contributor and columnist Mike Barnicle notably did not condemn Trump’s National Guard deployment in D.C., either.
“Over the years, of course, Washington, D.C, has been transformed into the city it is today. The insertion of the National Guard — I don’t know what that will mean,” he told viewers. “The National Guard will provide a presence, and sometimes that’s all you need to clear a block or clear a person’s mind that it’s OK to walk that block — police presence or the symbols of police presence. So we’ll see how it goes.”
