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A CNN panel suggested on Monday that the Democratic Party’s overall response to President Donald Trump‘s plan to reduce crime in Washington D.C. might come across as tone-deaf, likening it to the Democratic Party’s messaging on the economy during the Biden administration.
“What’s striking is that national Democrats are not following Mayor Bowser‘s lead on this, and that national Democrats have been insisting, just look at the statistics. We have a 30-year low violent crime. Whereas Mayor Bowser is talking about, ‘Hey, we need to get 500 more police officers on the streets. We‘d like the federal government to help us rebuild our jail,’” Axios reporter Alex Thompson said during a discussion on “The Arena with Kasie Hunt.”
“She’s also talking about some of the reforms she did to make it so accused violent offenders don‘t get out of jail pretrial. So there is this disconnect, and I’ve talked to Democrat strategists today that think that national Democrats saying, ‘look at the statistics,’ is sort of a tone-deaf way to react,” Thompson continued.
Trump spoke to reporters on Monday about his plan, which was immediately dismissed by top Democrats, who argued that crime is at a 30-year low.
Kristen Soltis Anderson, a CNN political commentator, pointed out that the Democratic Party’s reliance on crime statistics mirrored its unsuccessful economic messaging during Joe Biden’s presidency.
“Isn’t this the exact same problem that Democrats had last year? Look at the statistics. We promise you the economy is great, while people are going, ‘It doesn’t feel great to me.’ That feels like a lot of this conversation around crime that you can point to statistics all day long that say, ‘Hey, D.C. is safer this year than it was last year,’ but do people feel safe?” she observed.
“Bottom line, if they don’t, they may be more okay with something that would otherwise be considered extraordinary,” Anderson said.
Former Republican lawmaker Peter Meijer chimed in, saying Mayor Muriel Bowser might know something about the possible manipulation of statistics at the D.C. police department.
“She may know some things that national Democrats are not paying attention to,” Meijer said.
“It is also true, crime is one of these things where the randomness of it actually has a big psychological effect, right?” said Jamal Simmons, a former communications director for Kamala Harris. “When random crime happens along 14th street or one of the big thoroughfares here in the district, people get very animated about it.”
CNN host Kasie Hunt also pointed out that a D.C. murder victim Trump referenced during the press conference on Monday, former Trump administration official Mike Gill, who was killed during a carjacking in 2024, was one of her neighbors.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries reacted to Trump’s announcement on social media.
“Violent crime in Washington, D.C. is at a thirty-year low. Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department. And zero credibility on the issue of law and order. Get lost,” he said.
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