House Speaker Mike Johnson stumbled through his response after California Gov. Gavin Newsom pointed out that crime in Johnson’s home state of Louisiana is several times worse than in the Golden State.
Johnson spoke haltingly after he was played a clip Friday on Fox and Friends of Newsom pointing out that the murder rate in Louisiana is “nearly four times higher” than in California.
“Gavin Newsom will do anything for attention. He can name-drop me all, all,” Johnson stammered, “that he wants. He needs to go and govern his state and not be engaging in all of this.”
“We have crime,” he stuttered, “in cities across America.”
He added that his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, has “done a great job of reducing crime, gradually,” and said it was import to address crime “everywhere that it rears its ugly head.”
“I think every major city in the country—the residents of those cities are open to that, and anxious to have it,” he said.
Crime rates in red and blue states have come under fresh scrutiny after President Donald Trump ordered thousands of National Guard troops into Democratic-led cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.—with Chicago next on his list.
The administration claims the deployments are necessary to “liberate” residents of those cities from crime, which they say has turned American streets in war zones.
Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Democratic governors, however, have argued the deployments have nothing to do with public safety, since Trump isn’t sending in troops to the states with the highest crime rates—which happen to be controlled by Republicans.
“If he is to invest in crime suppression, I hope the president of the United States would look at the facts,” Newsom said during a press conference on Thursday. “Just consider Speaker Johnson’s state and district. Just look at the murder rate that’s nearly four times higher than California in Louisiana.”
The vast majority of Americans do not approve of the president sending in soldiers to quell local crime. A Quinnipiac University poll released this week found that just 41 percent of respondents approved of Trump posting the National Guard in Washington, D.C., to fight crime.
Those troops have not been trained in local law enforcement, and the crackdown has wreaked havoc on the courts as judges are flooded with cases involving trumped-up charges.
And despite Trump’s claims that Washington is as dangerous as a third-world city, soldiers in the nation’s capital have been picking up trash and spreading mulch to pass the time.
An analysis by Axios found that 13 of the top 20 cities with the highest homicide rates were located in states with Republican governors. At the state level, eight of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates are red states.
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