Transcript: Trump’s Rage over Fresh Legal Loss Takes Menacing New Turn
Sargent: Well, I just want to underscore the importance of what you just said there, which is that every time he says, I’m sending in the military and my justification is the murder rate or crimes off the charts, or anything like that, he can’t do that, right? He conflates what’s going on with Washington, D.C., and other states. And I think there’s a reason for that, which obviously is that in D.C. he actually has a lot more latitude, a lot more authority to do this sort of thing than he does in other states. But you’re right. He’s conflating his original justification, which was a carefully—well, carefully is the wrong word—a legal reason that was an ostensible legal reason that was drafted for it in keeping with what they say is the law with, on the other hand, this excuse, which is rooted in crime and essentially a promise to do what he’s not allowed to do, which is use the military for domestic law enforcement. He’s essentially admitting it’s all illegal.
McQuade: Right. And I will also tell you, Greg, that I spent a lot of time when I was serving as U.S. attorney fighting violent crime. We have some cities with challenges in that arena—in Detroit and Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac, Ypsilanti. All of those cities have violent crime rates that are not enviable. And in the eight years I was there, I learned—we tried a lot of different things, but brute force doesn’t work. It may have a short-term effect of having surges and large police presence or hotspots or these zero tolerance programs. But what you really need is to attack the root causes of crime. Crime is driven by one thing and that’s poverty. And if Donald Trump really cared about protecting people from violent crime, he wouldn’t have soldiers on the National Mall. He would have them in the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates.
In addition, prevention programs are what help the most. So when we’re seeing these reductions in crime in cities across the country, it is because of these intervention programs where violence interrupters are working in communities and are bringing people off the streets, having them put down their guns, providing resources. Donald Trump, of course, cut federal grants for community groups that prevent crime back in April. So this to me is all about a show of force, not about really effectively or thoughtfully reducing violent crime. One more point I’ll make is so far the cities he has threatened are all in blue states. We have Washington D.C., not a state, but a district. We have Los Angeles in the very blue California. We have Chicago in the very blue Illinois. Where we do have violent crime, but we have not seen any federal troops, are Detroit (Michigan is a state that voted for Trump), St. Louis (Missouri is a state that voted for Trump), Memphis (Tennessee is a state that voted for Trump). So if he really cared about focusing on violent crime, it seems like he would be focusing on all those cities and not just cities in blue.
