The White House declined on Monday to say whether major cities are safe while touting President Joe Biden’s efforts to fund police in response to rising crime.
This line of questioning was inspired in part by former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC pundit, saying crime was a major vulnerability for Democrats in the midterm elections.
“It is not a yes or no question,” Psaki’s successor and former deputy, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, said of whether Biden believed big cities are safe. “It is very much a question of what has he done.”
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“Again, I can’t do electoral politics from here, as you know,” Jean-Pierre began, citing Hatch Act constraints. “I don’t agree with your characterization of what she actually said.”
Biden’s top spokeswoman defended the president’s record on crime and public safety, calling the current spike in criminality “complicated and multifaceted” before heading into a variety of other campaign issues.
“Look, this is a president who has secured historic funding to make sure that law enforcement has what it needs,” she said. “He was able to do this in the face of opposition from Republicans.”
Jean-Pierre pivoted to attacking Republicans more broadly, referencing proposals by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).
“The past few months, what we’ve been able to do is create a pretty much clear split screen of what we are doing to deliver for the American people and what Republicans refuse to do,” she said. “We are making sure that we have Medicare and Social Security, and we make sure that Big Pharma is [not] upping costs for our seniors … and making sure that we give them a little bit of breathing room. And, you know, you have Republicans who want to cut Medicare.”
Since the 2020 campaign, Biden has tried to distance Democrats from “defund the police.” He has directed funds to law enforcement, chastised Jan. 6 rioters who clashed with Capitol police, and criticized Republicans who spoke of defunding the FBI in the wake of the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
Biden has tried to merge his law-and-order credentials with his midterm anti-MAGA messaging.
“Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the sixth, don’t tell me, you can’t do it,” Biden said during a campaign swing through Pennsylvania.
“For God’s sake, whose side are you on? On the side of a mob or the side of the police? You can’t be pro-law enforcement and pro-insurrection. You can’t be a party of law and order and call the people who attack the police on Jan. 6 patriots. You can’t do it,” he said, in a line he has used before.
“I want to say this as clearly as I can. There is no place in this country, no place, for endangering the lives of law enforcement. No place, none, never, period,” Biden said. “I’m opposed to defunding the police, I’m also opposed to defunding the FBI.”
As a senator from Delaware and top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden played a major role in the passage of the 1994 crime bill signed into law by former President Bill Clinton, which has since come under fire from both the Left and Right.
Crime has been on the rise since 2020, and even some Democratic data analysts have concluded it hurt the party in that year’s election.
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“For the last two years, murders and shootings increased in the U.S., while many other types of crime remained flat or fell,” the New York Times reported on Friday. “So far in 2022, the trends have reversed.”
Crime has been a top voter concern in multiple midterm election polls.
