White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany brushed aside an assertion from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last week that poverty could be a leading cause in the recent uptick in violent crime in New York City.
“Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now? The fact that people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen since the Great Recession?” Ocasio-Cortez said during a virtual town hall Thursday. “Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren’t paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent, and so they go out, and they need to feed their child, and they don’t have money so … they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry.”
Similar to several members of the Democratic Party’s more progressive arm, Ocasio-Cortez has called for the defunding of police departments across the United States and the redistribution of wealth to poorer citizens.
“You have Rep. Ocasio-Cortez saying, ‘This is just because people are trying to get food for the families.’ That is preposterous,” McEnany told reporters during a White House press briefing Monday. “The reality is, 63% of Americans in this country fear that criticism of our police departments will lead to no public safety in their streets, and 69% of black Americans — this is a real issue when you call our police cancer and talk about dismantling them.”
Since the death of George Floyd, a renewed conversation about police brutality and systemic racism in America has been sparked.
Democrats in several cities have passed measures to reallocate funds typically given to law enforcement, a trend President Trump and Republicans have said could lead to dangerous consequences.
“We will never, ever defund our police. OK? That I can tell you. We are not defunding police,” Trump said during a recent event in Florida. “So, just a terrible thing, but I assume this is going to be a fad. We’ll call it a fad.”
McEnany has spent time during recent press briefings warning of an uptick in violent crime seen in major cities across the country and blamed Democrats for the spike.
Ocasio-Cortez said she has refused a police detail outside her home in New York because it does not make her feel safe.
“I don’t have a police detail because I don’t want that outside of my apartment door every day … That doesn’t make me feel secure,” she said. “I don’t want to live my life that way. And so I don’t.”
The congresswoman and Trump’s press secretary clashed earlier this summer when Ocasio-Cortez accused McEnany of using racial undertones about her in a press briefing.
“[McEnany] wouldn’t be the first person to mistake a woman of color for having a lower position or title than she does,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But Kayleigh - in case you haven’t picked up a newspaper in two years, I’m a Congresswoman.”
