White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki recently marveled at the idea that the United States’s massive crime spike is a serious problem that serious cable news networks ought to cover.
On the liberal Pod Save America podcast, Psaki recalled seeing one day that CNN and MSNBC were covering the brewing conflict in Ukraine. In contrast, she said, “[On] Fox is Jeanine Pirro talking about ‘soft-on-crime consequences.’ I mean, what does that even mean?”
For context, carjackings are up sixfold nationwide. Murder rose 30% in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021. In California, thanks largely to lax enforcement, trains are being robbed and drug stores cleared out by criminals who face no consequences whatsoever. Two dozen police had been shot (at that point) since the year began.
But to Psaki, the coverage of the consequences of “soft-on-crime” policies is somehow incomprehensible, belonging in an “alternate universe.”
The most incredible part is not that Psaki doesn’t understand the consequences of going soft on criminals — it is that neither she nor her interlocutors could even process the idea that maybe the alternate universe is their own.
After all, the massive spike in crime actually affects regular people who watch cable news — and everyone else, for that matter. Meanwhile, although all of the networks (including Fox News) have rightly covered the Ukraine-Russia crisis, it is far less relevant to most people’s lives than, say, gas prices or the domestic crime wave.
Psaki is insulated from reality to a degree that makes this almost understandable. We are told that she lives in one of the nicer parts of Arlington, Virginia, a gleaming and posh inner suburb of Washington whose median income is north of $70,000. Arlington County, home to nearly a quarter-million people, recorded zero homicides in all 12 months of 2021, according to preliminary data from its police department.
This is not what most of America looks like right now.
Across the river, in Washington, there were 226 murders last year. In Philadelphia, there were 562. In Chicago, there were more than 700. At least 16 major cities set new records for homicide. What they have in common are liberal soft-on-crime district attorneys who habitually let career criminals back on the streets without consequences after they are arrested.
Psaki’s detachment from reality may shed some light on the aloof, out of touch, and extremely arrogant behavior of Biden administration officials when it comes to criminality and its negative effects on ordinary working people. This applies not only to those victimized directly but also to those forced to live in fear and those whose communities suffer economically as a result of criminal activity.
This is not just a problem for Fox News’s typical audience either. FBI data clearly show that no one is being victimized more than black people — in fact, the disparity in the race of murder victims has grown to alarming proportions in just the last 10 years. Yet the Biden administration, like so many white liberals, thinks it is doing black families a favor by coddling the very criminals who prey upon them.
Even as they scrutinize as terrorists parents concerned about what’s being taught in their local schools, President Joe Biden’s hand-picked prosecutors recently helped an arsonist who killed someone in the George Floyd riots get off with a light sentence and escape justice in the form of murder charges and a life sentence. Note that this person did not get off the hook because of the actions of his defense attorneys but because Biden’s prosecution begged for leniency on his behalf.
Biden is also failing to step in where he could to prevent flagrant criminality in California. The looting of freight trains, suddenly so common that debris left behind by looters recently caused a derailment, is clearly a matter of interstate commerce. So far, in spite of the nation’s supply chain problems, Biden has failed to get the feds involved.
When you think about it, Psaki really is the perfect voice for an administration that thinks not only that violent crime is painless but also that disruptions in commerce only affect rich people buying treadmills for Christmas.
One can only marvel at how out of touch the members of the Biden administration’s staff are. When the election results come rolling in this November, they won’t even know what hit them or why.
