Jesse Watters likens Democrats' soft-on-crime policies to parents letting their 'kids run wild'

Fictional sitcom dads like Red Forman from "That 70's Show" would make better public leaders than the liberals currently in power, Jesse Watters said Tuesday, highlighting how California is re-imagining one of its infamous prisons, and Democratic district attorneys from New York to Portland have come under fire for increasingly lenient prosecutorial practices.

On "Jesse Watters Primetime," Watters said that many American parents understand the value and importance of punishing their misbehaving children, but that such a dynamic hasn't seemed to translate to liberals in government against criminal suspects.

"You don't want to discipline your kids, but sometimes you just have to. They'll get upset and you feel bad about it. But you know it's the right thing to do because you have to set boundaries and create consequences to change behavior," he said, adding that the same is true for the law versus convicts.

"Punishment gives kids an incentive to avoid trouble," he said, noting that humans don't like losing their freedom or privileges, which happens when they are punished by the justice system for their crimes.

"I'm sure you all out there know some parents who just let their kids run wild," Watters said. "That's essentially what's happening in most of America's major cities. Local Democrat leaders have decided that criminals no longer deserve to be punished. And now crime surging."

He noted that in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is overseeing the deconstruction of San Quentin, a maximum security prison that has housed some of America's worst offenders, from cult leader Charles Manson, to Sirhan Sirhan – the assassin of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy – and "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez.

San Quentin is closing its death row to replace it with "a positive and healing environment," the host reported. 

Referring to Sirhan, Watters remarked that apparently people convicted of killing a presidential candidate can just "squeeze in a therapy session before a nice sweat in the prison sauna" because of Newsom.

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Watters surmised that much of this reimagining of criminal justice comes from the observation that many liberals cannot process concepts of good versus evil or "recognize sin."

"That takes on too much of a religious connotation, and they're very uncomfortable with the idea of judgment. Their entire political philosophy is based on tearing down history, law and cultural norms. And so the prison system to them is just a relic of a barbarous, unenlightened and medieval system that needs to be reimagined by them, of course, and modernized in a more humane and progressive way – a way that doesn't work at all because incarceration works for a reason."

"Just like walls work and men and women are different, you know, basic truths that have stood the test of time. These aren't concepts to be embraced for the left. They need to be destroyed and then rebuilt to celebrate, you guessed it, themselves."

"You can tell the kind of parents these Democrat leaders are anyway. Just look at how some of their children behave. What did you expect - a sitcom dad would make a better leader than … these pushover politicians? America needs someone who believes in tough love, but also has a big heart."