Gingrich: Trump has obligation to defend innocent Americans who are not being protected by city governments
President Trump vows to send the federal government into cities facing violence despite backlash from local leaders; Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich weighs in.
Crime and chaos have overtaken the streets of many American cities. Shootings and gun violence have increased. Reported homicides are up 24 percent so far this year among the nation’s 50 largest cities, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Riots and anarchy continue to rule the day in so-called progressive areas like Portland and Seattle, where spineless politicians have submitted to mobs and enfeebled the police.
The case of New York City is especially tragic for Rudy Giuliani, my guest on this week’s episode of my podcast “Newt’s World.”
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While Giuliani was mayor of New York from 1994 through 2001, all forms of crime in the city plummeted to a degree — and at a speed — that few thought possible. The crime rate continued to drop throughout the 2000s.
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The trick was a focused form of policing that dramatically transformed law enforcement in this country for the better. Giuliani and then-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton applied the “broken windows” strategy, under which police enforce the laws against minor crimes strictly in order to prevent major crimes.
The theory is that tolerating too much minor crime and disorder creates a permissive environment in which dangerous, violent crime becomes more likely.
In practice, the theory proved indisputably correct, as I discuss in detail in my new book, “Trump and the American Future.”
This left-wing ideology extends beyond New York to other Democratic-controlled cities, where there is an insidious effort to undermine law enforcement and support criminals.
Giuliani also oversaw, along with Bratton, the introduction of CompStat, a system that combines comparative statistics, which provide real-time intelligence, with a constant demand for accountability to reduce crime.
Again, the results speak for themselves: New York City’s streets became safer, cleaner, and more comfortable, even at night. That is, until now.
Today, America’s largest and most iconic city is experiencing an alarming surge in violent crime. Over the first half of 2020, homicides soared by 21 percent and shootings increased by 46 percent compared to the same period of time last year. Over the first seven months of 2020, meanwhile, murder jumped 30 percent.
In July alone, the number of people murdered in New York City rose 59 percent compared to the same month last year, and shootings skyrocketed by 177 percent. These trends were a continuation of what occurred in June.
Amid this chaos, New York City’s radically left-wing mayor — Democrat Bill de Blasio — sided with the criminals over law enforcement, cutting $1 billion from the police department’s budget. It’s no coincidence that violent crime continued to surge.
Under de Blasio’s administration, New York City has also effectively done away with bail, a mindless policy that just puts criminals back on the streets.
In short, de Blasio is repudiating all the sound principles that Giuliani applied, recreating the disaster that was in New York in the early 1990s. Indeed, the current mayor is basically saying to everyone: Break the law and nothing will happen to you. To quote Giuliani, de Blasio seems to be “pro-criminal.”
This left-wing ideology extends beyond New York to other Democratic-controlled cities, where there is an insidious effort to undermine law enforcement and support criminals.
The left-wing billionaire George Soros is actively funding races for district attorney across the country, pouring millions of dollars into races that don’t often make headlines but have huge impact.
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Soros and his vast network of influence are working to elect candidates who share de Blasio’s hostility toward law enforcement and sympathy for criminals. This will mean more crime and chaos, not law and order.
George Gascon, for example, served as the district attorney of San Francisco from 2011 to 2019, a period during which the city’s property crime rate soared as he refused to prosecute numerous crimes. Now he’s running for district attorney of Los Angeles with the backing of Soros’s massive wallet to replace the competent incumbent, Jackie Lacey.
I hope you will listen to this week’s episode to learn from Rudy Giuliani, one of the greatest leaders of our generation, how to combat crime in our current moment of chaos.
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And I hope you will listen to my next episode, set to air Wednesday, on what really matters for Black lives with Robert Woodson, an American civil rights activist.
To read, hear, and watch more of Newt Gingrich’s commentary, visit Gingrich360.com.
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