'Special Report' All-Star Panel on rise in violent crime

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Violent crime strikes American cities at alarming rate

'Special Report' panel weighs in as several major cities see historic rise in crime

This is a rush transcript of "Special Report with Bret Baier" on December 8, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER: With that, let's bring in our panel, "Washington Post" columnist Marc Thiessen, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and Josh Kraushaar is politics editor for "National Journal."

Mollie, let me start with you. It's a different tone coming from the White House, this relation that it is real despite some lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioning the reality of all that we are seeing.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": I'm not sure if there was enough of a tonal change, but unlike so many policy debates that we engage in, this is one where we really do know that crime is rising. Violent crime in particular is rising. And it's rising in those areas where Democratic leadership of local governments has pushed policies like defunding the police, no cash bail, the election, using leftwing billionaire money of liberal D.A.s who refuse to prosecute crimes.

And so in these communities and in the neighboring communities that are affected by it, people understand that this is a real thing that's happening, and it's happening because of actual policy changes that they are now trying to pretend that they never supported, but we know they did.

BAIER: Josh, when it comes to politics, there are a few issues that really hit home. And crime is one of them.

JOSH KRAUSHAAR, "NATIONAL JOURNAL": Yes, Bret. I think the issue of crime and law and order is a bigger long-term vulnerability for Democrats than even the economy and inflation and all the other issues on the home front. The Democratic Party was doomed for almost two decades between the late 60s and late 80s because of the perception that they were soft on crime, that they put criminals' rights ahead of victims' rights. And it took a long time for them to recover that branding problem, that substantive problem that the party faced for a long time.

And you just see a Democratic Party, including President Biden, that doesn't seem to be able to confront those progressive forces that are calling for the social justice policies, the anti-incarceration policies you heard from Los Angeles D.A. George Gascon.

And there's a lot of talk these days about the vice president, and Vice President Harris from the Bay Area doing a reset, having a political reset. She would be doing herself some good if she actually spoke out against some of these soft sentencing policies, the D.A. in her home neck of the woods in San Francisco is up for a recall. If she -- if the Democratic Party started talking tougher on crime, actually branded themselves more moderately, it would do them a whole lot of political good.

BAIER: You look at the incoming New York mayor, Eric Adams, who ran on a get-tough kind of campaign in New York City. You look at somebody like Val Demings, the Democratic running against Marco Rubio likely in Florida, former Orlando police chief, I bet you will start hearing more about that. But it's a big issue, Marc, and I think there is a realization that it is increasing around the country.

MARC THIESSEN, COLUMNIST, "WASHINGTON POST": No doubt. Mayor de Blasio said at the top of your broadcast, New York is the safest of the top 20 big cities in America. That's sort of like saying I'm the tallest midget. The only reason that New York's numbers look good in in comparison to the rest of the country because you've had 22 major cities in America that have seen murder rates go up, 12 of those cities broke records, their previous records, and five of them topped records that they had set last year. And New York held steady. It actually went down 0.5 percent, so virtually unchanged. But last year the murder rate was up 57 percent. So Mayor de Blasio is taking credit for maintaining the disastrous murder rate of 2020 and thinks that he should be praised for that.

To Josh's point, is he setting Biden and Kamala Harris up for a Sister Souljah moment, right? They should go and just knock down Bill de Blasio and say we are trying to take this seriously. Dismissing these murder rates, dismissing this crime wave is bad for the Democratic Party. It's bad for the country. And they could gain a lot of traction if they did that.

BAIER: Do you think they are going to listen to you, Marc?

THIESSEN: Oh, no.

(LAUGHTER)

THIESSEN: Not a chance.

(LAUGHTER)

BAIER: Just wanted to ask.

THIESSEN: No, they are not.

BAIER: Mollie, I want to call an audible here. We did this story about John Durham and the probe there. Are you thinking that this is going to get some place? As you look at this, you have obviously covered this from the beginning, as we update what coming out about this back and forth.

HEMINGWAY: One of the things that's important when you are trying to hold people accountable is to have outside pressure, not just John Durham alone with his crew pushing for accountability for this false and dangerous conspiracy theory. But, while we have seen some people in the media admit that they participated in this Russia collusion lie, you have had a lot of people in the media just refuse to take accountability.

So many people in the media are great at holding other people accountable, but when they themselves are responsible for great wrong, they don't do a good job of doing it to themselves. Nobody has returned the Pulitzer Prizes that they won for participating in these lies or really dealt with how it was that they uncritically regurgitated this made-up information from Democratic operatives and corrupt intelligence officials.

So I am optimistic that some accountability will be had, but I'd like to see a lot more from outside people who believe their job is to hold people accountable as well.

BAIER: Does that factor in at all, Josh, as we get ready for this next year?

KRAUSHAAR: I think it's more of a media story than a political story. As Mollie noted, there's some serious credibility challenges with some of the coverage of that Steele dossier. But are voters paying attention to all the details it? Probably not. And if they are, they are already likely to vote for Republicans. But look, I think there is a larger story that's beyond politics that's going to be really important.

BAIER: All right, panel, thank you very much.

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