MSNBC panelists immediately attempted to discredit President Donald Trump on Tuesday after he vowed to seek the death penalty for murderers in Washington, D.C.
As part of his crime crackdown, the president announced during a cabinet meeting that his administration will seek the death penalty for anyone who commits murder in the nation’s capital. MSNBC’s Chris Jansing claimed during a segment of “Chris Jansing Reports” that capital punishment does not work and that the U.S. is the “only western civilized society” that even carries out such a sentence.
“Well I think, if you look at the research, there is no indication that that works to stop people from killing people,” Jansing said. “But I wonder [about] the politics of this, Stuart, because of his support and there’s some recent polls I think from Pew [Research], Gallup, legit organizations that show that the support in the United States for capital punishment is at a five-year low, it’s still around 50%, but it’s at a five-year low. We are the only western civilized society that has capital punishment. But obviously [Trump] thinks there is big political gain for this.” (RELATED: How America’s Capital Became Soft-On-Crime Haven)
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The Lincoln Project senior adviser Stuart Stevens asserted that Trump has long been obsessed with the death penalty, even for those who are innocent. He claimed that Trump will not benefit politically from this new effort since the U.S. has “moved on” from supporting the death penalty.
“I think this is sort of an old sort of 80’s and 90’s Republican trope, I think the country has moved on. I don’t think this gets him anything politically, it sounds completely just too political,” Stevens said. “It’s not going to stop any crime and people have come to that realization.”
MSNBC political analyst Ashley Parker argued that Trump is calling for this so-called “outlandish” idea to “bait” Democrats. She further argued that crime has significantly dropped in Washington.
Jansing, Stuart and Parker did not mention that only one murder has been committed in Washington since Trump’s federal takeover and deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital. An adult male suffered from a gunshot wound in the Southeast part of the city on Monday night and he later died from injuries at the hospital, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) confirmed to the Daily Caller.
Since the federal takeover, authorities have made over one thousand arrests, including MS-13 and Tren de Agua members, and confiscated over one hundred illegal firearms. Police made 87 arrests on Monday night, which included 39 illegal immigrants, Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese reported on Tuesday.
The nation’s capital had the fourth-highest murder rate in 2024, which stood above Chicago, New York City and Atlanta, according to the Rochester Institute of Technology. The MPD claimed that violent crime went down by 26% since 2024, although it did not include aggravated or felony assault in its data and has faced accusations of knowingly fudging its crime statistics.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) data shows that violent crime dropped by 10% in Washington since 2024 and that it has remained above pre-pandemic levels.
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