In a podcast run by former Obama administration officials, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki criticized Fox News for covering the impact of “soft-on-crime” policies.
Despite the violent-crime surge amid the “defund the police” movement and George Soros-funded prosecutors refusing to enforce the law, Psaki mocked the network’s coverage priorities during the podcast as she looked at a nearby split screen of feeds from CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Fox News.
“Do you remember the four boxes that we had on all the TVs, right, which is on my TV right now?” Psaki said during the Jan. 25 episode of “Pod Save America” with Jon Favreau, Daniel Pfeiffer, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor. “So right now, just to give you a sense.”
She pointed out that CNN and MSNBC were covering the Ukraine-Russia tensions, with 8,500 U.S. troops on high alert. CNBC was talking about the stock market. And Fox News had host Jeanine Pirro, Psaki said, with a laugh, “talking about ‘soft-on-crime consequences.'”
“I mean what does that even mean, right?
“So there’s an alternate universe on some coverage,” Psaki said. “What’s scary about it is a lot of people will watch that.”
Meanwhile, with 12 major Democratic-led American cities breaking annual homicide records last year, the news has been punctuated with stories of people with an extensive criminal record being accused of murder after having been released on minimal bail. They include the man charged with the murder of a UCLA grad student and the man charged with driving at high speed through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and killing six people and injuring 60 others.
Psaki was asked in December by Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy whether or not the increase in criminal activity, including “smash-and-grab robberies,” had anything to do with “soft-on-crime prosecutors.”
“I would say we have seen, I’m not going to attribute the reasoning from here, what I will tell you is we have seen an increase in crime over the course of the pandemic. There are a range of reasons for that,” Psaki began.
“And what our focus is on is what we can do to address it. The president has proposed additional funding in the budget to make sure local police departments and cops have the funding they need. We have also worked directly with police departments in areas where they are seeing the highest impact of the crime, the retail theft, which we have great concern about. That’s what our focus is on currently, is action, and doing what we can to make sure the funding is out there to the communities that need it the most.”
See Psaki’s remarks on the “Pod Save America” podcast:
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On Twitter, Tom Fitton, the president of the Washington watchdog Judicial Watch, answered Psaki’s question of what “soft-on-crime consequences” means.
“It means dead cops, rape victims, and attacks on children.”
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