Rep. Raskin: “Crime Has Always Been Part Of Our History,” Everybody Is Struggling With Crime
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said on CNN that President Donald Trump is trying to militarize society and intimidate his political opponents with the National Guard.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He is the top Democrat Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. So thank you so much for being with us. You told my colleague Pamela Brown yesterday that you thought this military invasion, as you called it, is backfiring on Trump. How so? Because he certainly does not think it is backfiring. He clearly thinks it’s working for him. REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, it cuts against the deepest principles of the country. I mean, we were founded in opposition to a standing army, with a fear of a standing army. And the military is not supposed to be used for ordinary law enforcement purposes. In D.C., he was talking about cleaning up the graffiti and dealing with the blight of homelessness, which are obviously local, not federal issues. And he’s trying to militarize our society, intimidate his political opponents. The whole idea of picking cities based on their partisan leadership is absurd. I mean, there are lots of Republican cities and towns struggling with crime. Everybody is across the country, always. Crime has always been part of our history. And yet crime is down in D.C., for example. It’s at a 30-year low. It’s down in Baltimore. It’s down in Chicago. But the point is that in our system of federalism, the different branches of government and the departments of government are supposed to work together. If Donald Trump thinks he’s got some great ideas for Chicago or Miami or Houston, Texas or whatever, he should call a summit for the White House and say, hey, here’s some ideas where the feds can work together with states and localities, not have a series of rolling National Guard invasions of people’s cities.
