Mini-Post: Dirty Laundry

I make my livin' off the evenin' news

Just give me somethin', somethin' I can use

People love it when you lose

They love dirty laundry

Dirty Laundry, Don Henley

I watch the evening news... Breaking News... Murder in __________

That is usually how the news starts off and does that distort the perception of crime when it is always blasted on the front page.

The Politics of Crime Are Perilous for Left and Right Alike

President Trump has latched on to concerns about crime, as liberals point to its decline. The politics often flip when it comes to mass shootings.

The New York Times

By Shaila Dewan

Aug. 19, 2025

It was an object lesson in the politics of crime.

After President Trump called Washington a city of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor,” and summoned the National Guard and the F.B.I. to patrol its streets, his opponents on the left reacted with righteous indignation.

They called the move a cynical move to exploit a crime crisis that they say does not exist, in a city where violent crime is at a 30-year low.

But whatever the statistics say, polls consistently show that many people in the nation’s capital — including in communities that typically vote Democratic — are deeply concerned about public safety. That makes downplaying street crime politically perilous.

Mr. Trump’s opponents had walked into a trap. But it’s one that Republicans had also faced only a few days earlier.

[...]

Statistics are far from the only factor in how people feel. Violence and crime can provoke intensely personal, emotional reactions, helping people decide where to live and whom to vote for. And, individual incidents can always be used to score political points — arguably, any attack is one too many. The attempted carjacking of a former DOGE employee and his date apparently pushed Mr. Trump to make good on his threats to take over the capital’s police department.

Polling shows that Americans believe that crime is getting worse, even when it is getting better. But that is not simply because the public is easily swayed by social media posts and crime-saturated local news, said Adam Gelb, the president and C.E.O. of the Council on Criminal Justice, a policy think tank.

There were comments on Yahoo about the crime in DC and the person was all for Trump's invasion. One person said that crime was out of hand. I replied that it was higher in Trump's first administration and put a link to the FBI data. He called FBI data "fake news."