A former White House aid condemned “white liberals” for trying to defund the police amid rising crime rates across the U.S.
During an interview on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher asked Paul Begala about the Democratic Party’s efforts to fight crime.
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“Quality of life issues is what we’re going to be – what we’re going to decide the election on,” Maher said. “I saw this in the L.A. Times yesterday, ‘What’s the matter with Portland?’”
Maher noted rising violence and homelessness in Portland, Oregon, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, and claimed the Democrats controlled Portland and many other major cities with skyrocketing crime rates.
“They need to get out in front of it,” Begala, who is a former White House aide during the Clinton administration, said. “I want a Democrat to stand and say some people belong in jail.” Begala then claimed that Bakersfield, California, the hometown of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, had a “much higher murder rate” than San Francisco.
“Why aren’t Democrats talking about that?” Begala asked, before claiming that states that voted for former President Donald Trump had a 40 percent higher murder rate.
A number of Democrats in the House of Representatives also voted on Thursday to block a D.C. law that would have reduced certain criminal penalties, including Democratic Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, who had been assaulted in the lobby of her apartment building last week.
“For Democrats and my fellow liberals, it’s the people we supposedly care about are the victims of crime,” Begala added. “Elon Musk is not going to get his stupid Tesla carjacked. It’s poor people, it’s working people.”
“They’re the victims of crime, and by the way, if you look at all the polling and the voting, it’s those folks who are voting for more security, more safety, more and better cops,” he continued. “It’s the white liberals who want to defund police.”
This comes as crime has surged to an all-time high across the U.S., thanks to the Biden administration’s lax approach to crime.
“I try to stay neutral when I look at these things and say that this is a reason or that’s a reason without the politics, but the reality is, and law enforcement is becoming more and more beholden to leftist mayors and governors and even the president,” FBI special agent and former Navy SEAL Jonathan T. Gilliam said during an interview on “Fox & Friends First” earlier last year.
