‘She Needs to Get Off Twitter and Fox News’: Seattle Mayor Fires Back at SD GOP Gov’s Claim Democratic-Run Cities Are Being ‘Overrun by Violent Mobs’

MSNBC broke into the third night of the Republican National Convention with an instant response to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s incendiary, fear-mongering narrative that “violent mobs” are taking over the nation’s urban areas, inviting Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to weigh in after her city was specifically called out.

During the Republican governor’s speech, she echoed the “law and order” narrative that President Donald Trump and his party have chosen as a driving message for his re-election effort. Similarly, she stoked fears that cities being run by Democratic elected officials have the equivalent of lawless hellholes because they have experienced unrest marked by violence and looting amid weeks of ongoing peaceful protests after the George Floyd killing.

“From Seattle in Portland to Washington and New York, Democrat[ic]-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs,” Noem claimed. “The violence is rampant, there is looting, chaos, destruction and murder. People that can afford to flee have fled.”

Primetime host Rachel Maddow appeared just as Noem’s speech concluded and doubled back to that specific charge Noem had just made.

“As we have said over the course of this coverage, we will interject when we feel like there is something that’s important and deliberate and very wrong that should be corrected just so that we feel responsible about our broadcast,” Maddow explained. “Joining us for more on that and to essentially run a reality check on that assertion is the mayor of the great city of Seattle who is joining us on short notice.”

“She is very right about one thing  and that is our values are at stake: equality, freedom and opportunity,” Durkan said. “Unfortunately, this president does not stand for any of those values. Her caricature of the great cities across America is not only wrong, it is purposefully wrong. I think she needs to get off Twitter and get off Fox News and come see our city. Seattle is a city that I raise my two children in and I would not have raised them anywhere else. There are fine young man as their friends. Our violent crime is down 5% this year. We have — people are not leaving Seattle. In fact, again, our housing prices continue to increase, and the people moving here are young families.”

Maddow then followed up to ask if false claims about the state of her city, which saw protesters occupy a small, six-block section of the city’s downtown for weeks, affected its ability to “govern and Seattle’s ability to get the resources it needs?”

“It did have an impact this summer on something because the president and Fox News were so insistent on driving that message that people started to come there to make the reality real,” Durkan claimed. “But our city, like every city in America right now, with Covid-19 and a challenging economy has a lot to work through, and that’s where we need federal leadership. And that’s where he has absolutely failed. Mayors in America were on the front line of Covid-19 because there was no federal leadership.”

“We’re on the federal lines of the civil rights movement of our time because there is no federal leadership,” she added. “He cannot answer those questions, so he tries to change the topic. And Seattle is a great city. We have some of the most innovative players anywhere. We have a growing city that has real — the best workforce anywhere. And it’s not as portrayed by the president or by governor.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.