Margaret Hoover criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to send National Guard members to Washington, D.C.
On Monday, Trump declared a state of emergency and invoked the D.C. Home Rule Act, announcing that he is taking control of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department and deploying 800 National Guard members to the nation’s capital. The president alleged that crime is so bad in the city, that military intervention is needed, even though violent crime there hit a 30-year low. Trump stated that he is considering similar moves in other large cities run by Democrats.
On Wednesday’s installment of The Lead, Republican operative Scott Jennings lauded the decision.
“The city is crime-ridden,” he said. “I saw a guy get murdered in Union Station in February at four in the afternoon.”
“Murdered?” host Jake Tapper followed up.
“I saw the body hit the floor at the bottom of the escalator on the second floor,” Jennings said. “And so everybody who visits there, everybody who lives there knows it’s a serious problem. You have extra eyes and ears. They’ve arrested criminals. They’re getting illegal guns off the street. People feel safer. Tourists feel safer. What is the problem?”
Hoover, the conservative host of Firing Line on PBS, offered a different view. She said while deploying the National Guard to D.C. is “legally permissible,” it’s
“And the issue is that he’s normalizing this for American eyes and ears and making it seem like, ‘Oh, look, there’s a crime problem. We’ll just send the military,'” Hoover said. “[T]here is a slippery slope problem, Scott. You and I both know that. I mean, we come from a conservative pedigree that really respects checks and balances, that respects the military’s lane and civil society’s lane and police’s lane. And there are ways to secure a city.”
After some brief crosstalk with Jennings, Hoover concluded, “The urban policies in many of these cities have been failing, but the answer isn’t to send the military in. You send the military in, you think that’s normal? We’re gonna have a lot of problems down the road.”
Watch above via CNN.