Larry Kudlow: Democrats have supported the criminals, not the victims

Top of the news today: Joe Biden came to visit New York in the aftermath of the tragic deaths of police detectives Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora. Predictably, he fell back on the usual left-wing panaceas, namely gun control and federal funding for social services, with a small increase in federal money for new cops. 

The single best critique of the president came from my friend Heather Mac Donald in a brilliant Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. 

Quote: "Expect him to ignore the root cause of record-breaking violence—the demonization of law enforcement, to which he has contributed. 

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During his presidential campaign, Mr. Biden asserted that Black parents were right to fear for their children’s lives at the hands of the police. 

On April 12, 2021, the president tweeted about the need to address the ‘trauma that Black America experiences every day’ from police shootings. 

On Oct. 16, during the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service in Washington, he lamented that the promise of ‘equal and impartial justice’ was denied in ‘too many communities—black and brown’ and that too many families ‘are grieving unnecessary losses of their sons, their daughters, their fathers, their brothers’ from police violence." 

The problem is not gun control. New York has the toughest gun control laws in the country. The problem is that New York has one of the worst crime laws in the country. No bail, no jail is the watch word here. 

Biden and Governor Hochul have prattled on about the so-called 'iron pipeline' where guns come in from out of state. They decided to blame Georgia for New York's crime problems. 

That is utter nonsense. Utter nonsense. If they want to blame borders, how about stopping the catastrophe on our southern border where over 2 million illegals have crossed into the U.S. —many with criminal records — and they're being shipped around the country in the dead of night to locations where even local authorities have no prior knowledge.  

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Drug smuggling, sex trafficking, gun smuggling criminality. Disrespect for borders equals disrespect for laws equals disrespect for cops. 

If Biden wants to do something about crime, how about closing our open borders? Something he has steadfastly opposed doing.  

If you fail to prosecute recidivist criminals, if you downgrade felonies, including armed robbery and drug-dealing, if you let crazed teenage rappers get out of jail after several cop shootings, then you get high crime, a lack of security, unsafe streets, unsafe schools, unsafe businesses and an unsafe city. 

Unfortunately, Mayor Adams today embraced this crazy left-wing, woke Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg. Adams should not have done this. 

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has a better idea. He told Miranda Devine of the New York Post that if he were mayor, he would invite Bragg to come in to see him: "I would shut the door and tell him, I want you to write a memo retracting everything you said, right now." 

Then if Bragg refused, Rudy would go after Governor Hochul and start blaming her for every crime and death. That would be tough and that from a guy who turned New York City's crime problem around. Indeed, turned New York's economy around. In fact, turned the whole city around. It can be done, but you need to be tough.  

President Biden said today he was against defunding the police but, in fact, his party made their rallying cry during the election about defunding the police. 

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Kamala Harris said America should "reimagine public safety." Joe Biden called America "systemically racist" and said police funding should be "redirected." 

As Senator John Barrasso has written, "Biden has stacked his administration with anti-police radicals. His labor secretary cut funding for police as Boston's mayor. Two of his top Justice Department officials are on record supporting cuts to police." 

During the riots and burnings and smash-and-grab lootings of the past two years, Democrats have supported the criminals, not the victims. They blamed everybody except their own soft-on-crime policies. 

I repeat my related view that the crime wave is also an economic problem. High crime rates are akin to tax hikes. People won't go to work. They won't go back into the office buildings and they won't transact commerce. High crime rates, bad schools and high taxes are the death of New York. 

When Giuliani curtailed crime, he opened up opportunities for new businesses, more jobs and more prosperity.  

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People won't take the subway. They won't walk their kids to schools and they won't travel to work in this high-crime environment.  We need ultra-strong leadership here in the city.  

We need people who will listen to the thousands and thousands of cops who lined 5th avenue for two tragic funerals. Instead of beating up on the police, leaders should listen to the police. This is a New York story but it's a national story. This is a make-or-break moment for this city and a make-or-break moment for this country. 

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow's opening commentary on the February 3, 2022, edition of "Kudlow."