On Friday's CNN Newsroom, during a discussion after President Donald Trump's speech to the FBI National Academy, host Poppy Harlow fretted over the President calling out the high murder rate in Chicago as she suggested there was "hypocrisy" in trying to punish the sanctuary city while complaining about the high crime rate.
As she began her comments, Harlow was concerned about the President fomenting a "wedge" between police and communities:
Could this in part drive a wedge between some law enforcement and the communities that they police back at home? You heard the President single out Chicago and the murder rate in Chicago. Everyone knows -- the police commissioner, Rahm Emanuel, the mayor -- knows what the problem is in Chicago, right? And it has to be resolved.
The CNN host then bemoaned Attorney General Jeff Sessions trying to crack down on sanctuary cities as she added:
However, to hear him go after Chicago and say, "What the hell," in his words, "is going on in Chicago?" Lest we forget that this is the Trump administration who -- through Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- tried through the court system to pull funding from Chicago because it is a sanctuary city. Dick Durbin -- Senator of Illinois -- said, "You want to cut federal funds for this city and then criticize the murder rate in the city." There's some hypocrisy there.
CNN political analyst Alex Burns went along with the premise of her question as he responded:
Sure, and I think you have to view him holding up Chicago and Baltimore and other cities the way he does as really purely a political exercise.
This reflects a world view that the President has expressed going back to the 1980s, long before he ever got into politics, that basically the problems with society are found in, you know, high crime, very diverse cities where there is significant poverty and significant social problems that come along with it.
That's something -- is one of the few areas where the President has been very, very consistent throughout his life.
