While much of the liberal media coverage about President Trump’s federalizing of Washington D.C.’s police and deployment of the National Guard has been negative and dismissive of crime in the capital, CNN’s Kasie Hunt provided a welcome respite Tuesday as she spent nearly 11 minutes on The Arena thoroughly grilling D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D) over the city’s soft-on-crime policies about youth crime, truancy in schools, no-cash bail, and retail theft.
She started with a basic question about why he’s been far more forceful in condemning President Trump’s move compared to Mayor Muriel Bowser. This drew a laughable answer:
Hunt took that pat-on-the-back answer and pushed back. Incredibly, Schwalb doubled down:
Following two attempts to have him answer whether he’ll sue the President, Hunt read two headlines to represent the level of depravity being committed on city streets by teens well below 18 years old:
Schwalb’s answer was remarkable in its tone-deafness:
Thankfully, Hunt didn’t do what’s often the case in legacy media by asking a tough question or two and then moving on.
Hunt next shifted to an exhaustive work of investigative journalism by The Washington Post about the state of D.C. Public Schools.
Notice Schwalb seemed completely unprepared to offer anything of substance:
No-cash bail was next on Hunt’s hit list: “One other thing I wanted to ask you about is this cashless bail that the President brought up from the podium. Does that policy make it harder for D.C. officials to hold repeat offenders, people that the city knows have been behind previous crimes in the city? And do there need to be any changes to that policy?”
Schwalb refused to offer any chance of common ground with the President, thus putting himself on par with those up in New York City:
Showing the seriousness of the issue, Hunt pulled out yet another issue and perhaps the most glaring one to anyone who’s visited D.C.: retail theft.
Hunt cited the desolate nature of CVS’s in the city as perhaps the worst example (click “expand”):
HUNT: How do you look at the connection if — if you think there is one between violent crime and a perceived acceptability of petty crime? I don’t know if you’ve tried to buy a razor blade or some deodorant at a CVS in the District of Columbia lately, but it’s a lot harder than it used to be. They’re all under lock and key. There have been some CVS pharmacies that have closed in various parts of the city because this is such a problem. Would you like to see federal resources help fight petty crime to try to send a message?
SCHWALB: I think that we’re ever additional resources can be brought to holding people accountable. We ought to look for ways to do that. I believe in respecting the law, laws matter, accountability matters and whether it’s a petty crime or a violent crime, people need to know that the rules matter and that they’re going to be fairly and uniformly enforced. And certainly, when we’re talking about communities and businesses that are adversely impacted by petty theft causing them, perhaps, as you suggest, to leave the neighborhoods, that has huge adverse impacts on people. So, my view is, if the federal government wants to assist and partner with the District of Columbia, we are welcome to it does not require a federal takeover or the kind of invocation of the Home Rule Act that, as I noted in the more than 50 years of our city, has never been invoked by any president.
Hunt gave Schwalb a brief break by inviting him to explain “how” he “would...like to see the system here changed to allow D.C. officials to do more, to fight crime,” but closed with sound from the head of the D.C. Police Union lambasting those clinging to (possibly fudged) crime statistics as proof there’s little to see here (click “expand”):
HUNT: And I’d like to play something that the D.C. Police union chairman had to say and just get you to respond to it, because I know we’ve — we’ve — we’ve been talking quite a bit about this. Let’s watch that and then we’ll talk to you.
GREGGORY PEMBERTON [on FBN’s Varney & Co., 08/12/25]: Crime in the District is out of control and something needs to be done about it. This concept that crime is down is really an old trope. [SCREEN WIPE] Our rank and file officers know that we’re going call to call to call for armed carjacking, stabbings, robberies, shootings, homicides —
ASHLEY WILLIAMS [on FBN’s Varney & Co., 08/12/25]: Oh!
PEMBERTON [on FBN’s Varney & Co., 08/12/25]: — and the crime isn’t going anywhere. And so, we welcome the assistance And whether that’s federal agents or the National Guard, we’ll use it again.
HUNT: Again, the police union chairman, what do you say to him?
SCHWALB: Yeah. With due respect to Mr. Pemberton, I think his facts are wrong. I think his talking points are wrong. We know what’s happening in our city. We have more work to do. We need to all work together to reduce crime to a zero number, but we are going in the right direction, under local control, local policies, and local leadership, and we need to stay the course.
To see the relevant CNN transcript from August 12, click here.
