Republicans sure don’t like American cities these days. Conservative commentators have been trying to paint the nation’s metropolises as postapocalyptic hellscapes that have relapsed to 1970s conditions. They usually go after New York City, despite it being probably the safest it’s ever been in its 400-year history. On Monday, Fox News took on Seattle, but instead of finding a frightened populace desperate to escape soaring crime rates, they found…well, the opposite.
Fox News tried to do a bunch of scary man-on-the-street interviews about crime. It didn't go well. pic.twitter.com/49PVjwgFBB
— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) September 26, 2023
In a segment flagged by dedicated Media Matters far right watchdog Kat Abu (and caught by The Daily Beast), The Five aired what they hoped would be a scintillating man-on-the-street segment about Washington State’s biggest city, which easily riled-up co-host Jeanine Pirro called a “progressive hellscape.” But Pirro was gobsmacked that residents told reporter Johnny Belisario that, no, it’s pretty nice there.
One man Belisario found informed him he’s “never seen any crime in Seattle.” Instead he’s seen “fun and laughter and laughter and fun.”
One woman said she straight-up didn’t believe the crime statistics Belisario had fed her. When Belisario tried to convince her that people were getting carjacked and robbed left and right, she said she’s “never heard of anyone getting robbed.” She added that “people don’t just come up and try to rob you.”
When Belisario claimed he saw people “shooting up on the way down here,” the woman replied, “Oh, did you? Okay. And they were bothering you?” When he said he was in a car, she mocked him: “Oh no, you were in a car! They were hurting you so bad!”
While this woman spoke, the chyron tried to gin up outrage with the words “residents in blue cities are embracing the decay” — the decay which they tell them isn’t happening.
Another tried to explain how they could right the societal ills they claim are destroying Seattle and other cities: “Crime is a social issue that could be solved by giving people their basic needs.”
After the segment, the Five talking heads weighed in. Pirro was especially appalled.
“The arrogance and the ignorance of Seattle residents that Johnny interviewed is shocking. I mean, how could they be clueless?”
Jesse Watters claimed they were simply in “denial” that their place of residence had fallen on hard times. “And if you look at the demographics of the city, it’s understandable. It’s a very highly educated city—very white, very LGBTQ, very secular. And they all believe in the same thing, which is [that] criminalizing crime is racist.”
Per data published by the Seattle Police Department, violent and property crime did rise 4% in 2022 from the previous year, with violent crime at a 15-year high. But according to residents, it’s not the end-of-the-world situation Fox News hosts claim it is.
In other news, Republicans have a new reason to have the Big Apple: A New York judge ruled Monday that Trump and his Trump Organization cronies, including his two eldest sons, were guilty of fraud, which means the former president’s days doing business in his hometown are probably finito.
(Via Kat Abu and The Daily Beast)