Hypocrisy was on full display on Wednesday’s Morning Joe as New York Times columnist David French joined the MSNBC show to discuss how Democrats should respond to President Trump on crime. Despite all the claims that Trump would be abusing his authority if he deployed the National Guard to blue cities, French, who, despite endorsing Kamala Harris, fancies himself as one of the few remaining principled conservatives left in America, advised Democrats to blame Trump for the 2020 crime crisis.
Co-host Willie Geist opened up the floor, “So, David French, the question is then for Democrats, and you can offer some free political advice, too, if you'd like to. What is the way through this? We have heard Governor Moore, Governor Pritzker, Governor Newsom saying, 'We welcome partnership, we welcome more cops. We want people in our streets to feel safe, but we're not doing it his way. We're not going to have troops walking down the streets of Baltimore and Chicago and Los Angeles.'”
French began, “I mean, you have to use the truth to blow up his narrative.”
According to French, the very same people who accuse Trump of acting like a king or a fascist dictator should also attack him for not micromanaging cities in 2020, “And the truth is this: that people forget he was president in 2020. And when crime really exploded, when violent crime really exploded in a way that was terrifying and dangerous, it happened in 2020, in his presidency, his first term.”
It’s probably not the best idea for Democrats to remind voters of 2020, when left-wing Black Lives Matter activists rioted in the streets and looted department stores in the name of “social justice,” but French suggested Democrats could still declare victory:
Ever since 2020, I think Democrats could say we've been dealing with the fallout, and we've been trying to wrestle and bring this under control and have had a lot of success. You can look at declining crime rates in the Biden term. You can—these declines have continued in this year. So there has been a story of success to say, ‘He was in charge when this blew up. And we've been dealing with the fallout ever since.’
In addition to being hypocritical, French’s urgings are not actually truthful. Blue city mayors and blue state governors own their responses to the 2020 crime wave. It’s not Trump’s fault that former Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz waited to deploy Minnesota’s National Guard, the mayor fiddled while Portland burned, Seattle let a bunch of left-wingers occupy parts of the city with their so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or any other number of examples.
Here is a transcript for the August 27 show:
MSNBC Morning Joe
8/27/2025
6:42 AM ET
WILLIE GEIST: So, David French, the question is then for Democrats, and you can offer some free political advice, too, if you'd like to. What is the way through this? We have heard Governor Moore, Governor Pritzker, Governor Newsom saying, we welcome partnership, “We welcome more cops. We want people in our streets to feel safe, but we're not doing it his way. We're not going to have troops walking down the streets of Baltimore and Chicago and Los Angeles.”
DAVID FRENCH: I mean, you have to use the truth to blow up his narrative. And the truth is this: that people forget he was president in 2020. And when crime really exploded, when violent crime really exploded in a way that was terrifying and dangerous, it happened in 2020, in his presidency, his first term. Ever since 2020, I think Democrats could say we've been dealing with the fallout, and we've been trying to wrestle and bring this under control and have had a lot of success. You can look at declining crime rates in the Biden term. You can—these declines have continued in this year. So there has been a story of success to say “He was in charge when this blew up. And we've been dealing with the fallout ever since.”
