Fox News host Lawrence Jones pressed Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on Wednesday about his criticism of President Donald Trump’s administration’s effort to clamp down on crime in Washington, D.C.
Trump announced on Monday that he was taking actions, including declaring a “public safety emergency” and deploying the National Guard, to combat violent crime in the nation’s capital. Jones noted on “Fox & Friends” that black Americans were dying in the district, but Moore claimed deploying the National Guard was not necessary to mitigate violent crime.
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“I’m just curious why you’ve been so critical of the administration trying to solve this problem. Is it the process that you don’t like?” Jones asked. “Because it looks like they’re doing the same that you’re doing, which is surging resources to the city.”
“[A]ll I’m saying is this is if we want to have a serious conversation about violent crime, we can have a serious conversation about violent crime,” Moore responded. “And I would love to be able to share the multitude of things that we are doing in the state of Maryland, where we are urging support for local law enforcement … for predictive analytics and technologies … community groups and allowing more support for the mayor and the county executive and the people on the ground doing the work.”
Moore additionally asserted he did not need to deploy the National Guard to make progress on crime in his state.
“Governor, it’s a different war now. There’s more brothers dying here in these cities than overseas. So isn’t it fair to have them there? And it’s Democrats that agree with this measure,” Jones retorted. “Don’t take my word for it: the local cop there, the police chief, agrees with this, the mayor of the city agrees with this. And it’s because people that look like me and you are dying.”
The DC Police Union announced on Monday that it backed Trump’s efforts to take over the Metropolitan Police Department [MPD].
“No one needs to explain to me the pain that is taking place in so many communities … urban, rural, and suburban, who are being besieged by this issue of gun violence … chronically and generationally not feeling safe inside of your neighborhood … what people want more than anything in those communities is they don’t want performative, they want performance,” Moore said. “They’re not looking for someone to walk around with military fatigues and a big gun.”
“They’re looking for someone who actually understands how to make people feel safe and how to make people actually safe in their communities,” he added. “Our National Guards are not trained for this … we know the missions that they are trained for and municipal policing is not one of them. And so if we want to be serious about making people safe, let’s actually do the things that make people safe.”
While Democratic lawmakers have responded to Trump’s ire regarding violent crime in the city by asserting that it decreased by 35% in 2024, they were citing local police data that exclude crimes such as felony and aggravated assault.
MPD only includes homicide, sex abuse crimes, assault with a dangerous weapon and robbery in its overall “violent crime” statistics that showed a decline in 2024. Aggravated assault and felony assault without the use of weapons are also excluded.
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