Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York noted the “nuanced” coverage of crime in Washington as reporters reconcile their own experiences with crime.
York referred to the coverage of President Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday that he would deploy the National Guard to the capital to assist law enforcement in combating crime. Troops arrived on Tuesday and will remain in the district for at least 30 days.
During Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday, York explained that the majority of reporters “lived in the most expensive and safest neighborhood in Washington.” However, that “changed over the years” as reporters “spread all around the city in gentrifying neighborhoods.”
“There is a little more nuanced reaction among a number of reporters who live in Washington, D.C. And that is the difference,” York said. “They experience crime. They know people who experience crime. They are looking at this and saying, ‘I can’t go out there and say this is not a problem because it is a problem.’”
From 2022 to 2023, the district had a huge carjacking problem, York explained. The attorney general for the District of Columbia wrote letters asking automakers Kia and Hyundai to recall models released between 2011 and 2021 because they were, as York described, “too easy to steal.”
At the time, Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Metropolitan Police Department offered residents who owned a 2011 through 2021 Kia or Hyundai vehicle a free anti-theft steering wheel lock. Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from the district, offered a similar device to its residents.
WHY TRUMP IS RIGHT ON DC CRIME
“When people look at what Trump is doing, they are saying this is much more likely to work,” York said.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau made 10 arrests in Washington as of Tuesday evening.