Transcript:
Newsmax: Here now is National Police Association spokesperson and retired Chicago area police officer Betsy Brantner Smith. Journalist Melissa Francis is back with us here in studio as well. Betsy, I’d like to start with you because you’ve been listening to that conversation there, and you have a connection to Chicago. Why are you seeing these democrat leaders double down on things like, well, these guns are coming in from red states and, no, we don’t need the help. Why not, as to the superintendent’s point, why not work together?
Betsy Smith: Yeah. All those guns making their way from Mississippi to Chicago per, mayor Brandon Johnson. Look, Eddie Johnson just showed you why he’s one of the last great superintendents of the Chicago Police Department. What he says is exactly right. If we had true leadership in the city of Chicago in the way of Brandon Johnson, he would call up president Trump with his governor Pritzker on the phone and say, how can we work together?
How can you, the federal government, help the Chicago Police Department who is not just 2,000 police officers short, but is being constantly vilified and demonized by their mayor, by their political leadership. And instead, you see all these protests over the weekend. And I am told by people in Chicago that those protesters are mostly people either from out of town or from the suburbs who are gonna go back to their safe homes in Western Springs and Naperville and Highland Park and protest in favor of criminality and against assistance from the federal government.
Katrina Szish: Dangerous at at the most, Melissa. Very, very dangerous here. Why do you think Democrats are digging in their heels so much on this issue when it was evident, especially from president Trump’s election, that Americans are concerned about crime. They are concerned about their safety.
Melissa Francis: I think that Democrats and frankly politicians in general have gotten very good at taking any current event and trying to spin it in the direction of what their politics are. You can say you’re on the side of immigrants, and then all of a sudden, here’s somebody who came from a war torn country and got here and survived and they got stabbed. Then you can spin it and say, you know, you’re you’re looking at mass incarceration. Whatever it is, this reminds you that it’s not politics. It’s actually people’s lives that are at stake here, that it’s not about who’s gonna win the next election.
It’s when politics gets out of control, and all of a sudden, we aren’t doing the very basic things that we need to do, like safeguarding people on public transportation.
Melissa Francis: That’s when you know, like, just the political backlash dialogue is out of control. We have to get back to what’s important.
Newsmax: And they point to the the crime statistics. All they’re dropping, but the the the takeaway is that people don’t feel safe regardless of whether or not the crime.
Katrina Szish: Yeah. And they’re fundamentally not safe
Melissa Francis: It’s they’re not safe. When you look at that video, there was no reason for it.
Katrina Szish: Yeah. Right. Alright. We’re gonna have to leave it there. Betsy, Melissa, thank you.