'Spin': Red state cities exposed for sending troops to DC while having higher crime rates

President Donald Trump has received support in his effort to take military control of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., with Republican governors sending hundreds of their own troops to patrol the streets of the nation's capital, all in the name of addressing crime. However, the actual number of arrests related to this initiative remains questionable.

A bigger issue, CNN analyst Marshall Cohen told anchor Boris Sanchez, is that most of the governors who are sending in troops have higher crime rates in their own cities.

"Marshall, take us through the data," said Sanchez.

"Yeah, Boris, there's a lot of talk, there's a lot of spin, but the numbers don't lie," said Cohen. "So we pulled the latest FBI violent crime statistics to find out what's going on."

"You just mentioned the National Guard troops," he continued. "There are 2,000 of them here in our nation's capital, half of them from the D.C. National Guard. Half of them come from these six states. Republican governors in these states sent troops here to join the D.C. guard: Ohio, West Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. And we looked at the data, and there's actually 10 cities in those states that have a higher violent crime rate than D.C."

He pointed to Cleveland and Toledo in Ohio, as well as Memphis, Tennessee.

"They were number one last year in the nation for violent crime. Nashville. Charleston, West Virginia, the capital city there. And then two down in Louisiana, Shreveport and Lafayette. They all had a higher violent crime rate last year," he said.

"But if that's not bad enough for us, look at this," Cohen added. "The homicide rate. The murder rate last year in D.C. — it was 27 per 100,000. Not saying that's good. That's not good. It's too high. But look at this. Seventy-seven last year in Jackson, the capital city in Mississippi. And that's why the critics of this are saying it's not really about public safety. Because if that was the case, you'd be looking at some of these other states. It's more to put on a show for Donald Trump."

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