‘We talk about it every day!’ Van Jones cuts off GOP strategist over crime claims

Media personality Van Jones pushed back on GOP strategist Pete Seat Saturday over accusations that Democrats don’t “talk about” crime, during a CNN panel discussing the ongoing federal takeover of Washington, D.C.

“I don't like crime, I'm not a part of some pro-crime lobby, but there's a smart way and a dumb way to do anything,” Jones said, speaking to President Donald Trump’s deployment of thousands of federal officers and National Guard members to the streets of the nation’s capital.

Jones argued that the president’s crime crackdown strategy, while temporarily successful, would fail in the long term and “create unintended consequences,” largely from the mass arrests leading to “over charging” that would “clog up the court” and incarcerate individuals that “shouldn’t be in the system at all.”

“This is not a stable, dependable way to deal with the problems that are happening in America,” he continued.

Seat, who was also the White House spokesperson under former President George W. Bush, pushed back against Jones’ critiques, and claimed that the federal takeover was necessary due to Democratic city leaders outright ignoring crime.

“Washington, D.C. has a murder rate that is five-times the national average, but no one wanted to talk about that!” Seat charged. “No one wanted to acknowledge those statistical facts.”

Jones, visibly emotional, fired back at Seat for claiming crime was being ignored.

“I don't like it when conservatives say that we pretend there's not crime; I don't know who you're talking about,” Jones said.

“I spent my entire life working in very tough neighborhoods, going to funerals with young people in caskets. Nobody cares more about this issue than the people who have to deal with it, and there has been progress.”

Now two weeks in, Trump’s D.C. takeover has yielded more than 1,000 arrests, and while crime has dropped significantly in the city, the operation has largely been, according to a review by the New York Times, “more of a sprawling dragnet than a targeted crime-fighting operation.”

The review found, according to police records, that federal officers are “often” performing “low-dollar buy-and-bust drug operations,” confronting D.C. residents to determine whether they’re consuming alcohol, and other low-level crime investigations.

Jones conceded that the operation had reduced crime in the short term, but warned that it could, if prolonged, have devastating long-term consequences.

“Now you have this solution, which right now, I think is temporarily correct but it's not long term,” Jones said. “I just don't like it when you say we weren't talking about crime; maybe you weren't talking about crime, but the people who actually deal with this, we talk about it every single day!”

Watch the video below or use this link.