MARK PENN: Trump is trying to save 100,000 American lives while Democrats let cities spiral out of control

Nearly 100,000 people died last year in violence-related deaths. It wasn’t in Gaza or Ukraine. It was here in the United States. Deaths from opioids like fentanyl and murders totaled just under 100,000 — down from the year before. The war is right here in America.  

These numbers are families ripped apart; children lost; communities unsafe. And these overall statistics sugarcoat the areas with the highest numbers lost, which are five and 10 times the national average. This is not about politics, but about American lives.  

The denial of this reality is one of the great scandals of our time and why so little was done to stop it until now. Every life is precious, and it’s big news when a deranged individual shoots up a church, but the equivalent of that is happening multiple times a day in many places, and it seems to be hidden from the public consciousness. 

EXPERT FLIPS SCRIPT ON DEMS PUSHING ‘CHERRY-PICKED’ CRIME STATS TO RESIST TRUMP’S DC CRACKDOWN

The governor of Illinois said that they had crime under control and didn’t need any federal help. Nearly 800 people were murdered last year in Cook County. Another 1,000 died of drug overdoses. That’s about five people every day. Nothing to see here. Cook County may not have the highest crime rate (that’s reserved for St. Louis, which has the highest murder rate of any major city), but it has the highest number of deaths per year. 

President Donald Trump has taken some strong measures on closing the border, threatening China and other countries over fentanyl and taking over policing Washington D.C. He has gone right at trying to end the hidden war killing so many, right here.  

And the early signs are that his methods are shaking things up and are working to attack problems that under the Biden administration had largely been allowed to fester. The focus on policy was to ignore the border and make everything about racial equality and climate change. Numbers may have come down since the post-pandemic surge, but they are still way too high.  

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To his credit, Trump has gone right at the border, organized crime, the cartels and the street crime infecting many cities. The border is closed and even D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser recognizes that the measures have brought crime down, taken guns off the street and curtailed carjackings. Virtually overnight, it has made the nation’s capital safer, proving we don’t have to just sit here and let our inner cities be written off.  

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We can go right to the core, repeat criminals who have been allowed to game the system over the last few years. One criminal in D.C., being hauled off last week, started yelling as he was being taken away about how he would be out in no time despite a rap sheet Al Capone would have been proud of. Maybe not this time.  

The Democratic response has been to wail about “authoritarianism.” California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom is taking the gloves off. This is not what President Bill Clinton did when I worked with him — he made stopping crime and creating the safest big cities in the world a key goal.  

Instead, Democrats should have reached out to find a way to work together on these issues — they should have asked to go to the Oval Office and work out the issues they had so that civil rights would be protected without letting crime continue as usual. But then that might possibly give some recognition to Trump and the opposition party and that is a no-go in today’s world. So, even on losing issues, they instead hold their base with shrill rhetoric.  

Lost in this political battle are the lives and families involved. Eight thousand people a month are being killed right here by drug overdoses and murders. Yet there will be no campus protests. No signs saying “save the lives.” No posters of carjacking victims. But the president is going right at these problems – and Democrats need to find a way to join the movement rather than resist at all. 

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