Mollie Hemmingway: We have a violent crime crisis in this country (2024)

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," April 26, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R-SC): They filibustered Tim Scott's bill because they didn't want Tim Scott and President Trump to get credit for it. There's no reason we shouldn't have done it last time. We'll try again.

Qualified immunity is a very big deal. If you want to destroy policing in America, make sure that every cop can be sued when they leave the house.

REP. KAREN BASS, (D-CA): I don't know if I am willing to blow up the deal. I don't consider that blowing it up, but we do have to look at ways. If Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott can show us some other way to hold officers accountable, because this has been going on for just decades, and officers right now are not really held accountable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: The status of police reform legislation up on Capitol Hill talked about over the weekend. This as President Biden gets ready for 100 days in office and also an address to a joint session of Congress.

Let's bring in our panel, Harold Ford Jr., former Tennessee Congressman, CEO of Empowerment and Inclusion Capital, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and Jonah Goldberg, editor in chief of "The Dispatch." Jonah, let me start with you, the prospects of getting some kind of bipartisan solution to this as we continue to see these incidents. Tim Scott has optimism, senator from South Carolina, but he did last time too.

JONAH GOLDBERG, "THE DISPATCH": Yes, I think the difference here is the Democrats really want to get some kind of bill. I think Lindsey Graham was right in the soundbite about the Democrats filibustering it and killing it last time. And Karen Bass, who I think it is way too ideological on this stuff, but she does understand that if she does not get Tim Scott to sign on, they are not going to get the 10 Republicans they need in the Senate to be able to get this past a filibuster. So I'm a little hopeful that something will get worked out.

BAIER: Mollie, this comes as the attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced another investigation of another police department, the Louisville Police Department. This adds to the Minneapolis investigation that's ongoing. Your thoughts of the federal actions launching this?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": The police are not perfect, and there is room for improvement, and certainly there's room for reforming the police. If it were being done in good faith it would have been done last year when there was broad bipartisan support, and the Democrats did not want to do that for political reasons.

But less than having a police crisis in this country, we have a violent crime crisis in this country. What has happened in that last year since Democrats decided not to do police reform is that violent crime has gone up in all of the major cities, or all but one of the major cities, like the top 60 cities, and you've seen a 33 percent increase in homicides, upticks in arson and rape and robbery. And these are things that affect people in low income communities, precisely the communities that we are told people care about.

I'm not sure if we need police reform so much as we need media reform, because it has been a decade of the media really telling lies about the state of policing in this country and what the real problems are with crime in this country.

BAIER: Harold, we have seen all kinds of statements from all kinds of folks. Over the weekend there were a lot of bombastic statements about police departments around the country. This is one from this week on ABC, Angela Rye, talking about the Columbus, Ohio, police department and that incident with the police officer firing on the one girl with the knife saving the other girl.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGELA RYE: The Columbus Police Department isn't about one bad apple. It's about an entire department. So we have to talk about qualified immunity without fighting with buzzwords, but really talking about how we solve for a system that by design from its inception was designed to capture and return enslaved people back to their masters. If we can't uproot what was intended, we will forever have this problem, and we have to be willing to have honest discourse.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: There's no pushback to that at that roundtable. What is she talking about?

HAROLD FORD JR., FORMER TENNESSEE REPRESENTATIVE: There are a lot of thoughts around this issue, and thanks for having me on. Can you imagine an American democracy that is not at war with itself, but instead is powerfully asserting our economic and national security interests here and abroad? I listen to Mollie, I think she is largely right, as we think about gun reform and we think about the challenges around crime and communities. Imagine if we had gun legislation where Cory Booker and Tim Scott and Karen Bass were leading, where we actually had some trackers or some way to trace these guns.

These gang members are not going into gun shows or gun stores or attending gun shows and buying these guns. There is a way to address this issue, and I hope that the president, who I think has done the right thing on COVID and COVID vaccine distribution and COVID relief package, that's why the country elected him, it's now time, I think, to pave the way, to push forward not at war, but to find ways to find bipartisan solutions on immigration, gun reform, I would argue criminal justice reform, even more so than what President Trump was able to accomplish, and obviously infrastructure and immigration. That's where the focus needs to be.

And as we talk about these issues, let's talk about them honestly and be willing to put all of the issues on the table and try to rally and galvanize broad support for solutions.

BAIER: It sounds great, and I hope it happens. We'll see how it develops over the next coming days.

As we go to break, I want to play this one soundbite. Not a lot of people around the country watched the Academy Awards, but there was a great speech about refusing hate by Tyler Perry. As we had to break, we will listen to a little bit of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TYLER PERRY, ACTOR: Refuse hate. Don't hate anybody. I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican or because they are black or white or LGBTQ.

(APPLAUSE)

PERRY: I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer. I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian.

Stand in the middle, because that's where healing happens. That's where conversation happens. That's where change happens. It happens in the middle. So anyone who wants to meet me in the middle to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment, and to help lift someone's feet off the ground, this one is for you too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does the president have any comment or reaction to Kerry telling the Iranians about covert military action on the part of Israel?

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We are not going to comment on leaked tapes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our security partnership in the region is based on the unshakable trust between the United States and Israel. We need to maintain that, and sharing sensitive information like this, if it happened, could really strike at the heart of the bilateral relationship.

NED PRICE, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: If you go back and look at press recording from the time, this certainly was not secret, and the governments that were involved were speaking to this publicly on the record.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Right, by the allegation is that the former secretary of state out of office talk to the Iranians about specific actions the Israelis took inside Syria against Iranian-backed forces. It's in this leaked tape with Zarif saying it was former U.S. foreign secretary John Kerry who told me Israel had launched more than 200 attacks on Iranian forces in Syria.

We're back with the panel. Jonah, a big deal?

GOLDBERG: I think it definitely could be a big deal. For sure the House and the Senate should call Kerry before them and ask for some clarification about all of this.

I should also just note very quickly, everything in this tape confirms everything that critics of the Obama administration's Iran policy had been saying the entire time. Zarif is a paper tiger. The country is run by the Republican Guards, and then also that Soleimani was a legitimate target for the Trump administration and we should all be glad that he was taken out.

BAIER: Yes, Mollie, that is a big takeaway, too, is how big a factor Soleimani was if you rewind to what current lawmakers are saying about that action now.

HEMINGWAY: It was so interesting to hear that perspective of what a big deal that was and how much more important that was than even if the U.S. had entered into a hot war with Iran. I'm struck by what Ned Price says about how this was public information when Zarif himself says he was astonished when John Kerry shared this news about covert operations with Israel. If it is true, and there absolutely should be questions about this revocation of a security clearance, removal from the National Security Council, more than anything the Biden administration, and just like the Obama administration before, should really reconsider this idea that Israel is not our ally, but that Iran is. That has been the underlying sense throughout their foreign policy and is really at odds with what our history should tell us.

BAIER: Clearly, they're trying to get back to the table on the nuclear deal now. Representative Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin has a statement out tonight, "It's unfathomable that any U.S. diplomat past or present would leak intelligence to the world's leading sponsor of terrorism at the expanse of one of our staunchest allies. If this report is accurate and he did leak intelligence, John Kerry should resign." It matches a lot of other statements. Here is John Kerry on Bill Maher's show back in 2018.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL MAHER, COMEDIAN: You're out of office and you met with the Iranian, or talked to the Iranian --

JOHN KERRY, SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL CLIMATE ENVOY: I did, absolutely.

MAHER: Yes, but that's been done before?

KERRY: Everybody does. Harry Kissinger for 40 years had been traveling to Russia, traveling to China, talks with the leaders. There is absolutely nothing unusual about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: And yet Michael Flynn did it with the Russians before the Trump administration got in, and it was all about the Logan Act. I will give you the last word, Harold.

FORD: Time and facts will tell about what John Kerry did. But what's clear is more politicians and policymakers have gotten Syria wrong than right, from Obama's red line to President Trump cutting and running on the Kurds, neither were the best examples of foreign policy in the region. There is enough destabilization in that region where you don't want the Iranians having a nuclear weapon. So anything that gets us back to the table I support, and I hope President Biden figures out a way to get it done.

BAIER: And Jonah, do you think they are coming back to the table?

GOLDBERG: I don't think so. And if the hardliners, as it were, really run the show, they're not going to go back to the table because they never wanted the deal in the first place.

BAIER: When we come back, tomorrow's headlines tonight.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, a look at tomorrow's headlines with the panel. Harold?

FORD: Cory Booker, Tim Scott, and Karen Bass alliance paves way for commonsense police reform bill, and hopefully it unleashes other bipartisan reform bills.

BAIER: All right, Mollie?

HEMINGWAY: Today Philip Wegmann at Real Clear Politics reported that governors were upset that Biden and Harris had skipped out on every single one of the weekly COVID meetings with governors. And today they admitted that they had skipped out on that. This is in big contrast with how Mike Pence had chaired each one of those weekly meetings for months. The Biden administration seems to have just continued what the Trump administration did, but not even bothering to show up for these meetings.

BAIER: Do you think, Mollie, that President Biden is saving the mask unveil of guidelines outside for his big speech?

HEMINGWAY: Perhaps he will. I think people are more concerned about all of the problems with the border chaos and other issues that have happened in the first 100 days.

BAIER: All right, Jonah, bring it home here, tomorrow's headlines?

GOLDBERG: CDC eases guidance, says that deceased will only have to wear masks for 30 days after death.

(LAUGHTER)

BAIER: I knew I could count on you to bring it home. Thank you very much, panel.

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