Joe Scarborough reads text on-air from ‘very liberal’ person unloading on ‘rampant’ DC crime

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough read a text on-air Tuesday from a “very liberal” person expressing concerns about violent crime in Washington, D.C.

President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he was taking actions — including declaring a “public safety emergency” and deploying the National Guard — to address violent crime in the nation’s capital. The person, whose text Scarborough read on “Morning Joe,” said he was not fully against Trump deploying the National Guard, noting his own friend group’s experiences with crime in the district.

WATCH:

“I want to read you a text from a someone … I won’t say their name, but … we’ll just say that they’re very liberal,” Scarborough said.

“He says, ‘This may sound controversial, but I’m not totally opposed to Trump’s National Guard move in D.C. I know he’s doing it for politics, but crime remains rampant,’” Scarborough read. “‘I’ve had too many friends carjacked, shot at. None of us will walk more than three blocks after 8 p.m. 13 year-olds are committing many of these crimes. Quite a change from a decade ago, when things were much calmer.’”

The MSNBC host also noted his own experience with crime when he resided in the district.

“Well, that actually sounds like the D.C. that I lived in when I lived a block behind the Supreme Court. And, you know, every three days, one of my neighbors was getting held up at gunpoint,” he said. “I mean, there has been a crime problem in D.C. At the same time, obviously, a lot of concerns: will this look like June of 2020?”

Although legacy media outlets have reported that crime decreased by 35% in 2024, their numbers rely on local police data that leave out crimes such as felony and aggravated assault, making the district’s crime problem appear better than it is since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) only includes homicide, sex abuse crimes, assault with a dangerous weapon and robbery in its overall “violent crime” statistics that showed a decline in 2024. Aggravated assault and felony assault without the use of weapons are left out, although Washington law characterizes them as violent offenses inflicting bodily injury and despite the fact that aggravated assaults are increasing, according to the FBI.

The FBI includes a broader range of assaults in its violent crime data for the district, based on what local police provide to the bureau. The FBI’s data thus demonstrate that the number of violent offenses in the district only fell by 10% in 2024 and remained slightly elevated compared to 2018.

The FBI’s data also indicated that homicides have remained higher than pre-pandemic levels in the years following 2020, with the exception of 2021, a year when the district filed faulty data, according to Axios. The district also experienced 12% more aggravated assaults with or without a weapon in 2024 than in 2023, along with 37% more than in 2022, according to the FBI.

Moreover, high-profile violent crime cases have recently occurred across Washington, including former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee Edward Coristine, also known as “Big Balls,” receiving a brutal beating when he intervened in a carjacking of a woman at around 3 a.m. on Aug. 5.

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