Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said Friday that he recently reintroduced a crime bill in the House that would assert congressional control over Washington, D.C., to bring law and order back to the nation’s capital.
The legislation would prohibit the D.C. city council from pursuing soft-on-crime sentencing policies and lower the city’s definition of a youth from age 24 to under 18.
“We filed it last Congress,” Donalds told Newsmax’s “National Report.” “It actually passed out of the Oversight Committee. We're refiling it again, because now we have a president who is taking the safety and security of Washington, D.C., seriously. [Former President] Joe Biden did not do that. His team did not do that. They didn't care that the people of Washington were being victimized. They didn't care that staffers on Capitol Hill were either being assaulted, one was murdered. You had several members of Congress, Democrat members of Congress, I might add, who were carjacked and who were assaulted in their own apartment buildings.
“So now we have a president who is taking the safety and security of Washington, D.C., seriously,” he said. “It is the federal enclave, according to the Constitution, and so, if the D.C. City Council is not going to do their job, then the president and the federal government will do it for them. And that's why this measure is being reintroduced.”
The Florida Republican also slammed those in the mainstream media who claim there’s a racial element behind President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and federalize the city’s police force. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said that “maybe it’s not about crime … Maybe it’s what you can see with your own two eyes.”
“This is what happens when [those on the left] completely lose an argument,” Donalds said. “They turn to race, and they try to make it some racial issue. It's simply not. This is about public safety. Tell that to the Black kids who are being victimized in D.C. every single day. Tell it to them. These folks should be ashamed of themselves. By the way, they all have security details. So, it's cool to talk tough when you have security around you 24/7, and you hop in and out of private cars that take you to your next destination. It's cute to say that. They don't walk the streets of D.C., and so anybody that's lived in D.C. for any period of time, they know it's not safe. The president is doing the right thing.
“To bring race into it?” he said. “That's what the radical left always does. This is why they are losing in America. This is why they continue to fall behind politically in America. So, what the president is going to do, the America First movement is going to do, we're going to be focused on common sense, conservative principles. You cannot have a great society, a great city, a great state if you don't have law and order and public safety first and foremost. And we're finally going to do the job that needed to be done for a long time and bring that to the nation's capital.”
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