Gavin Newsom Gets Defensive Over California Crime Wave

JOY BEHAR: California is seeing a wave of smash-and-grab robberies, ummmm, uh, where mobs ransack re… retail stores. They’re organized, aren’t they?

NEWSOM: Oh, org… Very organized.

JOY BEHAR: Yeah.

NEWSOM: And I just want to note, we’re taking this… (sputters). We’re not only taking this seriously, we’re calling it out. There’s no excuse. We don’t condone that kind of behavior.

JOY BEHAR: Mmm-hmm.

NEWSOM: We want to arrest and prosecute folks, and we are doing that. We recognize we have to do more and better but it’s not unique to California.

JOY BEHAR: No.

NEWSOM: We’ve seen it in Chicago, Minnesota. But also, this is not unique. Property crime is gone up in many, many states. Red states, not just blue states. Violent crime and property crime, for example, is higher in Texas than it is in California. I don’t see that on Fox News.

BUCK: Ohhhhh, someone’s getting a little sore about it, I think. Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. That was slimy Gavin Newsom of California there with a nice little maneuver, I have to tell you. Pretty… Oh, so now we’re gonna compare states? We’re gonna pretend that there aren’t Democrats in control of all the cities where this stuff is happening and make it a statewide issue, to try to say that property crime in Texas is worse.

The folks that are listening now in Houston and Dallas and Austin and you name it all across the state, in rural areas of Texas as well… If I name all of our affiliates in Texas, Clay, we’d be here for, like, five minutes. But the point is, we’re seeing, finally, Democrats unable to run from the reality. I really think the videos in particular make it, because it’s so brazen, right?

It’s one thing when you see somebody in the middle of the night break into a store and there’s kind of a frenzy. They grab a couple things, they run, and you can tell they’re really worried about getting caught. When people are pulling up in cars and it’s the middle of the day and it’s the fanciest shopping district of Chicago or it’s a very well-traveled area, a very high pedestrian part of California, Los Angeles, San Francisco, wherever.

And they’re taking armfuls of stuff in broad daylight with security cameras and everything, you really get the sense, Clay, that they’re not worried about how hard a Democrat prosecutor, the Democrat police chief, and the Democrat mayor is going to come down on them if they’re caught. And I think that’s the part of it that has finally seeped in and is causing a problem.

CLAY: There’s no doubt. Look, and we talked about this yesterday. There are 12 cities in America all over this country from Tucson, Arizona; Louisville, Kentucky; Philadelphia; Columbus, Ohio; Austin, Texas; Portland that are all setting all-time highs this year, Buck, for murders. And so, this idea that Gavin Newsom is like, “Oh, look at somebody else!

“They have a higher crime rate than we do here.” Is their crime rate growing as fast? Because I feel like it’s not only violent crime, but also quality-of-life crime that many of our listeners right now in California are nodding their heads about. You’ve got homeless encampments taking over what should have been otherwise beautiful places.

Venice Beach in the L.A. area, I am told — at least over the last several months — is basically a homeless encampment now. You got people who live in Orange County that they walk outside to go down to the ocean, and there are homeless people there now. Quality of life factors in in a big way.