The Daily Signal - Liberation Day 2.0 Sends Crime Denier Packing & Putin-Trump Freaky Friday Alaska Summit | Aug. 12, 2025

Starting point is 00:00:00 At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today.

Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk. Business. President Donald Trump declares a state of emergency in Washington, D.C., to restore safety and protect public servants, citizens, and tourists from crime. President Trump also announces that he will be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, August 15th, to discuss ending the conflict in Ukraine. I'm Elise McHugh, co-host of Problematic Women in for Tony Kinnett this Tuesday morning, August 12th. This is the Daily Signal's top news in 10.

Starting point is 00:01:01 President Trump is delivering on a campaign promise to restore safety to our nation's capital by cracking down on crime. On Monday, he declared a state of emergency in Washington, D.C., with plans to deploy 800 National Guard troops and invoke Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which places the DC Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control. Trump said that Attorney General Pam Bondi would oversee the police force takeover of the Metro Police Department. And we're here for a very serious purpose, very serious purpose. Something's out of control, but we're going to put it in control very quickly like we did on the southern border. I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse.

Starting point is 00:01:48 This is Liberation Day in D.C. And we're going to take our capital back. We're taking it back under the authorities vested in me as the president. President of the United States, I'm officially invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. You know what that is? And placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control, and you'll be meeting the people that will be directly involved with that. In addition, I'm deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order, and public safety in Washington, D.C., and they're going to be allowed to do their job properly.

Starting point is 00:02:27 You want to have safety in the streets. You want to be able to leave your apartment or your house where you live and feel safe and go into a store to buy a newspaper or buy something. And you don't have that now. The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogota, Columbia, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on earth. Much higher. This is much higher.

Starting point is 00:02:54 Critics are slamming Trump's decision to federalize the D.C. police, citing reports that violent crime is down 26% this year. However, DC police commander Michael Pulliam is suspended and under investigation for allegedly falsifying crime statistics in his district. The police union claims that police supervisors in the department manipulate crime data to make it appear that violent crime has fallen. DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, and MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart shrugged off the crime in DC on Sunday.

Starting point is 00:03:22 So last night, Saturday night in Washington, for about 450 federal law enforcement, officers were spread out across all of the four quarters of the District of Columbia. And here are the arrests from last night. Multiple persons carrying a pistol without license, fugitive wanted from Maryland, driving on suspended license, dirt bike riding in the park. Three handguns seized last night with one of the firearms discovered to be stolen. I'm sorry, Madam Mayor, but that to me sounds like a run-of-the-mill evening in a large metropolitan city. So what do you think is truly going on here with the president's fascination with, quote-unquote, violent crime, and even Stephen Miller, the senior advisors of the president, deputy White House chief of staff,

Starting point is 00:04:19 saying that Washington, D.C. is, quote, worse than Baghdad. Well, you know, I'll leave that to you to analyze what some of the underlying motives may be, Jonathan, but this is what I know. We are not experiencing a crime spike. The White House released an updated fact sheet on crime stats in D.C. on Monday, stating that Washington, D.C. has one of the highest robbery and murder rates among large U.S. cities nationwide, with a homicide rate exceeding 27 per 100,000 residents in 2024. And vehicle theft in the district is over three times the national average at 842.4 thefts per 100,000 residents,

Starting point is 00:05:03 ranking it among the most dangerous cities globally. U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Judge Janine Piro, had a message for these criminals in Washington, D.C. Mr. President, I want to thank you for taking the step that we need right now to make criminals understand that they are not going to get away with it anymore. And I'm not going to stand here and go over and over the cases. But what I can tell you is this. I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think that they can get together in gangs and crews

Starting point is 00:05:37 and beat the hell out of you or anyone else. They don't care where they are. They can be in DuPont Circle. But they know that we can't touch them. Why? Because the laws are weak. I can't touch you if you're 14, 15s, 16, 17 years old, and you have a gun. I convict someone of shooting another person with an illegal

Starting point is 00:05:59 gun on a public bus in the chest. Intent to kill? I convict him, and you know what the judge gives him? Probation. It says you should go to college. We need to go after the D.C. Council and their absurd laws. We need to get rid of this concept of, you know, no cash fail. We need to recognize that the People who matter are the law-abiding citizens, and it starts today. But it's not going to end today, because the president is going to do everything we need to do to make sure that these emboldened criminals understand, we see you, we're watching you, and we're going to change the law to catch you. And my final note is this.

Starting point is 00:06:45 These kids understand that the jurisdiction is through the state attorney general, Brian Schwab. I did a poster of the young man from Doge who was beaten bloody with a severe concussion, a broken nose. And then I did a poster of what happens to those kids because I can't arrest them. I can't prosecute them. They go to family court and they get to do yoga and arts and crafts. Enough. It changes today. Trump noted in his press conference Monday where he addressed the crime in D.C.

Starting point is 00:07:18 That it's embarrassing to have to deal with this ahead of his meeting with a. another world leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin. See, this is a tragic emergency. And it's embarrassing for me to be up here. You know, I'm gonna see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday. I don't like being up here talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was.

Starting point is 00:07:41 And on that note, President Trump announced that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. They will meet in Alaska this Friday, August 15th. I'm going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I'm going to be telling him, you've got to end this war, you've got to end it. And he wasn't going to mess with me. This war would have never happened.

Starting point is 00:08:03 You know, we had a discussion about it one time, and we never had that discussion again. Would have never happened. A senior White House official said that there is a possibility that Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky could join Trump and Putin at the summit. Zelensky, in an ex post on Saturday, said, we are ready to work together with President Trump, together with all our partners for real and most importantly, lasting peace, a peace that will not collapse because of Moscow's desires. It has been three years, five months, and 19 days since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. President Trump has expressed disappointment

Starting point is 00:08:36 with Putin over not following through on his previous peace deals. Here he is speaking on that on July 28, 2025. I would have said five times we would have had a deal. I've spoken to President Putin a lot. I always got along with them very well. But five times and every time, four times maybe, but we've had discussions. You and I have had discussions. We thought we had that settled numerous times. And then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kiev and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever. You have bodies lying all over the street. And I say, that's not the way to do it. So we'll see what happens with that. I'm very disappointed. I'm disappointed in President Putin. Very disappointed in him. So we're going to have to look.

Starting point is 00:09:26 And I'm going to reduce that 50 days that I gave him to a lesser number because I think I already know the answer what's going to happen. Vice President J.D. Vance, appearing on Fox News this Sunday, praised the president's efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine and shared what he believes the end to this conflict could look like. Let me move on to foreign policy. Yes. Because President Trump is expected to meet with Vladimir Putin at Sunday.

Starting point is 00:09:47 point, perhaps in the coming week, what are you expecting? Well, first of all, I've got to give the president a huge amount of credit here, Maria, because this is a major breakthrough for American diplomacy. If you go back, this war has been going on for over three years at this point. Well over a million Russians and Ukrainian dead soldiers, and as the president says, the numbers are probably much higher than the official tally indicates, there has been no substantial breakthrough. And for six months, the president himself, he's asked me, he's asked Secretary Rubio, of course,

Starting point is 00:10:15 Steve Whitkoff, we have been aggressively working trying to break the logjam. One of the most important log jams is that Vladimir Putin said that he would never sit down with Zelensky, the head of Ukraine, and the president has now got that to change. We're at a point now, we're now trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss and into this conflict. Now, what do I, I think, is ultimately going to come out of this. Look, it's actually very simple. If you take where the current line of contact between Russia and Ukraine is, we're going to try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and the Russians can live with, where they can live in relative peace, where the killing stops.

Starting point is 00:10:57 It's not going to make anybody super happy. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians probably at the end of the day are going to be unhappy with it. But I don't think you can actually sit down and have this negotiation absent the leadership of Donald J. Trump. And the president's said this to me today, privately said, look, maybe this works out, maybe it doesn't, but it's worth the effort, it's worth trying, and we're going to keep on using the diplomatic influence of the President of the United States to accomplish an end to this conflict. And with that, we're going to leave it there for today. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and have a great Tuesday. I'm Elise McHugh, and this has been the Daily Signal's top news in 10.

The Daily Signal - Liberation Day 2.0 Sends Crime Denier Packing & Putin-Trump Freaky Friday Alaska Summit | Aug. 12, 2025

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.