It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind Washington, DC Crime with Amber Duke

Summary

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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode: It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind Washington, DC Crime with Amber Duke
Date: September 4, 2025

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Overview of Episode

This episode, hosted by Ryan Graduski (guest-hosting on the Numbers Game segment), focuses on the rapidly shifting crime landscape in Washington, DC, examining data trends in violent crime and the political and policy responses to those numbers. The highlight is a detailed interview with Daily Caller editor Amber Duke about the impact of President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in DC and the city's changing patterns in both crime and criminal justice policy. The episode also explores the political manipulation of crime statistics, the underreporting of crime, and challenges facing local police forces.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Washington, DC Crime: Is There Really a Problem?

• Liberal Narrative vs. Reality: There’s been liberal pushback against Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, with claims that "crime is going down." Amber Duke labels this misleading, emphasizing manipulation and underreporting.
• Manipulation of Statistics:
  • The DC police chief is under investigation for allegedly classifying violent crimes as nonviolent.
  • Prosecutors often reduce or avoid charges under the guise of not "over prosecuting," especially in youth crime.
• Changing Nature of Crime:
  • "Crime has become more randomized," hitting wealthier neighborhoods and formerly "safe" areas, often by "roving gangs of illegal aliens and youth offenders."
  • Residents now feel less able to avoid victimization through typical cautious behavior.
    (Amber Duke, 18:29-21:06)

Personal Experiences Highlighting the Problem

• Ryan's Experience: More instances of being followed or threatened in short DC visits than in decades living in New York, including witnessing a "live shooting in Chinatown."
  (Ryan Graduski, 21:07-22:57)

The Impact of National Guard Deployment: The Numbers

• Crucial Statistical Drops Post-Deployment (Aug 11–25, 2025 vs. 2024):
  • Carjackings: ↓96%
  • Robberies: ↓68%
  • Homicides: ↓67%
  • All violent crime: ↓52%
  • Burglary: ↓47%
  • Total crime: ↓21%
    (Amber Duke, 22:57-24:39)
• Prior Trends: Crime was already falling somewhat year-over-year, but nothing like the rapid drop since the National Guard arrived.

“Numbers don’t lie… the numbers are very clear here that Trump’s approach to crime in D.C. is working.”
— Amber Duke, (24:24)

National Context: The Two Eras of Crime Trends

• 1990–2013: Crime nationwide consistently declined.
• 2015–2020: Post-Ferguson and BLM, crime spiked.
• Post-2020: Some decline, but most cities still worse than 2014 baseline.

Law Enforcement Strategy and Resource Allocation

• DC Metropolitan Police are severely understaffed (“10, $20,000 signing bonuses” have little impact due to low morale and lack of charging by prosecutors).
• National Guard presence enables DC’s limited police to focus on high-crime neighborhoods (mainly SE across the Anacostia).
  (Amber Duke, 26:29-27:41)

Policy: Prosecution, Recidivism, and Reform

• Recidivism Is Key: “Average homicide suspect in D.C. had committed 11 priors.”—Amber Duke, quoting former Chief Robert Conti (28:34-32:17)
• Youth Criminal Justice Reform:
  • Originally allowed 15-year release for those tried as adults if good behavior, but revised to mandatory release at 10 years for anyone under 25 at time of offense, regardless of crime’s circumstances.
  • “You could rape someone when you're 25… and get out when you are 35 years old. That is insanity.”
    — Amber Duke (32:17-33:26)
• Effectiveness of ‘Three Strikes’ Laws: RAND study showed California’s law reduced violent crime by 20%.

Comparing DC with Other Cities

• Chicago: Even with 50+ weekend shootings, leadership resists National Guard.
• State vs. Local Authority: Federal government has the authority (“domestic tranquility”).
• Underreporting:
  • “National Crime Victimization Survey… helps capture underreporting and under prosecution.”
    — Amber Duke, (33:26-36:31)
  • Many residents don’t bother reporting crime due to lack of prosecution.

Reality of Urban Living and Quality of Life

• Residents’ personal safety and comfort affected by both crime and low-level disorder.
• Example: Restaurant goer’s encounter with homeless individual openly defecating—“I wasn’t technically a victim of a crime, but I’m still going to feel less safe in my city because that occurred.”
  — Amber Duke, (38:16-40:19)

Political Responses and Larger Implications

• Republicans should “take a page out of Trump’s playbook” to fix blue city crime—especially areas like Jackson, Mississippi.
• Crime’s impact felt beyond victimization—includes housing prices and civic morale.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the illusion of declining crime:

  “If you say, well, numbers are down between 2020 and 2024, it’s like, okay, well, down from one of their highest peaks since the 1990s.”
  — Amber Duke, (18:29)

• The fear and randomness of crime now:

  “We have seen crime become more randomized, meaning it’s spread out across the city into wealthier enclaves… people feel more unsafe because it seems like their ability to become a victim is much more random…”
  — Amber Duke, (18:29-21:06)

• On coordination between Guard and police:

  “Having the National Guard there to patrol Georgetown on M Street or to be a Navy Yard allows the police that you do have… to focus on the neighborhoods where the crime originates.”
  — Amber Duke, (26:29-27:41)

• Critique of lenient youth-offender policy:

  “You could rape someone when you’re 25 years old in D.C. and get out when you are 35 years old. That is insanity.”
  — Amber Duke, (32:17-33:26)

• Personal anecdote on safety:

  “In D.C., I have been followed more times than in all 36 years in New York… and I have had more incidences, including in broad daylight…”
  — Ryan Graduski, (21:07-22:57)

• On underreporting:

  “The police convinced [my husband] not to press charges because they said he would be back out on the street the next day. It wasn’t worth his time.”
  — Amber Duke, (36:34)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [17:47] Interview Begins: Amber Duke on DC’s crime reality
• [18:29] Crime is more randomized and harder to avoid in DC post-pandemic
• [22:57] Detailed statistical drops in crime post-National Guard deployment
• [24:39] National perspective: US violent crime trends since 1990
• [26:29] Policing strategies and the Guard’s role
• [28:34] Policy problems: Criminal justice “reform” and recidivism stats
• [33:26] National Victimization Survey & underreporting
• [36:34] Anecdotes of crime, everyday harassment, and police disincentives to report
• [38:16] Policy solutions: Republicans and urban crime, quality-of-life dimensions
• [40:19] Broader consequences: housing, city livability
• [41:02] Amber’s plugs (where to find her reporting)

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Where to Find Amber Duke

• X: @ambermarieduke
• Work: The Daily Caller
• TV/Podcast: “The Hill’s Rising” every Friday, “Reason’s Free Media” every Tuesday

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Episode Takeaways

• Despite claims of falling crime, manipulation and underreporting mask public safety issues.
• National Guard deployment in DC dramatically reduced key crime categories within two weeks.
• Legal reforms and prosecution policies have made it easier for repeat offenders, especially young adults, to return to the streets quickly.
• The perception and reality of urban safety are both eroded not just by crime, but by widespread disorder and lack of enforcement.
• National and local political leadership are at odds over how to manage urban crime crises—with implications for cities across the country.

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This summary highlights the urgent, data-driven argument about DC crime and urban security, unpacks policy debates, and brings out the personal tone and memorable anecdotes that define the episode’s impact.

Transcript

[Ryan Graduski]

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[Ryan Graduski]

Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Graduski. I am taping this episode from Washington, D.C. i got to speak at the National Conservative Conference on Tuesday. So I've been in D.C. i have a lot of D.C. kind of buzziness and hanging out with D.C. people. It's a certain type of wavelength that I'm not usually on. But I spoke to, I spoke in D.C. at the, @ the conference about radical Islam and immigration. And the event was great and I want to than thank the organization and his founder Yoram Hazoni for having me. It was an honor to speak here. I've never got invited before, so. But it was very funny what happened. Right? But right after I spoke, I got off the stage and someone who's been on this podcast, a former guest of the podcast, walked up to me and introduced himself because I never met in real life. And he goes, you know, do you remember me? I was on your podcast. I'm not going to say his name because I don't want to embarrass him, but he goes, you remember I was on your podcast. Oh yeah, of course. And then he just started talking to me about something that I don't know. I was like, I was kind of interested in, but I, I wasn't super interested in and I must have been making a face and I didn't notice it. And he goes, do you remember me? Like I'm, I'm so and so I was like, oh no, I, I'm very well aware of who I'm talking to right now. But I must have been making the face of I have no interest, which he interpreted as I have no idea who you are. I felt bad about that. Not, not my, I just didn't like, you know, sometimes you do something and you're talking for a long time, you just get so tired of talking and you just don't want to do it anymore. And I guess I was just in a moment, but it funny, the overall point of the speech that I said about Islam, radical Islam and immigration is that we as America are very lucky compared to Europe because we're not within walking distance of most Muslim countries. And we when we experience a large wave of first time Muslim immigrants, or the first kind of wave of any kind of Muslim immigrants in our country in the 1970s and 1980s, when a new culture is coming to America that's exotic to the native culture, this is not really relevant anymore because they're kind of all here. But this is especially true in the 70s and 80s, 90s is that they like the first ones to come have to be skills because you can really only get here through very few visas. And the largest one is family reunification. If you don't have family here, well then you have to do it through occupation and skill. And so we got like the doctors and the engineers and scientists and some very good Muslim immigrants when, when it first began. And we were also seeing things like the Shah fall and a lot of moderates Muslims in, in the Arab world wanting to leave because they saw the way that the world was changing there. That will come to an end though, as we have enough immigrants here now that family reunification and family based chain migration will be the predominant way we receive Muslims in this country. And also there's a radicalization that has happened abroad at the same time, a part of excellence in immigration comes from scarcity. You want the population of recent immigrants to be low, as low as possible in comparison to the native nation's population. So here's a perfect example. If you had a choice to live either in India or Mexico, you would want to live in Mexico because for the average Mexican, the average Mexican is wealthier and has a higher quality of life than the average Indian. Right? But if you rather be a Mexican or an Indian American, you'd rather be an Indian American. They have much higher levels of college degree and income and all the rest of it. Why? Because we took in 0.3% of India's population and 28% of Mexico's population. So while we got the cream from India, we have a lot of lower to middle, lower levels level quality populations from Mexico. And that has reduced the mean Mexican Americans household income, college degree, everything closer to what it is in Mexico than what it would be if we only took the elites in. And right now we only have the elites of India. Basically. We don't have a lot of the people who would otherwise be, you know, swimming in the Ganges river and bathing and bury their dead and washing their clothes all in the same place. What, what has happened with Muslim immigration though is now we are going to have more people. We have tons of refugees from like Somalia and Afghanistan, but even from the other places, even from the nice places, we're more and more getting chain migration through families. So we're gonna get the deadbeat cousin and uncle eventually who is susceptible to radical Islam and that's all. And also the, the, the spouses who they meet over there, who they bring, like the San Bernardino shooter. That is a problem for radical Islam. It's also a problem for American Jews. And when I said in the podcast, I said this on cnn and I said this with, I was on with Leah McGowan. McGowan, yeah, McGowan from. She's some left wing political podcast host from Canada. She's a very nice woman, but she's not, she blinks a lot. I'll just say she's like a woman who blinks a lot. So I said that there will be by 2035 more Muslim immigrants than there are Jewish Americans and they will live in more important swing states. And that will change how politics is conducted in relation to Middle east policy, but also other policies as well, around speech, around hate speech, around Sharia cities, around like a million other things because of mass immigration, you want scarcity, you want only the best of the best of the world to come here. Anyway, that was the whole speech. That was what we talked about and, and, and, and what I talked about. And I thought it was a fairly good and influential thing. I don't have a ton of numbers for you guys this week. I've been, been in D.C. for two weeks, especially post being sick with COVID as I mentioned in the last episode. And they've just. DC is like its own orbit and what they think people care about, no one gives a hoot about. I try to keep this very clean, by the way. I really don't swear. So anyway, one number that I thought was fascinating that I had never heard about before and I heard about it this week. If you run for a federal office or you run A super PAC like I do, you are forbidden from getting donations from foreign entities and foreign donors. Right. It's very well known you can't get money from, you know, Saudis or Israelis or any or Russians or anybody. Right. If you're running for president or you're running for U.S. senate, if you're running in the state legislatures, you can though in many places. And more importantly than you just being able to run for office and getting foreign money in some places, if you have a state proposal and state ballot initiative that can be funded by foreign money. There is an organization called the 1630 Fund. Now I had not been super aware of the 1630 Fund. It is a left wing C4. C4 is a nonprofit that can give a minority 50, 49% of its money to political campaigns and PACs. It's not a tax write off but it's like an, I don't know, it's not, it's not a PAC and it's not a nonprofit. Something that's what they call dark money groups. Dark money groups are basically C4 because you don't disclose where the money comes from. The biggest donor to the 1630 fund is a Swiss billionaire, a liberal billionaire called Hans Gorg Weiss. He is given hundreds of millions of dollars to this 1630 fund and they have spent over $250 million on ballot initiatives to change state laws throughout the country to promote progressive ideas on everything from abortion to taxes. You name it, you run the gamut. And the 1630 fund has had its fingers on the polls to try to change the way that our state governments work, the way our laws work pertaining to the government that affects us the most, which is your state government affects you more than your federal government does. I did not know this but the states have started to actually reform the laws and change the laws when it comes to how state constitutions are protected by from foreign interference. In 2024, Ohio was the very first state to ban any foreign money from being used to change ballot initiatives. And this last I think week and a half ago there were 10 total states, one being Ohio. From last year nine states have added to that this year they are Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Wyoming. All have passed new bans on foreign interference into pacs and other organizations being helped to sit there and change your state constitution. Seventeen other states have also passed, sorry, have a proposed bans on this foreign money. I think it's something that actually bipartisanship can really actually take effect in. I think that this is a place where Republicans, Democrats can come together because it seems fairly nefarious that some billionaire from Switzerland can be pushing left wing issues. I mean these are all Republican states who have done this. But I think that I don't see why a Democrat would support this anyway. We don't want they wouldn't like if Russia came in or if there was like an anti gay bill that Saudi Arabia or you know, African country and anti LGBT African country was getting involved in. So I think that I think this is a great thing and I think this is really, really progress. I did not know that this was the law and I did not know that states were really jumping on the bandwagon to ban foreign money. So far, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas and Wyoming have banned it. Hopefully more will follow. I have a great interview today. It is with my very good friend Amber Duke. She used to go by Amber Athey. I've known her since before she was married. She's a whip smart reporter from the Daily Caller and she's actually an editor from the Daily Caller. She'll be on to talk about Trump with a National Guard and the National Guard's been coming in to sit there and reduce crime. And we'll have a real conversation on crime in Washington and the country as a whole. Stay tuned for that. Coming up next.

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[Amber Duke]

Ugh. Come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

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[Amber Duke]

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[Ryan Graduski]

So in the last week, if you've seen the continued liberal outrage over one thing, it is over the idea of President Trump have troop. Let me start it over again. If you have paid attention to anything over the last week, the thing that liberals have been outraged over is President Trump having National guardsmen in Washington, D.C. here to discuss both their outrage and the statistics on crime both in our nation's capital and broad nationwide, is Amber Duke of the Daily Caller. Amber, thanks for coming on.

[Amber Duke]

Thanks for having me, Ryan.

[Ryan Graduski]

So tell me about you live in the Washington, D.C. area. Is there a crime issue, first of all, that they would even acknowledge doesn't exist?

[Amber Duke]

Yes, there's a major crime issue. And one of the things that liberals and Democrats have been saying in response to Trump's federalization of D.C. police in the efforts to fight crime is that crime has been going down over the past couple of years, which is a very misleading way of characterizing the problem. For one, because the D.C. police chief, former police chief, is currently under investigation for manipulating crime statistics, including classifying violent crimes as nonviolent crimes. We also have a problem where the D.C. attorneys will deliberately lessen charges against suspects because they don't like to quote, unquote, over prosecute. This is a particular problem with the D.C. attorney who prosecutes youth crime. That person is not selected by the president like the D.C. attorney general is. And so they are not someone who was chosen by Trump and is very tough on crime. The other problem is that crime skyrocketed in the D.C. area in 2020 during the pandemic. And so if you say, well, numbers are down between 2020 and 2024, it's like, okay, well, down from one of their highest peaks since the 1990s. Right. And then one final issue with DC Crime is that like most cities, you typically expect that a lot of the crime is going to be concentrated in specific areas, meaning there are things that you can do typically to avoid becoming a victim. Don't go to Anacostia, particularly at night, don't walk around alone at night by yourself, stay away from seedy areas, don't join a gang, etc. Etc. These are all sort of common sense things that most city dwellers will do to avoid becoming crime victims in D.C. since the pandemic, we have seen crime become more randomized, meaning it's spread out across the city into wealthier enclaves into areas that were typically considered safe and is done by sort of roving gangs of illegal aliens and youth offenders. So people feel more unsafe because it seems like their ability to become a victim is much more random and less tied directly to their behavior.

[Ryan Graduski]

I have been in New York my entire life. I was followed and attempted to be mugged one time as followed, I think two or three times in all of New York. In 30 something years, 36 years that I was a full time resident of New York in D.C. i have been followed more times than in all 36 years in New York. And I've never lived here. I've only come here like on trips for work for a week at a time. And I have had more incidences, including in broad daylight in well popular area around Chinatown. I've seen a live shooting in Chinatown. I have seen way more crime, like actual, like really violent crime in broad daylight in Washington D.C. than I ever saw in New York. Now, maybe I lived a very glamorous life, but I grew up in New York in the early 90s. So when where it's 2000 murders a year in New York. Like, I mean, I saw, like I was there when it was really bad. Granted I was a child, but throughout my teen years, everywhere, I never saw a crime like I saw it in D.C. just the open amount of crazy people, people who talk to themselves, who are allowed to roam the streets and accost people, is startling. It's actually startling. And the amount of kids who should be in school who seem to be like out and just around and it's middle of the day and you're like, why is there no school for these roaming black kids? Seems kind of insane to me. And a big part of this is, you know, big balls being attacked. The Doge staffer being attacked and him being attacked by it was black teenagers has changed this for Washington D.C. now, I think there's only been one murder in two weeks since President Trump launched the National Guard. Has crime overall gone down aside from murder?

[Amber Duke]

Yes, pretty significantly, actually. I have the numbers here in front of me. This is a two week comparison from August 11th to August 25th. And we have the numbers from 2023, 2024 and 2025 all the same two week period. Of course, the 2025 two week period is after Trump sent in the national guard. Between this two week period in 2024 to 2025, we have seen carjackings go down 96%, robberies down 68%, homicide down 67%, all violent crime down 52% and burglary down 47%. Total crime actually down 21%. And when we compare the same period of time between 2023 and 2024, where Democrats say, well, crime was already declining, yes, but not as much as it has since Trump federalized the D.C. police carjackings between that time period, 2023 to 2024, went down 35%. Again, between 2024 and 2025, it was 96%. Robberies went down 46% compared to 68%. Homicides down 40% to 67%. So was crime trending in the right direction? I mean, yes, technically, but obviously not enough. Not to the degree that it needed to in order for citizens to feel safe. And numbers don't lie. I mean, that's sort of the premise of this show. And the numbers are very clear here that Trump's approach to crime in D.C. is working.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yeah. Last night, well, on crime, when you mentioned 2020, there's crime in recent history in America. There are two chapters. There's from 1990 to 2013 where crime nationwide was decreasing everywhere. And then BLM happens with Ferguson in 2015 and crime goes up. It kind of stays around the same place, but it's up from 2015 through 2020. Then George Floyd happens, BLM happens on, on, you know, meth or like steroids rather, and like the crime explodes. And it's been weaning down from 2021, 2022 numbers. It is to my knowledge, in most parts of the country. It has never returned to 2014 numbers. Most. When you look at most violent crime, the reason that violent crime has declined, or specifically as a percentage, is because burglaries and robberies are considered a form of violent crime because of home alarm systems and home cameras. That has really caused a massive decrease in that specific field of crime. Right. While like, rapes have gone up in a lot of areas, or like nonviolent crimes, which are fairly violent nonetheless. But like, assault is considered actually not a violent crime. But assault has gone up, like in the New York area, for example, what liberals like to sit there and say, I was watching actually, Ben Shapiro on Abby Phillips's show yesterday and I was texting afterwards, but she was like, well, his National Guardsmen are not actually patrolling the streets to stop crime in the high crime areas. But to my knowledge, and maybe I'm wrong, his goal is to have them in the lesser crime areas that the policeman could go to. The more there'd be more cops in the more criminal areas. That's correct.

[Amber Duke]

That's exactly right. Because the D.C. police, it's the Metropolitan Police Department, is what it's called mpd. They are severely understaffed right now. They've been offering like 10, $20,000 signing bonuses for years now to try to staff up the police force. And really haven't had much luck because who wants to work for a police force when 67% of the crimes that you arrest people for are not charged by the top prosecutor who was appointed by Joe Biden. Now things are a little bit different now, but you still, again, have the D.C. attorney General who does all youth crime, who's not really prosecuting or under prosecuting. A lot of these kids, they're back out on the street every day. Who wants to work for that police department. So when you have a limited amount of resources, having the National Guard there to patrol Georgetown on M Street or to be a Navy Yard allows the police that you do have, particularly the more experienced police officers, to focus on the neighborhoods where the crime originates, which are typically in the southeast quadrant of DC across the Anacostia River.

[Ryan Graduski]

So in response to this, President Trump has also talked about he's going to send National Guards into Chicago. And the governor of Illinois is like, they just had 50 shootings over a weekend in Chicago. And it's. Chicago has like, I hate to say the word comically high crime, but it is, it is preposterously high for a big city in 2000s and has for a long time. It kind of didn't have the real New York LA shift in the 90s the way that other cities did. Like, they do have more, I think they have more murders than New York does. And New York's a much bigger city. The, the thing is, is, so the governor is like, oh, this is just normal to live in a big city is there's a lot of shootings. And I don't, I think the may opposing the idea of setting National Guardsmen. What is the status on that? I mean, can he just do that and be like, sorry, like this is. I'm sending my National Guardsman. And there's no, you have no options.

[Amber Duke]

I mean, the President is in control of that. Like, typically you would want the state to acquiesce to a National Guard coming in, but we saw this in Los Angeles, right? He doesn't actually need the governor's permission in order to do that. The Constitution, by the way, says to that it's the federal government's job to have domestic tranquility. So it seems pretty clear to me that he has the authority to do it. And I always find it bizarre when Democrats say, well, this is just part of living in a big city. Like, it doesn't have to be though. That's a choice. That's a specific policy choice that you've made that you're okay with a certain number of people dying because you don't want to do the more difficult thing. That actually requires manpower and resources and good policy, which is to make sure that you're cracking down on criminals. Which by the way, in most big cities, and particularly in D.C. most of the crime happens from a very small number of individuals. You actually don't have to do that much policing in order to get crime down. You just have to arrest the right people. In DC, one of the former police chiefs, not the same one who was accused of manipulating the crime statistics, but Chief Robert Conti, he said a few years back that the average homicide suspect in D.C. had committed 11 priors. 11 priors. And I mean, I think most people would probably scoff at the idea that all of Those priors, all 11, were petty or nonviolent or in some way not deserving of this person getting significant prison time. So again, that's a choice. D.C. city Council also made a lot of choices over the years to make it easier for young people to get away with crime. So when we see 14 year olds carjacking an Uber driver and killing him, it's because they have deprioritized prosecution of young people. Charles Allen, who is one of the D.C. city Council members, he's actually a transplant from Alabama, I believe, was the author of a lot of these criminal justice reform measures, which I don't even like that phrase because it doesn't really mean anything. But what he did was he first introduced a bill that would make it so that the most violent youth offenders, who are the ones that actually get prosecuted in adult criminal court because they've done things like murders or rapes, could get out in 15 years if they basically showed good behavior in prison. And a judge said that their conditions merited their release. Then he amended it and it got a lot worse. He amended it so that the youth offender, the definition of a youth offender who was tried in adult court was anyone up to the age of 25. So not even minors at this point. Full blown adults, people who can drink, serve the military, et cetera, vote, all of those things. Those individuals not could get out in 10 years now instead of 15, but shall get out in 10 years. The judge was. Judges are not even allowed now to look at these circumstances of the crime. They're not allowed to consider anything about the offender's background if they meet these specific conditions as laid out in the bill, under the age of 25, have served 10 years, haven't done anything bad while they're in prison. So to speak. The judge has to issue their release. So you could rape someone when you're 25 years old in D.C. and get out when you are 35 years old. That is insanity.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yeah, that's crazy. And you mentioned 11 priors. The overwhelming majority of violent criminals have at least three priors. And that's why three, that's why the idea three strike rules. In 2001 there was a study by the RAND Corporation that looked at California's three strike rules and found that it did reduce violent crime by 20%. Because that's, I mean that is true. I think in New York, I think in the name is in D.C. d.C. Was like if you arrest like the top hundred violent criminals, you would. And put them away for life, whatever. You would reduce violent crime by like or shootings by like 50%. And anything was for New York it was like 250 or 300. I forget the exact number, but it was, it was, it was in shockingly small amount of people who were doing the overwhelming amount of shootings and overwhelmingly targeting black Americans too. And in the name of anti racism, they all be left out to shoot more black people. Is crime now in crime in Chicago? Are they claiming that oh a crime is down anyway, so it's not a big deal?

[Amber Duke]

Yeah, it's the exact same refrain we've heard in D.C. and you started to get into this a little bit earlier with the way that they manipulate statistics to show crime decreases. One of the other important things to look at is there's basically two methods of tracking crime in the United States. One is the FBI crime database, which is what most people use when they're looking at crime statistics. And it can be relatively helpful if you're looking at the same measures year after year. But of course, people classify crimes differently in different states and different localities. And some states are prosecuting crimes as one thing and another state's prosecuting it as something else. Right. Like reducing the charges, et cetera, making a lot of plea deals like we see with the Soros prosecutors. But the other database that people often look at to really understand crime in its totality is the National Crime Victimization Survey, which is a survey that allows self reporting from victims of crime. And what this does is it helps capture underreporting and under prosecution. Because in places like D.C. and Chicago, when you have very progressive prosecutors and politicians in charge, you have people not calling the police when they are a victim of crime because they assume that either the police aren't going to do anything or the crime's not actually going to get followed up on or the prosecutor's not going to charge the individual. And it also captures again this problem of, well, the person actually assaulted someone, but because it's a he said, she said, then we're gonna, you know, bring it down to something lower. Or it was a aggravated assault and we're gonna charge simple assault, et cetera. The National Crime Victimization Survey pretty consistently shows since the pandemic that crime that has not been reported has gone up. So in D.C. and Chicago, the NCVS reveals that people have very little faith in the justice system. Talking to my friends in D.C. you mentioned that when you come here, you feel a lot less safe than you do in New York City. Every single person I know in D.C. has some kind of crime story, if not multiple crime stories. Just about a month ago, I was walking back from taping a show in Dupont Circle and was stalked by some creepy guy. And like, I'm not going to call the police about that because they're not going to do anything. But is that considered a crime? Right. It happened. My husband was assaulted by a homeless man. The police convinced him not to press charges because they said he would be back out on the street the next day. It wasn't worth his time. I've been threatened to be raped by a cracked out man at a bus stop, had my wallet stolen, been trapped by a crazy homeless woman who demanded I give her money.

[Ryan Graduski]

That was Maxine Waters, right?

[Amber Duke]

Shock. I don't think that is one woman I think I would be able to defend myself against. But in just walking through Union Station over the years, every woman knows that you do not arrive more than five minutes before your train is set to leave because you will be harassed by some homeless guy or assaulted or worse. Train stations, that's what life has been.

[Ryan Graduski]

In D.C. train stations are in New York, too, and it's in a lot of major cities. Train stations are hubs of mentally ill people beyond belief. My last thing is that Democrats have responded by saying it's the red states that have worse crime rates than the blue states. And the blue states or the rights Republicans will say, well, it's the Democratic mayors. It's really a high propensity of black Americans with an easy availability of guns with a young population. I mean, that's really what it is in these places like Jackson, Mississippi. But Gavin Newsom has a point. And I would like, and this is my own pontificating, the governor of Mississippi should say, I think it's Tate Reeves. Tate Reeves should sit there and Say President Trump, police in the National Guard and in Jackson, like, we could make this situation much, much easier if we're going to have a national moment and not just like, own the libs on it and the state National Guard could come in and try to help the police in these cities. I mean, it's hard. Like in New Orleans, there's a lot of policemen who are former convicts that are there, believe it or not. But like, in some of these cities, there is a lot. But I think that it is a real moment to actually do something if we have a president willing to get on board with it. There's no reason to at this exact moment. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

[Amber Duke]

Yeah, I agree that Republican governors should take a page out of Trump's playbook and get these blue cities under control. You're right. It really is a population of low income black Americans who are driving a lot of the crime crisis in those blue cities. So it's a policy choice, but also sort of just a socioeconomic reality. And Tate Reeves, I interviewed him maybe a couple months ago at this point, and he talked about Jackson and was very concerned about, I think there's an upcoming election for mayor that he's really worried about because they've consistently had these progressive mayors, but is acutely aware of the problem. Trust Trump, I think would it would actually be great if you were to be able to send some National Guard resources in to kind of squash that narrative. But I mean, I think one other thing that I just want to mention really quickly about the crime problem in cities is that sometimes it's not even really crime per se, but a lot of it is quality of life issues. So, for example, if I am going out to dinner in Georgetown and I choose to sit on the restaurant's patio, and this is a true story, by the way, I'm eating there with my friends and a homeless man walks up, takes a white cloth napkin off of the table next to us, squats behind a nearby trash can, takes a dump, and then wipes himself with the cloth napkin he just stored and throws it in the trash can. I wasn't technically a victim of a crime, but I'm still going to feel less safe in my city because that occurred. And that is something that statistics won't tell you about why people feel the way that they do when they're in D.C. yeah.

[Ryan Graduski]

And think of it like this. D.C. has a crazy housing problem. D.C. houses are so expensive in the D.C. area is crazy. It's one of the most costly areas to live in. How many homes are currently in a high crime area that no person would want to live in that go way under the market value if they were just a mile over that suppress the availability of housing. People cannot live in them because the crime levels and the homeless populations and the drug population is so high. It creates other issues like housing crisis and as well as a quality of life crisis as as you said with this restaurant Amber, where can people go to read more of your stuff, hear your commentary, follow you on social media?

[Amber Duke]

They can find me on X at Ambermarie Duke. My work is available to be read atthedaily caller.com and I'm also hosting the Hills Rising every Friday and reasons free media every Tuesday.

[Ryan Graduski]

So checking out with the libertarians over there. But Amber's Amber's one of the best in the business worth absolutely worth following and I don't say about everybody. So thank you for being on this podcast.

[Amber Duke]

Thanks Ryan.

[Ryan Graduski]

Hey, we'll be right back after this.

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[Ryan Graduski]

Welcome back for the Ask Me Anything segment. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me ryanumbersgame podcast.com that's ryan@NumbersGame numberspluralgamepodcast.com I read them all. I get to to every one of them eventually I have I'm a little backlog but I love your emails. I do read them and I will get to them on the show or I'll just email you privately if I if it's something I don't really can't answer the show or it's just a little quick thing. But this one comes from Mary. She writes, I know Trump is busy, but as a lifelong New Yorker, do you think he can get Adams, Curtis and Cuomo together to broker a deal so we can get. We can prevent Comrade Mandani from being in office? Office. Why can't Democrats figure out how to move forward? What remains in the party platform is pure Marxism. We should start referring to him as the Marxist party. They absolutely despise the country. They want to rule, even with in their party. They apply a purity test to root out traitors. They rewrite history and deny laws of nature. If they ever gain power again, they will try to find a way to crush opposition. Finally, if we can't stop Mandami this time, maybe Trump can run against him for mayor. Okay, Mary, a lot to chew on there. So, first of all, can Trump get them on a room? Trump, I guess, can call them all in a room. I don't think that Cuomo would answer that call because it would look like he's colluding and he's like Republican light. And part of the Cuomo campaign is to say that I'm the Democrat who could really take on President Trump. I mean, President Trump did well for New York City, but he didn't come close to winning. I think that right now what President Trump could do is he could offer Eric Adams and Curtis Lewis a very nice DC Job, get them leave the city and get out of the race. And it could be a head to head with Cuomo and with Mandani. I think Cuomo is running an absolutely garbage campaign, though. Cuomo should be sitting there and saying, I have been a bipartisanly supported governor, which when he was first elected, remember when Cuomo was first elected in 2010, he sat there and said, I will bring tax reform that will help working class people, that will help the elderly, that will help small businesses in upstate New York. He ran to appeal to Republicans, especially moderate Republicans, who thought that the Republican at the time was a little too out there. Right. I can't remember his name, but he was from Erie county and he was. He brought a baseball bat to his own press conference and said he hated the media. Whatever the case is, that's neither here nor there. But he did run. When he first ran, he said, I can work with the Republicans who control the state Senate. Work. I could. I could have. I'm a man for all people. I support gay marriage. I support tax reform. I'm here for everybody. As his time Being governor continued. He ran to the left because he wanted to run for president and because he didn't want to get primaried and he was afraid of that. He saw the teeles in the Democratic Party. Okay, fine, you lost the Democratic primary. Run to the middle again. Call the Republicans and say, I will protect your seven city council seats. I will protect the, you know, six, six or seven assembly seats you have in the city. I will support the handful of politicians you have, and I will work with you. And the Common Sense Caucus, which is a caucus of Republicans and Democrats who are just not socialist whack jobs in the city Council, he's not doing any of that right now. Cuomo is running, as he ran for governor, is saying, I can manage the decline better than anybody else and it's not aspirational and it's not going to win in the election. And I cannot believe how stupid, stupid I thought this man was a real politician. It's just that he happened to be a Democrat from New York so he can get elected without really trying. He's, oh, my God, this is the worst campaign I've ever seen. But I don't think that Trump can do anything besides try to give Adams and Sliwa a job. So that's that. Why don't we call the Democratic Party, the Marxist Party? Because they're not the Democrats. That's not their name. I mean, that's just. People feel that way anyway. There are a number of Democrats who are fairly moderate who would not agree with that term and wouldn't agree with that opinion. Like, you know, know, I wouldn't call like the governor of Kentucky like a Marxist. I mean, you know, they believe in some level of social safety, they live in some level of taxes, but so, so do Republicans in most cases. Yeah. I mean, I just think that the next generation of Democrats are all identitarian on the issues of race and socialism. And I don't think that. I think the next generation of Democrats that have been kept at bay for a long time by the likes of Nancy Pelosi are going to be coming and be going crazy when it comes to Trump running for mayor. He's not a resident of New York City anymore, he's resident of Florida. And I don't think that you want to go from being president to being mayor, especially when you're in your mid-80s at the time. So we're gonna have to find somebody else, maybe get Derek Jeter to run, maybe find a Yankee. Like that might be our path. Find one of the dynasty Yankees and ask them. Ask Alex Rodriguez to run as a Republican. And like that might be I grew up a huge 90s Yankee fan. I could name the almost the entire roster. Tina Martinez I would knock on doors for him. Bernie Williams I would knock on doors for him. I don't care what there was Derek Jeter, Chuck. I'll knock on doors for Chuck Knobloch. I mean, that's how bad it is. I don't care who it is. Get a 90s New York Yankee. Maybe that would do it and bring people further into the GOP coalition who aren't there yet. But yeah, it's not. I don't think it's gonna be Trump for that. But thank you for that question, Mary. And if you like this podcast, please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts wherever you get your podcast and I will see you guys in the next episode.

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