Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) said Tuesday that soft-on-crime policies were turning the criminal justice system on its head – turning criminals into victims and then bending over backward to make sure the system didn’t treat them too harshly.
Kennedy joined Fox News host Jesse Watters on “Jesse Watters Primetime” to discuss the impact of those policies, and he argued that the woke motto with regard to crime was “Hear no evil, see no evil, prosecute no evil.”
Before introducing Kennedy, Watters began with a monologue on crime and the fact that cities everywhere were failing to implement punishment.
WATCH:
Local Democrat leaders have decided that criminals no longer deserve to be punished- and now crime is surging. #JWP pic.twitter.com/sfi27MTXAn
— Jesse Watters Primetime (@jesseprimetime) February 2, 2022
“I mean, Senator Kennedy, first they don’t want you to go prison and then when you do go to prison for a heinous crime, they want to make it as cushy and as favorable as possible. Why do you think they want to do that?” Watters asked, turning to Kennedy for his response.
“Because they are woke,” Kennedy replied. “I would rather be forced to listen to O.J. jokes for the rest of eternity than to take the advice of President Biden or Governor Newsom. They are both nauseously woke.”
Kennedy went on to say that “one of the cardinal tenets of wokeism” is that the victim is not really the victim — the criminal is actually the victim.
“Wokers believe that no one should have to accept responsibility. They believe that it’s always someone else’s fault,” Kennedy continued. “And their motto is, ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, prosecute no evil.’”
“Now, fortunately, most Americans, at least those who have the IQ above a sloth understand that’s not the way the real world works,” Kennedy said, noting that there were always going to be people who committed crimes and that most Americans understood that was always going to be the case.
“There are some people in our society, Jesse, who are not sick, they are not confused. They are not mixed up. It’s not that their momma or daddy didn’t love them enough. They are just bad,” Kennedy explained. “Or at least they do very bad things. And that’s why we have to have prisons. And with respect to those people who say, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m in prison, isn’t this terrible?’ I would say, ‘Look, if you don’t want to go to prison, don’t do illegal stuff.’ But the corollary to that is, what you allow is what will continue.”
Kennedy said that what he meant by that — “what you allow is what will continue” — was that if officials did not hold criminals to account and put them in prison when their crimes warranted it, they would just continue to commit crimes. He claimed that both President Joe Biden and Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) had already “adopted this jaundiced view of reality.”
“When you are at the Senate cafeteria and you guys are drinking the little milks, you know, or you peal it open like that or may be sitting around the table gossiping with some colleagues from the other side of the aisle, do you sense that some of your Democratic colleagues are getting the anger that is erupting across the country about this out-of-control crime or is it just kind of going in one ear and out the other?” Watters asked, and Kennedy said he believed some Democrats understood exactly what was going on.
“They do? Why aren’t they doing anything about it or saying anything?” Watters pressed, and Kennedy said there were a number of factors that might be keeping them from acting.
Some, he said, were “woke” themselves — and others were “scared of the wokers.” Still others were worried about what might happen if they crossed President Biden.
“Some of the wokers started the defund and disrespect the police movement. They tolerated it — President Biden allowed it to happen. And you see the result,” Kennedy concluded. “It’s safer to walk down the streets of Mogadishu than it is to walk down the streets of New York. And I have said this before. Chicago and to some extent my city in Louisiana, New Orleans, that I love to death. They have become the world’s largest outdoor shooting ranges. What you allow is what will continue. And as long as we allow this, the criminals are not going to be unhappy with this. And they are going to keep committing crimes.”