The president supports DC statehood.
He's been clear about that, but he's not going to veto this bill from Congress,
which does amount to Congress sort of medal governance, right?
So how do you square that circle?
Both things can't be true.
>> No, we believe both things can be true.
Look right now, DC is not a state.
This is coming to the president, right?
This is something that's coming to his desk and he has to take action.
>> President Joe Biden has decided to side with Republicans and
conservative Democrats in Congress.
Who will very likely vote next week to block Washington DC s attempt to
reform their criminal code, which by the way is over 100 years old,
over a century year old, years old.
Now the DC Council initially passed the law back in November of 2022,
but it was vetoed by Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser.
Now, the council then unanimously voted to override the veto in January.
But because DC is not considered a state,
the federal government has the Authority to step in and veto it themselves.
So Congress has unique legislative power over Washington DC outlined
both in the US and the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act.
Which gives Congress the power to block any laws by the DC Council.
While rarely used, it is not unprecedented and it is likely
to happen again in this context when it comes to the criminal code.
Now, Congress can impose new and unwanted laws on the district and
they do have ultimate power over the DC budget.
Now, even the mayor who had vetoed the criminal code is
not in favor of the federal government stepping in and
blocking what the council has voted in favor of.
And the reason why is because they want DC to be able to govern itself
without the federal government getting involved the way it has been.
Now, we'll get back to Biden in just a moment.
But I do think it's important to talk about the changes to the criminal code.
But you know what, before we do that, Cenk just some initial thoughts.
>> Yeah.
Democrats often make the case that hey DC has got to be its own state
because the federal government can overrule what happens in DC.
Then thereby absolutely destroying any idea of self rule and
democracy in our nation's capital and then Democrats do it anyway.
They overrule DC and destroy the idea of self rule and democracy.
So standard democratic move pretend that you're in favor of one thing.
But when it comes to your own power and comfort and safety,
go in the opposite direction.
>> Exactly.
And, we're gonna talk about why we think Biden is motivated to block
this bill before we do though, or block this rewritten criminal code.
But before we do, what does the new criminal code entail?
Well, at issue are components of the new criminal code that would reduce
maximum criminal penalties for violent crimes like carjackings.
As well as expand rights to jury trials for
certain misdemeanor offenses that critics said would actually
stretch the capacity of an already overwhelmed court system.
Look, that last part I think is a little bit of a concern.
I mean, if you're gonna do this find,
I don't have a problem with the jury trials for misdemeanors.
But you've got to make sure that you have the resources ready to go that way.
You have enough judges, enough resources to actually carry this out.
Right in Riverside County, California, there is a severe shortage of judges.
They are not resourced enough to deal with violent criminal cases.
So they're just dismissing cases.
It's a disaster.
>> No, I'll go further than you.
I think that law is gonna be repealed at some point cuz it is a definite disaster.
There's no way that it's gonna work.
If you say jury trials for every misdemeanor,
you will clog up the courts so badly that no misdemeanor will be prosecuted.
And you would be shocked at what is considered misdemeanors,
tons of violent crimes within those misdemeanors.
So, you understand what we're saying?
I personally think this law in Washington is a terrible idea, but
I would not overrule it cuz I actually believe in democracy.
So it's not for me to decide, it's for their elected representatives to decide.
And that should be the bare minimum when you're dealing with this issue.
But Biden goes, nah, even though that was my stated principles,
I don't care, I'm gonna go in the opposite direction.
>> It would also eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for
everything except first degree murder.
The mandatory minimum for that is 24 years.
Proponents say that the changes are intended to update old sentencing
guidelines and bring them more in line with most other states.
Now looking at a carjacking specifically, this is a good example to show you like
where their mind is at when it comes to this rewritten criminal code.
So under current law, unarmed carjacking has a mandatory minimum
sentence of seven years and maximum sentence of 21 years.
If armed that jumps to 15 and 40 years respectively, and
get a load of this for context that 40 year maximum is double
the current maximum for second-degree sexual abuse.
Which by the way does help to bolster the argument that when it comes
to our law enforcement system.
Our judicial says all of that stuff,
it's all about protecting property over the safety of humans [LAUGH] right.
>> [CROSSTALK] Yeah, look we had a violent carjacking in
my neighborhood the other day but even so 40 years.
I mean, all right, so now under the revised code, right,
the new criminal code carjacking is divided into three gradations.
Depending on severity with the lowest penalties for an unarmed offense
running from 4 to 18 years which by the way is still pretty lengthy for
an unarmed carjacking.
And the highest penalties for an armed offense ranging from 12 to 24 years.
I do wanna also just note that all of the emphasis here seems to be on the length of
sentences.
Without much like the length of the sentences don't matter if you're not
rehabilitating people when they're locked up [LAUGH] right?
So all of the discussion seems to be about like, what do we do on the edges?
But no, let's actually answer the hard questions about how to help people,
how to rehabilitate people so they can go back, and live fruitful lives in society.
Go ahead Cenk.
>> So one more thing about how badly the system is broken, part of the reason for
these extreme sentences.
And I think that if you're a decent person,
all those sentences look way too extreme, right is because this system is so
overloaded that there's nonstop plea deal.
So 95 to 98% depending on the jurisdiction of cases are settled with plea deals.
So you start out in 40 years and they wind up at two years and so
they play everything now.
So that's why when you make misdemeanors harder to plea down, they become
nothing and everybody walks right and felonies become misdemeanors, etc.
That's all this is wrong.
The way that they should do it is they should do decent moral sentencing
that it does not over sentence like this.
But properly resource our courts so that if you need to,
you can try a lot more cases.
So you don't have to plea everything down.
>> Exactly.
Now let's go back to Biden, okay.
Now that you have somewhat of a sense of what the new criminal code indicates.
I would argue that whether you agree with it or not doesn't even matter, right?
What matters is that the elected leaders,
elected politicians in DC should have final say over what is enacted in DC.
And by the way, Biden argued that previously,
but now Biden has committed to signing.
Or using his veto power because neither chamber of Congress is likely to
have a vito proof margin to override it, okay.
So days before the house vote, the Office of Management and
Budget released a statement of administration policy that said
the administration opposes the measure.
And called on Congress to respect the District of
Columbia's autonomy to govern its own local affairs.
Now, 173 house Democrats voted against the resolution siding with what they
thought was the stance of the White House.
But Biden has decided to support it instead.
Now he's trying to claim that he still supports DC statehood but
also wants to block these policy changes.
So let's go to his tweet where he says, I support DC statehood and home rule,
but I don't support some of the changes DC Council put forward.
Over the mayor's objections such as lowering penalties for carjackings.
If the senate votes to overturn what DC Council did, I'll sign it, he says.
>> In other words, you don't support the rule for DC.
But look guys,
the reason why he could write such an absurd tweet that by the way.
Donald Trump would be ripped apart for,
right is because mainstream media is gonna protect him.
There's not gonna be anybody in mainstream media that says finds a liar.
But if you say that, hey, you're gonna overrule their home rule decision.
That means you're not for home rule and saying you are, is a clear lie, right?
No way, anybody in mainstream media says that at most they'll tweak him for
a little bit of hypocrisy, right?
So, I mean, we'll get a load of the insane argument that binds me.
Now, remember DC need statehood because of presidents like me,
that'll just take away their democracy anytime I like.
>> And look. >> I mean, how's that for
an ironically pretty good argument that the DC needs to be protected from Biden.
>> So, let's speculate a little as to why Biden has made this
commitment to overrule, what the DC council has voted on.
I think about Trump's speech at CPAC and
a giant chunk of it focused on crime, right?
And just kind of riling people up about crime and
how scared they should be in all of that.
That is clearly gonna be part of his platform when he runs for president and
Biden doesn't want to be accused of contributing to the crime wave,
or doing things that enable a crime wave.
So I think that's the reason why he did this.
And so, I mean, but at the end of the day,
you have an opportunity here to prove that you mean what you say?
So if you say that you support DC statehood, then prove it.
And here's your opportunity and he proved otherwise.
>> And by the way,
he didn't even have to say anything about it until the bill came to his death.
He jumped out to say something about it.
I have a second theory as to why he did this because people in power live in DC
and they're like.
We're not gonna risk our safety, even if we're Democrats,
we can pretend to be in favor of those laws.
But this isn't about you guys in New York or L A or Seattle or Portland.
We don't give a damn about you guys but
us no way we allow these kind of sentence reductions.
And remember what's Joe Biden most famous for in his senate career was
the crime bill that increased sentences didn't decrease sentences.
So he cares about his own ask more than anything else in the world.
So both things lead to the same conclusion.
Biden is saying either my political calculation for
my own career is more important than self rule for DC and or my own personal safety.
My view of my own personal safety and the powerful people in DC,
the oligarchs in DC, their safety is more important than DC self rule.
So either way it is at a minimum, incredibly hypocritical.
And in reality, obviously, his excuses, our lives.
And in the end, what is very likely to happen is the DC criminal
code will remain and it happens to be older than Joe Biden is.
Just let that sink in.