California Governor Gavin Newsom ripped into Donald Trump on Friday, calling out the president’s federal crime crackdown in Washington, D.C. — and turning the heat on Republican-led states where violent crime is far worse.
“I think he should start with Shreveport, Louisiana, in Speaker [Mike] Johnson’s district that has six-plus times the per-capita murder rate of Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco,” Newsom told MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen.
He continued: “What about the carnage, Mr. President, in Shreveport? Why aren’t you protecting the folks there? Eight of the top 10 murder states in this country are red states. What bulls—, and everyone knows it, everybody knows it.”
The numbers back him up.
Shreveport ranks among the most dangerous cities in the U.S., with a murder rate of 21.4 per 100,000 people — over six times higher than San Francisco. The city also has a violent crime rate of 949 per 100,000. It’s located in the district of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Zoom out, and it gets worse for the GOP. Four of the top five states with the highest murder rates are Republican-run: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Missouri.
Despite those facts, Trump launched a high-profile federal operation in Washington, D.C. this week, sending over 1,600 federal officers into the city. He’s called it a “historic action to rescue (the) nation’s capitol from crime.” So far, the effort has resulted in just 111 arrests — a number critics say is laughably low given the likely multi-million-dollar cost to taxpayers.
Newsom sees the move for what it is: a weak show of force from a desperate politician.
“It’s acts of authoritarianism, it’s acts of power [from] a person that is trying to use his formal authority; it’s depleting, it’s increasingly weak, and it’s increasingly desperate,” Newsom said. “That’s why it’s important for us at this moment to meet him head on; not just rhetorically, but through substantive counter actions, and that’s what we’re doing in California.”
In just a few minutes, Newsom flipped Trump’s crime narrative on its head — not with rhetoric, but with hard data that puts the blame squarely on the red states trying to shift it elsewhere.
Watch the video below.
.@GavinNewsom: "I think he should start with Shreveport, Louisiana, and Speaker Johnson's district that has 6x+ the per capita murder rate of Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco. What about the carnage, Mr. President, in Shreveport? Why aren't you protecting the folks there? Eight of… pic.twitter.com/l7DQlOd23u
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) August 15, 2025
