Hillary Clinton speaks onstage during a conversation with Margaret Hoover in New York City on May 1. (Dominik Bindl / Getty Images)
By Joe Saunders August 12, 2025 at 10:22am
When political power player Hillary Clinton decided to weigh in on the national debate over crime in the nation’s capital city, President Donald Trump’s White House decided to fire right back.
In a post published Monday on the social media platform X, Clinton denounced Trump as “unhinged” and declared that violent crime in Washington, D.C., is at a “30-year low.”
White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson wasted no time in responding.
In no uncertain terms, she branded Clinton a “massive liar,” but first she poured salt in the no-doubt still festering wound of Clinton’s 2016 election loss to Trump.
On top of being a big-time loser, you’re also a massive liar. https://t.co/AUTWgY8ZrP pic.twitter.com/Z44u24LN7o
— Abigail Jackson (@ATJackson47) August 11, 2025
“On top of being a big-time loser, you’re also a massive liar,” she wrote.
Jackson included a chart that showed the district’s homicide rate in 2024 was a startling 27 for every 100,000 residents — far above other world capitals. (No. 2 was Bogota, Colombia. The rate there in 2024 was 15 per 100,000 residents, according to the Colombian news site Colombiaone.)
She also included a screenshot of an NBC News report noting that a D.C. police commander had been suspended in May for allegedly fudging crime statistics to make it appear his district of the city was safer than it is.
Should cleaning up Washington, D.C., be a priority?
The implication was clear: Statistics can be manipulated. Non-fatal crimes can be categorized as less serious than the law would ordinarily allow (and the victims would demand). But homicides result in dead bodies, and corpses demand counting.
In short, the post conveyed: Whatever Democrats like Clinton try to claim, the capital of the United States is overrun by crime.
And the head of the D.C. police union agrees.
While Greggory Pemberton, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Union, wasn’t addressing Clinton’s claim during his interview with Fox News’ Sandra Smith on Monday’s “America Reports,” his statement was a clear endorsement of the action Clinton called “unhinged.”
“We completely agree with the president that the crime in the District of Columbia is out of control and something needs to be done,” Pemberton said.
Clinton limits comments on her X account to those she follows or specifically mentions, but that didn’t stop social media feedback mocking her “gotcha” attempt on Trump.
Former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer had a simple question. How safe would Clinton feel in D.C. without a security detail?
Madame Secretary
Serious question
Without a security detail would you walk through the Navy Yard area of DC alone at night?
or Penn Quarter?
Or Capitol Hill? https://t.co/DC9kZ9PG46
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) August 12, 2025
Other sentiments were similar:
If Hillary Clinton thinks DC is safe, she should go move to Anacostia or Navy Yard. https://t.co/6ubNVLkQRz
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 11, 2025
And then, of course, there’s the reputation of the former first lady, senator, secretary of state, and failed Democratic presidential candidate for a shaky relationship with the truth (to put it mildly).
Does Anyone look to Hillary Clinton for the
Truth!— MsTracy (@TracyAFF1) August 11, 2025
Some things from the exchange are clear:
Trump is mounting a high-profile public initiative to wrest control of the streets of the nation’s capital away from criminals.
His communications staff is on board with it and ready for rapid response alerts. Top appointees like Jeanine Pirro, the onetime Fox News host who was recently confirmed as U.S. attorney for D.C., are unapologetic about pushing it.
And Democrats like Clinton and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies are doing their best to pretend it’s unnecessary.
Jefferies, a New York Democrat, used a social media post to repeat the “30-year-low” claim about D.C. crime, and state flatly, “Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department.”
That didn’t go over so well, either.
You know who disagrees with you? DC residents. The police union. The DA. The whistleblowers. https://t.co/uf7BNwVFaU
— @amuse (@amuse) August 11, 2025
“You know who disagrees with you?” one respondent wrote. “DC residents. The police union. The DA. The whistleblowers.”
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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