00:00Look, it's common sense. This is just common sense. I mean, whether you live here, whether you come here to work, whether you come here to visit, you want to be safe. You don't come to get carjacked or assaulted or robbed. This is common sense. People need to be safe in our nation's capital. And that's what this is all about. And as Mike Lee explained very well, we have a responsibility.
00:28If we just continue to let this crime go on, then isn't Congress at fault when it ultimately it is our responsibility? So it's very good that President Trump has stepped forward and said, hey, we need to have a safe nation's capital. And ultimately, Congress has this responsibility. If it's not getting done, who else are we supposed to blame? Say, oh, well, we handed off power and they're not doing their job. So what? That's ridiculous. Of course, we have to make sure that our capital is safe. That's our job.
00:58And the other thing I'll say is the National Guard is trained to do this kind of work. These are military police units. Matter of fact, a lot of those Guard members probably in their civilian work are law enforcement.
01:11They're professionals. They're professionals. They're trained to do it. I was a governor for 10 years. And as a governor, I knew and all the governors can tell you that the National Guard is a Swiss Army knife. If you have flood, fire, tornado, you need any kind of emergency response or anything else, who do you call?
01:28Well, you call the National Guard. They're trained to do this kind of work. And they're not the only ones helping out. They're doing an incredible job. And their visibility is very effective as well as a deterrent.
01:40But I was visiting with Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum, who's from my state of North Dakota. And I called him up. It was fairly late. He was out actually doing a ride with the park police.
01:52And they were out in some very dangerous, formerly dangerous parts of town with trained law enforcement professionals from the park service. So these are people who know what they're doing.
02:04And so I come back to where we started. It's common sense. People want to be safe. And it's long past time that we make sure that people are safe in our nation's capital.
Comments