On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper stated that Vice President JD Vance’s statement that Washington, D.C’s Union Station “had been taken over in recent years by drug addicts and vagrants and the chronic homeless,” describes circumstances that are “certainly disturbing, for many reasons. None of it, though, is criminal.”
Cooper played video of Vance saying, “We hear these people outside screaming free D.C., let’s free D.C. from lawlessness. Let’s free Washington, D.C. from one of the highest murder rates in the entire world. Let’s free Washington, D.C., so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure. That’s what we’re trying to free D.C. from.”
Cooper then said, “The Vice President said the station had been taken over in recent years by drug addicts and vagrants and the chronic homeless, all of which is certainly disturbing, for many reasons. None of it, though, is criminal. D.C.’s vagrancy laws, like many around the country, were repealed in the wake of a 1972 Supreme Court ruling. As to the claim the district has, ‘one of the highest murder rates in the entire world.’ It doesn’t even have one of the highest in the entire country. But crime, certainly, is a problem for people in D.C. and many major cities. And the Vice President also correctly stated that violent crime is down 35% in the last nine days.”
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