And who could possibly think that mass distribution of COVID tests could help, right? Jen Psaki tried to shrug off American voters’ concerns over sharply increasing crime rates, especially in cities where prosecutors have taken up radical “reform” by refusing to prosecute criminals. When asked about the current political environment, Psaki tried to make concerns over crime only a figment of Fox’s imagination in their “alternate universe”:

Jen Psaki mocks people discussing the “consequences” of “soft-on-crime” policies: “What does that even mean?” pic.twitter.com/C1KEnXVIQI

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 31, 2022

Ahem. In the real universe, violent crime and homicides are sharply increasing even over 2020’s unrest-driven spike. Just a few days earlier, CBS News rather than Fox pointed this out:

Homicides in major American cities ticked up in 2021, with a 5% increase from 2020 and a 44% increase over 2019, according to a new analysis of crime trends released Tuesday by the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ).

The study drew on crime data from 22 cities nationwide — including Atlanta, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Memphis, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia — and found an additional 218 murders last year, compared to 2020. And while the overall increase in the homicide rate slowed, murder rates in St. Petersburg, Florida, (108%) and Austin (86%) skyrocketed, while Washington, D.C., (16%) also recorded a notable increase.

Last week, CNN — also not a Fox affiliate — reported on “dramatically” increasing rates of carjackings across the country:

Carjackings have risen dramatically over the past two years in some of America’s biggest cities.

Just outside Chicago, a state senator’s car and other valuables were taken at gunpoint in December, and a group of children, one just 10 years old, carjacked more than a dozen people. A rideshare driver being carjacked shot his attackers earlier this month in Philadelphia. Last March, a 12-year-old in Washington, DC was arrested and charged with four counts of armed carjacking.

“The majority of it is young joyriders. They’re not keeping the cars. They’re jacking cars to commit another crime, typically more serious robberies or shootings, or joyriding around for the sake of social media purpose and street cred,” said Christopher Herrmann, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It’s a disturbing trend.”

Comprehensive national data isn’t available because the FBI’s crime reporting system doesn’t track carjackings. But large cities that track the crime reported increases in 2020 and 2021, especially as the pandemic took hold of the country.

And at the New York Times, which at last look is not yet owned by the Murdochs, a focus-group effort from Frank Luntz last week among “self-identified independents and moderates” made it clear that crime isn’t just a concern but also a top priority in the center:

LUNTZ: … The people who were disappointed in him don’t hate him. He still has an opportunity to win people over. He still has an opportunity to transcend ideology, to transcend politics. But they look at their day-to-day lives and they don’t think that he’s helping them at all. And I’m listening every moment of the 90 minutes we had with them to hear something they embrace. Here’s something that they endorse, something that they support.

And I’d say if you did a content analysis, 75 minutes of the 90 were spent complaining and only 15 minutes were spent in support of anything. These people sounded tired. And it wasn’t the time that we did it at night. They’re just physically, intellectually, emotionally tired from the last two years. Covid never seems to end. Prices seem to get out of control. Shortages, a lot of them mentioned issues of crime. In fact, crime is more commonly mentioned than any other issue.

And in a clip from the discussion:

LUNTZ: How many of you think that the level of crime is up in America today versus a year ago? Raise your hands if you think it’s up.

OK. Almost all of you.

– Absolutely. – Well, at least we’re hearing about it more. So, I don’t know. That’s the question. Is it perception or is it reality?

– Reality.

– Reality.

– Reality.

So who’s living in the “alternate universe”?

The real purpose of Psaki’s scoffing appears to be an attempt to deflect blame from local prosecutors elected by progressive activists to enact “criminal justice reform.” It instead comes off as a sneering attempt at gaslighting by pretending crime rates aren’t going up and that voters have no real security concerns in their communities. It comes across as a hopelessly elitist attitude from people who have all sorts of official security to keep themselves from harm’s way while the rest of the country suffers under the dual weight of the progressive efforts at defunding police and electing DAs like Georges Gascón and Chesa Boudin, among many others.

Final question: is there anyone who’s serving this administration worse than Jen Psaki?