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A previous aide to President Biden, now an MSNBC host, has criticized Donald Trump’s effort to address crime in Washington DC, despite living in a luxurious $2 million house in a suburb far from the chaos affecting parts of the city.
Jen Psaki, who served as White House Press Secretary and is now 46, echoed the sentiments of many liberals by denouncing the president’s decision for federal intervention in the capital’s police department as a means to curb crime.
“Meanwhile, the real residents of the city that Trump aims to control do not share that perspective, and they are pushing back,” she asserted on her show, The Briefing Room, on Wednesday.
Psaki went on to share her delight at placards and protests devised by anti-police and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) protesters across the city.
But she made no mention of the fact that she lives in a six bedroom mansion in Arlington, just across the Potomac River from DC.
The Virginia suburb was hailed as ‘one of the safest places in America’ in 2024 and is a world away from Washington DC’s notorious wards seven and eight, despite being just a few miles away.
Last year, more than half of DC’s murders occurred in those two areas.
Jen Psaki cheered on protesters pushing back against Trump’s DC takeover in a particularly crime-ridden section of the municipality on Wednesday
![Psaki lives in a six-bed Arlington, Virginia, mansion six miles away. Bloomberg pegged the suburb was one 'the safest place[s] in America' just last year](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/08/15/20/101266637-15004683-Psaki_lives_in_a_six_bed_Arlington_Virginia_mansion_six_miles_aw-a-1_1755285985405.jpg)
Psaki lives in a six-bed Arlington, Virginia, mansion six miles away. Bloomberg pegged the suburb was one ‘the safest place[s] in America’ just last year
More than 40 percent of children living in Wards 7 and 8 live in abject poverty and more than 900 residents reported feeling unsafe in their homes or cars at all hours of the day in a recent survey.
But Psaki suggested Trump’s crackdown was just window dressing.
‘Federal agents reportedly stopping cars for things as minor as seatbelt violations and broken taillights,’ she said.
Psaki questioned whether such stops were ‘really cracking down on crime’. She speculated that they were ‘probably’ being conducted to glean citizens’ ‘immigration status.’
Psaki – after losing roughly half of Rachel Maddow’s audience during her first month in the coveted 9pm timeslot – relished in reports that some of the bystanders ‘ran into a CVS to quickly make signs warning others that ICE was ahead [while] directing drivers to turn left to avoid the checkpoint.
‘You can see one of the signs there they’re holding,’ she said.
‘That was DC last night,’ she eventually concluded. ‘The people of DC – which doesn’t surprise me. I’ve lived here a long time – pushing back in practical ways against what Trump is trying to do to the city.’
It’s located across the Potomac miles from DC’s Ward 8. Psaki was seen celebrating protesters making cops’ jobs difficult as they conduct traffic checks at a checkpoint at this intersection at the heart of Ward 8, along 14th Street in northwest Washington
‘To give you a sense, this is a neighborhood full of restaurants and bars, and lots of people live there,’ Psaki said, before relishing in the pushback. More than 40 percent of children living in Wards 7 and 8 live in abject poverty
Her home is on the complete opposite side of the municipality’s predominantly black Wards 7 and 8. Cops are seen here investigating the death of 3 during an armed clash on August 6, 2023 in Ward 8
Psaki is one of a number of liberals who have taken issue with Trump’s bid to make the capital more safe.
They cite statistics showing that crimes have fallen since 2023. But DC has more murders per capita than Bogota in Colombia or Mexico City.
It is also plagued by far more homicides than New York City, with other liberals conceding that the capital has a serious lawlessness problem that does need tackled.
At least some DC residents have embraced Trump’s forced takeover of Washington, DC’s, police force with open arms, including a local black woman who uses the TikTok handle @bigdawglexi.
She took to the platform to celebrate feeling safer since the first troops started arriving Tuesday morning.
‘Finally able to chill at a red light with my windows down,’ she said in a self-filmed video that went viral Friday. ‘(I’m) not worried about if one of them young n***s is coming… Riding through the city, feeling more safe than I ever felt.’
Some of Psaki’s own MSNBC stablemates are at least partly-supportive of the crime crackdown. Morning Joe star Joe Scarborough, who also lives in the city, said lawlessness was out of control.
A homeless man sits on a street in Ward 8 in 2023. Residents and local politicians have long called for increased security measures in the area, with many reporting feeling unsafe
Psaki served the Biden administration’s White House press secretary for a little over a year until May 2022. She went on to join MSNBC, where she now has her own show
Former MSNBC star Chris Matthews, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Mike Nellis, a former Kamala Harris advisor, have all issues similar warnings since.
They all claim Trump is goading Democrats into ‘a trap’ with his takeover of the DC, police force by daring members of the party to defend an unacceptable status quo of crime.
The government in January said violent crime in DC was at a ’30-year-low’ in 2024, and early statistics from the Metropolitan Police Department suggest similar results can be expected for 2025.
But such statistics can be misleading, all three said – especially when taken as truth without a hint of personal experience.
