Last week, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced the GOP’s Commitment to America. It focuses on reversing the worst policies of the Biden agenda that are causing record inflation, increases in crime, more border crossings, deadly drug overdoses, and dependence on China. For some reason, MSNBC thought of inviting the woman who destroyed Atlanta, former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, to comment on the exceedingly mainstream plan Republicans proposed.
How disastrous was Lance Bottoms’s tenure? The fact that she decided not to run for a second term in a city Democrats own should give you a clue.
In the wake of the 2020 death of St. George Floyd, Lance Bottoms gave rioters the same “space to destroy” that Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake provided to BLM “protestors” in 2015. While Lance Bottoms did not give explicit permission to riot like Rawling-Blake, her actions made Atlanta significantly more dangerous and violent.
Through a series of public statements and official actions, Lance Bottoms demoralized and limited law enforcement while empathizing with the rioters. The problems started when she punished officers for using force to quell riots downtown. Then she amped up her anti-police rhetoric following the death of Rayshard Brooks. According to an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Brooks resisted arrest, physically assaulted officers, and tried to shoot them with their own tasers. In short, the investigation justified the use of lethal force.
Instead of taking a pause and waiting for the outcome of the investigation, Lance Bottoms fanned the flames by stating publicly that she did not believe the shooting was justified despite being unable to articulate where the officer may have violated procedure. She also issued new orders limiting the tools police had to respond to violence in Atlanta.
Following her speech, shootings surged, with 75 individuals getting shot between May 31 and June 20, 2020. In the same period the year before there were 35. From June 17-20, Atlanta Police Department (APD) was nearly inoperable due to repeated sickouts in several precincts. The silence on the scanners was eerie for such a large city.
Recommended: Joe and Hunter’s Fang Fang Problem
By the beginning of July, the Wendy’s parking lot where an officer shot Brooks became Atlanta’s own CHOP-like autonomous zone. Rather than sending law enforcement in to clear the place, Lance Bottoms and other council members decided to negotiate with the rioters. It ended when Republican Governor Brian Kemp threatened to take over public safety in the city after the murder of an eight-year-old girl. Rioters shot her because her mother drove the car too close to the sacred Wendy’s by mistake. Secoriea Turner was martyred by the anti-police cause in Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Atlanta.
The fallout continued, and long after the riots over St. George Floyd ended because Joe Biden won the election, Atlanta was sliding deeper into chaos. By December 2020, the city’s murder rate was the highest in 22 years. Rates of aggravated assault and carjacking also rose. The trends have continued through 2022. The lawlessness that took root under Lance Bottoms caused residents of the Buckhead section to seek independence from the city after several random shootings in the area.
Despite the chaos she reigned over, Lance Bottoms made her way to the short list of candidates for Je Biden’s vice president. When she did not make the cut, she became the Senior Advisor for Public Engagement for the Biden White House. In that role, she sat down with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC to support the Biden administration’s narrative that “MAGA Republicans” are a threat to the nation. The irony is outrageous.
“There is a MAGA Republican agenda that gives no consideration to the rule of law, that has no respect for a woman’s right to choose, that wants to defund the FBI,” Lance Bottoms said. “There is a MAGA Republican agenda that thought that it was okay to attack our nation’s Capitol on January 6.”
This statement comes from the woman who allowed riots to infest the city she ran for weeks during the summer of 2020. Her policies and lack of action caused the death of one eight-year-old in the immediate aftermath and dozens of young people due to increased violence since then. The APD still suffers from an officer shortage after record retirements and resignations following Lance Bottoms’s actions in 2020.
So precisely whose policies are a danger to society? Making the case that it is Democrat politicians like Lance Bottoms and other officials in deep blue cities that threaten the safety and security of Americans seems to have a lot more available evidence. Perhaps Joe Biden should pick more credible and accomplished advisors if he wants them to go on television and lie.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member