Morning Joe has uncomfortable conversation with black MSNBC co-star over Trump’s DC takeover

President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C., has set Democrats against each other as their TDS meets reality head-on.

With the latest narrative against Trump’s efforts to address crime in the nation’s capital, a discussion about crime statistics in D.C. set off a verbal clash between MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Symone Sanders Townsend.

The “Morning Joe” panel focused on the crimes in the city, and some of the recent stories that made national headlines, as Scarborough seemed to defend Trump’s taking over the Washington, D.C., police force and deploying the National Guard.

Scarborough: “You don’t think more police makes streets safer?”

Sanders: “No. I’m a black woman in America.”

Oh, well that settles it then! pic.twitter.com/hDdnR8WQCC

— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) August 12, 2025

But Sanders Townsend pushed back with her own version of reality.

“We are really adding to the fearmongering, in my opinion, and amping up the rhetoric when we should be tamping it down, because Donald Trump has given us rhetoric and not the reality,” she claimed.

“You don’t think more police make streets safer?” Scarborough asked.

“No, Joe, I’m a black woman in America. I do not always think that more police make streets safer,” she fired back, resorting to a predictable narrative.

“When you walk down the streets of Georgetown, you don’t see a police officer on every corner, but you don’t feel unsafe. So what is it about talking about places like Southeast CDC, right? Ward 8, if you will, that people say, ‘Well, we need more officers to make us safe.’ I think we have to rethink what safety means in America,” Sanders Townsend argued.

(Video Credit: MSNBC)

Scarborough, a former Florida Republican lawmaker who has been a vocal critic of the president,  interjected with facts.

“Well, you know, there have been black city council members in New York City when people were talking about defunding the police, saying the people we represent are the people who need police officers the most, as safety officers and schools need police officers the most, so our children can walk from their homes to school without without being stopped, you know, five, ten times by drug dealers or people that are going to assault them,” he noted.

“I just, I don’t, I don’t think this is an issue of black versus white when you come, when you’re talking about safety, there are a lot of black Americans who don’t feel safe in their homes, in their neighborhoods. And when they hear people talking about defunding the police, it freaks them out,” he added.

“I’m not saying that the police are not good, I never supported defund,” Sanders Townsend claimed in her response.

“I think you’re making a good point, Joe. I want to be able to call the police in my neighborhood, and when they come, I don’t want them to think that I’m a suspect,” she continued. “But what we are talking about is that the president of the United States is saying that there is a crime emergency in Washington, D.C. An emergency could be anything that he says it is.”