Sharpton On MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’: ‘To Take All Policing Off is Something a Latte Liberal May Go For’

This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, it was a tale of two opinions as the Rev Al Sharpton highlighted increasing crime, while co-anchor Willie Geist downplayed violence in New York City, saying it does not feel “different or unsafe” to him.

While speaking to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Sharpton said that “we need to re-imagine how we do policing, but to take all policing off is something a latte liberal may go for as they sit around the Hamptons discussing this as an academic problem, but people living on the ground need proper policing.”

Amazing. After MSNBC’s Willie Geist downplayed surging NYC violence, Al Sharpton (of all people) said things are indeed getting dangerous in non-wealthy communities, saying only “Latte Liberals” think defunding the police makes sense.

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 8, 2020

Video: https://t.co/oThFUW6r56

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 8, 2020

From CPT:

“We’ve always heard about the tale of two cities. On the side of the city that I come from, which is Blacker and poorer, we’ve seen more in terms of gun usage.

I got a lot of attention when I did the eulogy for George Floyd’s funeral, but I also, a month later, preached a 1-year-old kid’s funeral in Brooklyn who was killed by a stray bullet,” Sharpton said.

“Six people were shot over Labor Day weekend at a festivity in Brooklyn, so I would say statistically we’re not much higher than where we were, but on the ground it is certainly feeling more violent, feeling more unsafe in unsafe communities,” Sharpton added.

Sharpton also talked to Geist, saying that “there was a study done by a group in Princeton, 93% of the marches and protests that we’ve had have been completely peaceful.”

He claimed, “you can’t tell people things that are apparently there without people saying, wait a minute, I may be a conservative, I may be a Republican but I’m not going to be duped.”

He added that he believes “they are trying to depend on people are so racist that they will act stupid and they just don’t have enough racist to go around this time.”

Are you tuned in to MSNBC’s #MorningJoe? pic.twitter.com/z8fuY6PEJc

— Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) September 8, 2020