"'I think that Democrats have to get it around their heads that Americans are far more hawkish on crime than they think that are,' he told Dana Bash."

Democrats are hawkish on crime in ways that don't make sense to Republicans: Education jobs, housing, opportunity. Republicans carry water for criminality by cutting support for education, jobs, housing, and opportunity.

Republicans are only hawkish on crime when it's black and brown people doing the crime. Republicans aren't really hawkish on crime when it's rich white men. Republicans just love them an easy scapegoat and a virtue signaling witch hunt.

Does the average voter go for that? In certain circumstances yes, and they'd apply it to powerful white men too.

And that's why Republicans can't ever release the Epstein Files.

"The figures showed Trump's net approval rating for crime sitting at +1 for his second term as of August, in contrast to the -13 he secured during his first."

^
All this, while crime was actually down under Biden. All this while Republicans were lying and saying crime is on the rise.

So what this really tells us is the Propaganda Model remains the enduring legacy of the Twentieth Century.

Serious George Orwell shit, and Boaz eats it up.