EXCLUSIVE: Attorney General Pam Bondi invites Democratic governors and mayors to partner with the Trump administration on public safety
Attorney General Pam Bondi told the Washington Reporter that she and the Trump administration welcome partnership with lawmakers of all parties when it comes to making Americans safe.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. —
Attorney General Pam Bondi went to Tennessee this week with a simple message: “Make Memphis beautiful again.”
Bondi, who went to Memphis to tout the successes of President Donald Trump’s Memphis Safe Task Force, was joined by Sens. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), Gov. Bill Lee (R., Tenn.), Rep. David Kustoff (R., Tenn.), as well as by Scott Turner, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Gady Serralta, the director of the United States Marshals Service (USMS), Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, and Tyreece Miller, the U.S. marshal for Tennessee.
“In 2024, Memphis had the highest violent crime rate in the country,” Bondi said. “No longer, thanks to the leadership of President Trump and our dedicated men and women in law enforcement.”
The Washington Reporter was on site for Bondi’s whirlwind Memphis tour, and asked her what she wanted Democrats to glean from the Trump task force’s success.
“We want to help all governors, we want to help all mayors who need President Trump’s help,” Bondi told the Reporter. “Look what we’ve done in D.C., look what Donald Trump’s leadership has done right here in Memphis. You don’t have to be in the same political party, clearly. This is about keeping Americans safe. If you want to talk to anyone, go out and talk to the residents of Memphis, who have been very vocal about what has been done by the leadership of all the people behind me and sitting in this audience to make their great city safe again. We want to help anyone regardless of political party.”
“Tolerating crime is a choice,” Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, said. “This administration chooses law and order… We will not coddle violent criminals at the expense of law-abiding citizens.”
In the last 56 days, compared to the same 56 days last year, murder in Memphis is down over 50 percent, sexual assault is down over 40 percent, robbery is down around 60 percent, and 121 children have been located and returned to safety.
“The numbers tell the story themselves. Overall serious crime is down 45 percent… we are reversing the trend,” Bondi said.
Tennessee’s federal and local leaders echoed Bondi’s sentiment that Memphis should be a role model to cities across America.
“We have been tracking to the street level where violent crime has been happening in Memphis,” Sexton — the House Speaker — told the Reporter. “The enhanced focus with the additional resources from the federal, state and local entities have lowered Memphis’s crime to a 20 year low in just 56 days. Public safety should not be a partisan issue, we all should want our children to feel safe to ride their bikes and experience freedom and peace.”
“We want Memphis to be the safest city in the country,” Blackburn said during Bondi’s event. “We know this will be a longterm effort… Memphis can be the model for the rest of the country on how you come together as a team, how you fight violent crime, how you don’t stop and you don’t give up, but you keep getting these results.”
Memphis has had a “problem with crime” since he was a child, Hagerty added, and it “expanded way beyond control” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, Hagerty wants the Trump administration to continue restoring safety and justice in “one of the most amazing cities in America.”
The challenge, Hagerty explained, is to “sustain this success”; Hagerty told Memphians that he plans to leverage his role as a Senate appropriator to ensure the city gets the funds it needs.
For Tennessee’s governor, the Trump administration’s success is personal. Lee described himself as “a seventh-generation Tennessean, as someone who’s lived here my entire life, who’s loved the city of Memphis, whose grandparents lived six blocks from the river.” However, crime, he said, has placed a “burden… on this city for far too long. This is Thanksgiving week, and this is a governor who has a deep debt of gratitude” for those who have kept it safe during a “historic” moment for Memphis, he said. “The world will see what can happen when partnership comes together.”
Serralta, who also led surge in Washington, D.C., explained that he has heard firsthand from Memphians who are “so supportive of the task force” and its efforts to make the city safer.
“The task force has been able to make Memphis a safer place to live, work, and visit,” Serralta said, with over 500 firearms taken off the streets over the last 56 days. Thanks to the task force, which is composed of 31 different agencies, “law and order is being restored in Memphis,” he said. “We’re going to keep arresting folks.”
Following her remarks at the Shelby County Office of Preparedness, Bondi joined hundreds of members of the Memphis task force for dinner, which was sponsored in part by Tennessee broadcaster Todd Starnes.
“We are just so thankful for the great work that the Trump administration is doing,” Starnes said. “Many people in Memphis have been praying for a very long time that God would send help our way, and God sent you to us, and we are so thankful for that.”