Holder: Trump’s Claim We’re in a Period of American Carnage Is Inconsistent with the Facts

RUSH EXCERPT: 
TAPPER: "And we’re back with more of my interview with former Obama attorney general Eric Holder. I asked Mr. Holder about moves by the Trump Administration to walk back criminal justice reform and whether efforts to lessen penalties for some nonviolent offenders is effectively dead."
HOLDER: "I hope that’s not the case. I hope that people will — in law enforcement and people at the Justice Department will look at the statistics, will listen to the police professionals who all say that, you know, criminal justice reform is a — is a good thing. And, you know, it wasn’t too long ago where this issue was supported by Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. The opportunity was there, certainly in Congress, to bass some meaningful legislation in that regard. The comments — many of the comments made by the attorney general and by the president are simply inconsistent with the facts. You know, the notion that there is a crime wave out there that we are dealing — we’re in a period of American carnage. Again, inconsistent with the facts. We have crime rates that are at 40-year lows."
TAPPER: "They’ve gone up."
HOLDER: "They’ve gone up certainly in the last couple of years. And every city we want to make sure that we have measures in place to deal with those issues, but I lived through a time when I was the United States attorney in Washington, D.C. When this city was called the murder capital of the country. And we’re in a fundamentally different place now than we were in the early ‘90s. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t, you know, focus attention on those places where crime, violent crime in particular, is a concern, but I think we have to be careful in the language that we use and base policies on the evidence as it exists."
TAPPER: "What do you say to voters out there who hear you and others talking about criminal justice reform and they think you just want to be soft on crime? You just don’t want people who commit drug offenses to go to prison, but they’re killing people in different ways just as much as somebody with a gun."
HOLDER: "Well, criminal justice reform is not soft on crime. And what I would tell people, first off, anytime you hear somebody say soft on crime, hold on to your wallet. That’s a political slogan and really has little or nothing to do with good law enforcement. Criminal justice reform is about using the limited resources that exist in the law enforcement community in the most effective way to protect the greatest number of people. And it means putting violent offenders in jail for extended periods of time. It means looking at people who are doing things in a nonviolent way and trying to understand what is it that we can do to hold them accountable but at the same time to make sure that they do not become repeat offenders."