TODD: This has been happening on the West Coast for years, and it is these domestic terror groups threatening people, pulling them out of their car, beating them. Used to happen just in downtown. Now they are taking the show into suburbs. My friend Victoria Taft at Pajamas Media has a piece. “I thought I was going to die.” Man held at gunpoint, beaten by Portland’s Antifa, BLM terrorists. He’s taken to a hospital trauma center. Often this happens in sight of cops. I’m not kidding. And it’s not the police’s fault preponderate do not blame the blue. They’re not allowed to do anything.

Now Black Lives Matter/Antifa took this show to Texas, and it was Black Lives Matter/Antifa who drew guns on unarmed Texans, including a black man who was committing the crime of wanting to go home to his family. And the look on this man’s face is part astonishment. You would do this to people. And I don’t even know that I detected rage as much as just astonishment. How dare you? They’re seeking violence. They are. Greg Abbott now has said there’s going to be extra punishment for people who stop motorists. Course, there’s other states that have passed these laws. Ron DeSantis has done this.

In New York there’s been an 83% surge, an increase in shootings since the defund, defund. Since events in other cities like Minneapolis this has happened. There was a shooting this weekend Times Square at the same intersection where thousands of Americans gathered to see the ball drop. This is happening around the country, and now it’s spreading into the suburbs. And it’s not — this isn’t — this isn’t organic. This isn’t accidental. This is designed. Ten months ago in a Morning Update, Rush talked about how the city of New York was taking the teeth out of law enforcement, and nothing has changed in that time.

RUSH: The rising crime wave in New York City, talk about it all the time. Shootings are up 200 percent over last year, and all sorts of violence and mayhem are being unleashed.

Now the mayor, the idiot Bill de Blasio, says people’s pent-up frustration at being cooped up inside because of the coronavirus is the reason for skyrocketing crime. He says the one billion dollar cut in the police budget, that’s got nothing to do with it. Dismantling the anti-crime task force, the plain-clothes unit, that’s got nothing to do with it, either. And, of course, neither does his release of over 2,000 hardened criminals from Rikers Island.

And now another genius, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has put her two cents in. She agrees the massive police budget cuts are not related to the crime wave – because she wants the police defunded. She says rising crime is caused by people who are scared to pay their rent. They go out and shoplift a loaf of bread to feed their hungry kids. How does that account for the 200 percent increase in shootings?

Meanwhile on the other coast, California Democrats are about to release 8,000 criminals from jails and prisons to stop the virus from spreading, supposedly.

Liberal Democrats. They defund the police, and at the same time they release criminals from jail. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

TODD: If you’re not in these cities, you can’t know how possibly know how bad it is or how insane it is. You can’t know that in fact in cities like Portland and Seattle, they will not let you sweep homeless camps where people are overdosing, carrying knives, guns, et cetera, but they will make the kids go to school with woke masks. Please again another learning opportunity. Please.

The same government that’s telling you to wrap yourself in a woke mask is telling you to walk through a drug camp, which in Portland, San Francisco, those are sex trafficking camps too. It’s a two for one. Sex trafficking is more profitable and safer for the traffickers. Has been traditionally. Just a comparison with your kids. Why do you think they want us to wear masks but want you to walk by people who are taking meth, shooting up, performing acts of prostitution in tents? Why is that? Why is it okay that they dispose of their human waste on the streets but we would get fined if we did that when we went camping?

If a park ranger came by in the state park and, “Hey, you didn’t take your waste with you. Here’s a $5,000 fine.” “Oh, we’re homeless.” “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Here’s your $5,000 stimulus payment. My bad.”