Schumer mocks Sessions: I'll ride the subway with you at 4 a.m.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hit back at U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions for last week calling the New York Police Department “soft on crime.”

“My daughters, you know, they’re young adults, but they ride the subway at 4 a.m., and I’m perfectly happy about it,” Schumer, the senior Democratic senator from New York, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday. “We are a safe city.”


“And by the way, New York has grown from 7 million people in 1990 to 8.5 million today, the largest of any city, because crime went down,” he continued. “Mothers from Denver and Dallas were not sending their daughters and sons to New York in 1990. Now they’re happy to do it.”

Sessions, who was appointed attorney general by President Donald Trump, was heavily criticized after his department sent out a news release last week threatening to withhold federal funding from New York for being a sanctuary city, in which the department characterized the NYPD as being "soft on crime."

Several New York officials quickly lambasted Sessions and the Justice Department for the comments, including New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Police Commissioner James O’Neill. Sessions later backed off the statement, praising the police department and calling New York a “fabulous city for law enforcement.”

Schumer, who in March called for Sessions' resignation over the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign's communications with Russia, said the “unfortunate” comments still concerned him.

“Here’s the greatest thing I worry about in this country,” Schumer said. “We’re no longer fact-based. The founding fathers created a country based on fact, and we debated the facts. We debated them at the constitutional convention. We debated them in town halls throughout America, and we were supposed to debate them in the legislature. We don’t have a fact base. If, say, Breitbart News and The New York Times are regarded with equal credibility, you worry about democracy.”

“But I’ll be happy to ride the subway at 4 a.m. with Jeff Sessions,” Schumer added.