President Biden today came to visit a city dealing with the aftermath of the tragic deaths of two of New York’s Finest, Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora. Predictably, he fell back on the usual left-wing panaceas — namely, gun control and federal funding for social services, plus a small increase in federal money for new cops.

The single best critique of the president came from my friend Heather Mac Donald in a brilliant Wall Street Journal op-ed piece: “Expect him to ignore the root cause of record-breaking violence — the demonization of law enforcement, to which he has contributed.”

During his presidential campaign, Mr. Biden asserted that black parents were right to fear for their children’s lives at the hands of the police.

On April 12, 2021, the president tweeted about the need to address the “trauma that Black America experiences every day” from police shootings.

On October 16, during the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service in Washington, he lamented that the promise of “equal and impartial justice” was denied in “too many communities — black and brown,” and that too many families “are grieving unnecessary losses of their sons, their daughters, their fathers, their brothers” due to police violence.

The problem is not gun control. New York has the toughest gun-control laws in the country. The problem is, New York has one of the worst crime stances in the country. No bail, no jail is the phrase used here. 

Mr. Biden and Governor Hochul have prattled on about the so-called iron pipeline through which guns come in from out of state. They decided to blame Georgia for New York’s crime problems. 

That is utter nonsense. Utter nonsense. If they want to blame border crossers, how about stopping the catastrophe on our southern border, where over 2 million illegals have entered into the U.S. Many arrive with criminal records, and they’re being shipped around the country in the dead of night to locations where even local authorities have no prior knowledge. Drug smuggling, sex trafficking, gun smuggling criminality.

Disrespect for borders. Disrespect for laws. Disrespect for cops.

If Mr. Biden wants to do something about crime, how about closing our open borders? It’s something he has steadfastly opposed doing. If you fail to prosecute recidivist criminals, if you downgrade felonies — including armed robbery and drug dealing — if you let crazed teenage rappers get out of jail after several cop shootings, then you get high crime, a lack of security, unsafe streets, unsafe schools, unsafe businesses, and an unsafe city. 

Unfortunately, Mayor Adams today embraced the crazy, left-wing, woke Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Braggs. Mr. Adams should not have done this.

Mayor Giuliani has a better idea. He told Miranda Devine of the New York Post that if he were mayor now, he would invite Mr. Bragg to come to see him. He said: “I would shut the door and tell him, ‘I want you to write a memo retracting everything you said, right now.’”

If Mr. Bragg refused, the former mayor would go after Ms. Hochul and start blaming her for every crime and death. That would be tough, but it’s coming from a guy who turned around New York City’s crime problem. Indeed, he turned around New York’s economy. In fact, he turned the whole city around. It can be done, but leaders need to be tough. 

President Biden said today he was against defunding the police, but in fact one of his party’s rallying cries during the election was about defunding the police.

Kamala Harris said America should “reimagine public safety.” Joe Biden called America “systemically racist” and said police funding should be “redirected.”

As Senator Barrasso has written, “Biden has stacked his administration with anti-police radicals. his labor secretary cut funding for police as Boston’s Mayor. Two of his top Justice department officials are on record supporting cuts to police.”

During the riots and burnings and smash-and-grab lootings of the past two years, Democrats have supported the criminals, not the victims. They blamed everybody and everything except their own soft-on-crime policies.

I repeat my related view that the crime wave is also an economic problem. High crime rates are akin to tax hikes. People won’t go to work. They won’t go back into the office buildings, and they won’t transact commerce. High crime rates, bad schools, and high taxes are the death of New York.

When Mr. Giuliani curtailed crime, he opened up opportunities for new businesses, more jobs, and more prosperity. People won’t take the subway, won’t walk their kids to schools, and won’t travel to work in this high-crime environment.  We need ultra-strong leadership here in the city. We need people who will listen to the thousands and thousands of cops who lined Fifth Avenue for two tragic funerals. Instead of beating up on the police, leaders should listen to the police. 

This is a New York story, but it’s also a national story. This is a make-or-break moment for this city, and a make-or-break moment for this country.

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From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.