I’ve got a pop quiz for you today.
How many of you think that Donald Trump is sending in the troops to take over policing duties in Washington, D.C., because our capital city has been — in the Convict-in-Chief’s words — “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of violent youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people”?
Please keep your hands up if you think that’s the actual reason. Because I want to know who could possibly fall for that singular piece of MAGA disinformation.
I haven’t been to D.C. in a year, but the last time I was there, I didn’t see roving mobs of violent youth. I did see roving mobs of lobbyists and, in a brief trip to Congress, roving mobs of MAGA sycophants. I did see some homeless people, as you’ll see in most cities, but I now wonder what they have to do with violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.
This one is so easy to debunk — just for starters, if you believe statistics, violent crime in D.C. has just reached a 30-year low, and it’s just one of many cities that have seen crime rapidly falling — that you’d think I must have better things to write about it.
And yet, for some reason, I get quite nervous when Trump declares what is basically martial law to show that he’s tough on crime. Or on immigration. Or on whatever issue works politically for him.
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I mean, Trump tells us the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is a “hoax” and we should all just forget about it. Meanwhile, Epstein’s partner in the worst kind of crimes against children, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been transferred by Trump’s Justice Department to what Republicans typically like to deride as a country-club prison.
If you’ve guessed Maxwell, who is serving 20 years for sex trafficking, has been sent there with the hope that she might someday discount the extent of Trump’s relationship with Epstein, you might be on the right track.
If you noticed that tough-on-crime Trump has had nothing to say about the guy who fired 180 shots at the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta or anything, of course, about the guns he brought with him to the assault, you might be on the right track.
If you have not forgotten that Trump refused to send out the National Guard during the January 6 assault on the Capitol, which was also an assault on the D.C. cops, you might get the idea that Trump is against crime — and pro-police — only when it suits him. And don’t get me started on the 1,500 convicted insurrectionists, many of them having committed violent crimes, he later pardoned.
Trump’s martial law smacks of the F-word (that’s F for Fascism), although I prefer to use the CA words (that’s for Creeping Authoritarianism or should we say Creepy Authoritarianism?), although the creeping has definitely been picking up steam.
And the creepiness? It gets more terrifying with each passing day.
I mean, Trump seemed to be — and not for the first time — calling for out-of-control cops to walk the streets and do, in his words, “whatever the hell they want.” He wants young teens, many of them Black, going to prison. And what does he want to do with the homeless? Apparently, he wants to ship them out of town.
When announcing his takeover of the D.C. police, Trump called it “Liberation Day” for Washington, which, you might remember, is the same proclamation he used in announcing his world-shaking tariffs that may be liberating consumers from their hard-earned pay.
Is it just me, or are you also tired of this kind of liberation?
Or do you think that taking charge of policing in D.C. is simply a diversion from what I like to call the disastrous Trump Restoration?
Here’s what we know:
Washington, like most cities, does have a crime problem, even if crime there is rapidly falling and yet somehow presents the latest in Trump’s declared emergencies. Trump also mentioned New York City, Baltimore, Oakland and Chicago as other cities with similar problems that could see federal action.
He already sent the troops to Los Angeles for a non-emergency situation, featuring anti-Trump protesters, that he called an emergency. It was another similar emergency that led to Trump’s decision to send troops to the border. Trump does it because he can, or because the courts allow him to.
You may have noticed a trend here about violent cities — he mentions only cities with Democratic mayors in states that vote blue. Personally, I was shocked he didn’t mention Denver. He’ll probably get around to it eventually, and maybe someday you’ll have to bunk with some National Guardsmen.
You may not have noticed, though, that various lists of the most dangerous cities in America tend to include Memphis, St. Louis, Little Rock, Kansas City, New Orleans, Cleveland, Birmingham and Houston, Orlando and Miami.
You can probably guess why Trump didn’t mention any of those cities. After careful research, I’ve found that each of those cities happens to be found in red states.
So, you think Trump’s move is about unacceptable levels of crime in D.C. or about unacceptable levels of partisanship?
The crime that apparently led to the Big Ugly Trump Takeover was the unsuccessful carjacking attempt on a young former DOGE employee known as “Big Balls,” which Trump would love to see as his nickname. Big Balls was violently assaulted, apparently by two 15-year-olds, who remain in custody.
When Trump might have been praising the D.C. cops for stopping the crime, he was putting them on double-secret probation.
Beyond Trump’s bombast, crime is a real issue in D.C. and other cities, even those in red states. We know all about that in Denver. But Trump says D.C. doesn’t need more cops — which would mean more federal funding — just nastier cops, led by presumably nastier federal officials from the FBI, ATF, DEA and other acronymed law enforcement, who would seem to have more important crime-deterrent jobs than walking a beat on the Washington Mall.
And yet, when the military takeover ends — if it ends — Trump will declare his decision to nationalize the police a wild success. But I don’t know.
Trump has already announced his plan will succeed, just as it did, he says,
in “fixing” the border. And then he posted that “Crime, Savagery, Filth and Scum will DISAPPEAR,” which seems like a lot to promise, not that overpromising has ever worried him before.
But, as we wrap up our quiz, I’ve got a bonus question for you:
Can anyone think of an even better way to make Crime, Filth and Scum DISAPPEAR from our land?
You don’t need to send your answers to me. Try your member of Congress. Or maybe 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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