The response from political and media elites to this militarized takeover of our capital, however, has been rather limp. As The New Republic’s Monica Potts reports, Democrats apparently have been caught flat-footed by Trump’s maneuver; to the extent that they’ve said anything about it, they’ve largely dismissed it as a manufactured “distraction” rather than loudly calling it what it is: a fascist occupation—and a prelude to worse.
These authors and others are making a profound error from the jump in assuming that Trump sincerely desires to lower the crime rate in D.C. Trump is actually a “blank, sucking nullity” who wants to see himself on television and has decided that his second term in office will be about self-enrichment and revenge. He is inventing a crisis of crime as a pretext for further consolidating his power; this is authoritarianism 101.
Trump’s critics do take this seriously, and they have a thesis of their own backed up by data. The District of Columbia had a miserable year in 2023; as crime rates were dropping across the country, D.C.’s were spiking. The New Republic’s Grace Segers took an in-depth look into the phenomenon and reported that the city’s woes stemmed from an interlocking array of local failures, structural problems, and lack of investment. But city officials got busy in 2024 and reversed the trend, achieving a 35 percent reduction in violent crime and the aforementioned 30-year low in the violent crime rate. (Trump is now contending that the city lied about these results. As always, the safe harbor for journalists is to treat every Trump claim as a probable lie—unless, for example, you relish being the type of dummy who reported that Trump had “disavowed Project 2025.”)
That sounds fine, but there’s a lot I don’t know about these numbers and no one at Axios bothered to do much in the way of scrutinizing Trump’s claim. Which agency is reporting these numbers? Is this a coordinated data dump from multiple agencies? Are these adult arrests, juvenile arrests, or both? Do these figures include the Metropolitan Police Department’s own arrest tallies during that period? Does “212” reflect the number of defendants or the number of arrest charges? Because that’s how the MPD tabulates its own arrest statistics. Speaking of, in the same time period in 2024, the MPD made 596 adult arrests.
By all outward appearances, Trump’s crime crackdown priorities seem odd. As The New York Times reported this week, most of the troops that have been sent to D.C. are aimlessly wandering around “the National Mall, large monuments and other tourist-heavy areas,” as well as “metro stations, most of which are also near tourist and entertainment sites.” These patrols aren’t exactly taking place in the mean streets, folks.
But it’s not all so benign. Gangs of vaguely identified pseudo-cops are brazenly beating up people in the street, in a manner that The New Republics Melissa Gira Grant likens to the violent exploits of the Proud Boys. The occupying forces are carrying out a sadistic campaign against the city’s homeless population. And beneath it all, the city is being subjected to the mother of all ICE raids, with unidentifiable agents snatching food deliverers off the street (one GrubHub driver was rammed by a police car while making a delivery on his moped) and swarming local churches, grocery stores, and daycare centers. That’s certainly a lot of activity, but those who’ve criticized the city’s own approach to law and order should explain what’s being achieved.
You can absolutely mark me down as extremely skeptical that Trump’s interventions are going to reduce crime in D.C. As always, I’m prepared to be wrong. Can the same be said of the pundits who’ve criticized anyone who dares use facts to question Trump’s fearmongering on crime?
This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.
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