President Donald Trump has temporarily taken control of the Metropolitan Police Department — as is his prerogative under Section 740 of the Home Rule Act — and ordered on Monday the deployment of the National Guard to “re-establish law, order, and public safety” in the national capital.
“Rising violence in the capital now urgently endangers public servants, citizens, and tourists, disrupts safe and secure transportation and the proper functioning of the Federal Government, and forces the diversion of critical public resources toward emergency response and security measures,” Trump noted in a corresponding executive order. “These conditions cannot persist. We will make the District of Columbia one of the safest cities in the world, not the most dangerous.”
‘This is a phony, manufactured crisis.’
The promised law enforcement crackdown on “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people” has ruffled plumage on the left.
Some liberals, including twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have cited allegedly manipulated crime data to suggest that the problem Trump is working to solve — a problem that has earned D.C. a 2 rating on Neighborhood Scout’s crime index, where 100 is safest — is overblown.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who discussed the possibility last year of Democrats in Congress nullifying the 2024 election in the event of a Trump win, suggested that “this is a phony, manufactured crisis” and that Trump’s crackdown on crime “has nothing to do with fighting crime.”
Raskin appeared anxious that Trump might also restore law and order in other cities adversely impacted by Democratic policies, including Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore.
‘It’s going to spread from city to city, and then to the suburbs, and then to rural areas.’
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) claimed that the crackdown — which was announced just days after former DOGE employee Edward Coristine was savagely attacked in D.C. — was just “a political ploy and attempted distraction from Trump’s other scandals.”
Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore called Trump’s decision “deeply dangerous” — a sentiment echoed by Al Sharpton, who added a racial framing to the complaint.
Most of the liberal media has hit the ground running with Democratic talking points in hand.
Salon’s politics blogger Chauncey DeVega — the leftist who claimed a second Trump administration would “turn America into a type of Fourth Reich” complete with a “concentration camp system” — recycled the Democratic line about D.C. supposedly having record-low crime, then deviated into paranoid fantasy.
DeVega suggested the crackdown on crime was not just “symbolic violence against the nation itself” but part of a “White restoration project whose goal is to roll the gains of the civil rights movement and long Black Freedom Struggle back to the Gilded Age.”
‘The people that are cheering this on privately are not like right-wing Republicans, they’re not MAGA people.’
Although less unhinged, writers at the Atlantic — the publication owned by one of failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ biggest donors — similarly treated the law enforcement operation as confirmation of liberals’ fears that Trump would deliver “the authoritarian government his party once warned about.”
Marc Elias, the founder and chair of Elias Law Group LLP, a law firm involved with the Steele dossier, told leftist YouTuber Brian Cohen on Monday that the law enforcement operation was effectively a test-run for taking over police departments nationwide.
“It’s going to spread from city to city, and then to the suburbs, and then to rural areas, until Trump feels like he has complete authority over local law enforcement,” said Elias.
Despite the desperate effort to paint Trump’s federalization of the MPD as the first move in some great authoritarian scheme, there appears to be a growing appreciation for the president’s initiative — even at MSNBC.
MSNBC talking head Joe Scarborough complained on Tuesday about the city’s crime problem and read on air a text message from a “very liberal” friend who was “not totally opposed to Trump’s National Guard move.”
“The people that are cheering this on privately are not like right-wing Republicans, they’re not MAGA people,” said Scarborough. “A lot of our friends are in the media and also Democrats that worked on Joe Biden’s campaign, that worked on other campaigns, they’re just saying, ‘Yeah, I’d like to feel safe walking around this city.’”
The relative of a 1-year-old girl shot in the arm in Southeast D.C. last month told WTTG-TV that she welcomes the intervention by the president, saying that if Trump can make the streets safer, she’s all for it.
Representatives for the city’s police are apparently keen as well.
Gregg Pemberton, chairman of the D.C. Police Union, for instance, said in a statement obtained by WUSA-TV, “We stand with the president in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory. Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.”
While acknowledging the federal intervention as a “critical stopgap,” Pemberton suggested that the MPD needs proper staffing to thrive, and the city needs to ax the disastrous policies that have prompted officers to seek work elsewhere.
Republican lawmakers have also expressed support for Trump’s efforts to make the national capital safer.
“This bold move addresses the rampant crime that’s plagued our nation’s capital for too long. Thank you, Mr. President, for prioritizing safety!” wrote Sen. Mike Lee of Utah (R).
“Democrats have lost the plot and must face the fact that people who live this every day can’t be gaslit into believing their lived experiences are false,” wrote Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.).
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