Donald Trump’s second term has been dominated by White House power grabs, and the president’s efforts to militarize the nation’s capital are just the latest in a broader pattern. His vice president, however, has come up with a new defense in response to the administration’s critics.
In his latest Fox News interview, JD Vance defended Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops and federal agents into the streets of Washington, D.C., suggesting to Laura Ingraham that the ends justify the means. From the transcript:
How is it a ‘power grab,’ or how is it a ‘stunt,’ when we have already declined murders by 35% in nine days? How many people are living and breathing today because Donald Trump had the willpower to say, ‘You know what, we’re sick of D.C. being a home to lawlessness, we’re going to bring some public order back to the nation’s capital?’
Right off the bat, the idea that the militarization of the city has lowered murder rates by 35% in nine days is difficult to take seriously. Such trends tend to be measured over years, not days, suggesting the Ohio Republican’s statistic is completely meaningless.
Relatedly, NBC News reported that the latest crime data for D.C. — not just murders specifically, but crime in general — found only marginal differences from before and after the federal takeover.
But just as important as the vice president’s dubious data is the asymmetry between the first part of his response and the second. Look at Vance’s line again: “How is it a ‘power grab’ ... when we have already declined murders by 35% in nine days?”
Just as a matter of logic and coherence, this doesn’t make sense. Even if the statistic were correct (and it’s not), the relative success of a power grab policy doesn’t mean it’s not a power grab.
Indeed, Vance’s line echoed a related point Trump himself made last week. As part of a defense of his D.C. militarization policy, the president said, “Already they’re saying, ‘He’s a dictator.’ [Washington, D.C.] is going to hell, and we’ve got to stop it.”
Instead of insisting that his critics have been unnecessarily alarmist, Trump suggested his critics have missed the point: The president feels the need to improve conditions in D.C. How he chooses to pursue such a goal is far less important than the goal itself.
He didn’t say the accusations related to tyranny were wrong; he instead suggested the accusations were irrelevant. D.C. is “going to hell,” the Republican falsely claimed, so if that means acting like a “dictator,” so be it.
For all intents and purposes, Vance’s line was identical. It would’ve been easy (although not necessarily persuasive) for the vice president to argue that the White House’s militarization policy in D.C. isn’t a power grab. He argued instead that the accusation is unimportant because the policy is proving effective.
It’s a case rooted in the idea that underlying principles about democracy, institutions and the rule of law simply don’t matter. What does matter, according to the White House, is results — and if the actual results are at odds with Team Trump’s hopes, then Team Trump will just make stuff up.
As Vance and his colleagues prepare to export their D.C. agenda to other cities, this problem is likely to get worse before it gets better.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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