On Thursday, President Donald Trump told “The Todd Starnes Show" that he would personally accompany the police and the military on some kind of a patrol around Washington, D.C., a city which he recently described as “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people.”
Despite the dire situation in D.C., however, the commander in chief had a pledge for the show’s listeners. “We’re going to do a job,” he vowed.
That “job” turned out to be more about food delivery than crime fighting. In what was perhaps a predictable turn of events, given the obvious limitations of the president’s security detail, Trump’s patrol was just an afternoon photo-op. He handed out pizza and hamburgers to local police and to members of the National Guard and other federal agencies while crowing about the “incredible results” of his D.C. crackdown.
“The crime numbers are way down... You saw some of the stats,” he told captive audience. “They're numbers that we haven’t seen here ever, actually. Ever.”
But as countless experts and pundits have noted over the past few weeks, this statement is just more propaganda. For all of the president’s fearmongering, violent crime in the capital had already dropped to its lowest level in 30 years, according to a January press release from the United States Attorney’s Office. In April, Trump’s own Justice Department announced that violent crime in D.C. had fallen an additional 25% since his return to office.
This certainly helps explain why Trump failed to cite a single “number” or “stat” during his appearance on Thursday. It might also explain why most of the deployed National Guard members have been so far stationed near tourist heavy areas, where The New York Times reports they have been observed posing for photos with tourists.
Trump’s takeover of the district isn’t exactly innocuous, however. According to the Times, the hundreds of federal agents who have also fanned out across the city have regularly stopped and searched vehicles at various checkpoints. The strategy, as the Times describes it, is to identify minor offenses as a possible reason to search people more thoroughly or even arrest them. The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported the disturbing story of federal agents tackling a food delivery driver to the ground and forcing him into an unmarked black vehicle before driving off.
Needless to say, harassing drivers at checkpoints or detaining delivery drivers suspected of being in the country illegally is unlikely to significantly impact the capital’s murder rates.
But flexing the might of the military against D.C. residents does satisfy Trump’s seeming strongman urges. Recall that Trump attempted a similar stunt back in June when he arranged for a massive military parade to celebrate the Army’s birthday (on a day happened to also coincide with his birthday.)
The last time American troops paraded en masse through our city’s streets was June 1991, when roughly 200,000 people celebrated the end of the Gulf War. Three decades later, however, Trump’s exhibition sparked much less excitement, with attendance numbers considerably below that of the 1991 spectacle.
D.C. residents were apathetic to Trump’s show of military force then, and, as a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll finds, have even less of an appetite for it now. According to the poll, 69% of D.C. residents strongly oppose Trump’s takeover of the local police force and deployment of federal troops, while another 10% somewhat oppose the president’s actions. Likewise, restaurant owners have pointed to the tense atmosphere around the city as one of the reasons that reservations at their establishments have fallen sharply over the last few weeks.
Trump, however, continued to insist Thursday evening that his actions have been met with gratitude. “I’ve never received so many phone calls thanking me for what we’ve done in Washington DC,” he said.
As to who exactly was on the other end of those calls, your guess is truly as good as mine.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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