President Donald Trump addressed the press on Monday morning to announce plans to federalize the Washington, D.C police department and deploy the National Guard in the district.
It featured all the elements of a Trump production: dramatic pronouncements, dire warnings about urban decay, and a legally dubious power grab dressed up as decisive leadership. This time, the script cast him as the savior of the nation's capital, seizing control of the city to crack down on what he called rampant crime.
But the numbers tell a different story. Violent crime in the District has generally trended downward over the past five years, with spikes in certain categories offset by declines in others. The "out of control" crisis Trump described was more set piece than statistical reality -- an invention for a strongman performance aimed squarely at his base.
Theatrics aside, what stood out most was his professed love for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Trump spoke with indignation about "wild youth" and "drugged-out maniacs" spitting in the faces of uniformed officers. He didn't just demand respect for police, he also vowed to let cops "do whatever they want": "You spit, we hit, and they can hit real hard."
Trump said:
Entire neighborhoods are now under emergency curfews. Just this past weekend, gunfire went through, and you saw that at the Navy Yard. I saw it this morning. They saw that they fought back against...
See, they fight back until you knock the hell out of them, because it's the only language they understand. But they fought against law enforcement last night. And they're not going to be fighting back long, because... I've instructed them and told them whatever happens, you know, they love to spit in the face of the police as the police are standing up there in uniform, they're standing and they're screaming at them an inch away from their face. And then they start spitting in their face and I said, you tell them you spit and we hit and they can hit real hard.
It's a disgusting thing. I've watched that for years, for three, four years. I've watch them. Police are standing. And they're told, don't do anything under any search. And you can see they want to get at it. And they are standing there. And people are spitting in their face. And they aren't allowed to do anything. But now they are allowed to whatever the hell they want.
It was pure red-meat rhetoric -- designed to flatter police as heroes while giving his supporters a cathartic fantasy of unrestrained retribution. But as always with Trump, the show falls apart under the weight of his own record.
Because on January 6, 2021, D.C. cops were bludgeoned with flagpoles, sprayed with bear mace, and crushed in doorways by Trump's supporters during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Jonathan Allen noted on X that "Jan 6 was the largest violent crime event in DC in the modern era, and the largest assault on law enforcement."
And how did Trump treat the criminals who attacked Capitol Police during his bonkers "Stop the Steal" rally? He pardoned or commuted the sentences of hundreds of those attackers, hailing them as "patriots" and "hostages" of a corrupt justice system shortly after taking the oath of office for a second time.
So when Trump demands "respect" for D.C. police, it's not a principle -- it's a plot device. It's also total bullshit.
Violence against cops is an outrage when it's committed by the people he vilifies -- a political talking point to be milked for applause. But when the perpetrators are his own supporters, their violence is recast as noble, their prison sentences as injustice, and their victims erased from the story.
This is the situational morality that has come to define Trumpism.
"Back the Blue" was once treated as a moral imperative by the right -- a litmus test of patriotism, a cudgel against protesters and political opponents. But when the blue was standing between Trump's mob and his hold on power, that moral imperative vanished.
That's why Monday's event isn't really about fighting crime or protecting police. It is about staging another episode in the long-running Trump reality show, where every problem is existential, every solution is him, and every fact is bent to serve the drama. The invocation of obscure legal powers, the lurid street-crime imagery, the "you spit, we hit" slogan -- all of it was scripted to project toughness, not to govern.
And that's the danger. Political theater like this corrodes public trust in both law enforcement and democratic institutions. It teaches Trump's base that the rules are flexible, that police power should be absolute when aimed at their enemies but irrelevant when turned on their friends. It conditions them to see every issue through the lens of loyalty to one man rather than fidelity to the law.
For the officers on the ground in D.C., it's worse than empty rhetoric. It's being used as a prop by a politician who abandoned them when they needed him most. And if history is any guide, they will be abandoned again the moment it's politically expedient.
Trump's words on Monday weren't a pledge to make the streets safer or the city stronger. They were a reminder that in his political theater, everyone is just a supporting character -- even the cops he claims to revere.
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