WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, a convicted criminal who pardoned 400 violent felons who assaulted police officers in his name, on Monday announced he was deploying National Guard troops and seizing control of the capital’s police force to deal with crime there, which he falsely claimed was “totally out of control.”
“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back. We’re taking it back under the authorities vested in me as the president of the United States.”
Trump previewed his action Sunday and early Monday in a series of social media posts.
“The Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In reality, the crime rate in the District of Columbia has been falling for two years and is now as low as it has been in decades.
Trump, though, cited the 2023 crime rate as he held up charts comparing Washington’s crime rates to that of major cities around the world. He also suggested police should use violence as they work if people they arrest try to resist.
“They fight back until you knock the hell out of them, because it’s the only language they understand,” he said.
Authoritarian experts warn that Trump, who previously deployed both the California National Guard as well as active-duty Marines in Los Angeles, is...
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