President Trump focusing on crime? That’s not very surprising, given he’s the most corrupt president in American history, at least since Warren G. Harding in the 1920s—100 years ago. Do you ever get the impression that his entire presidency is just a grift, one big promotion of his sons’ burgeoning crypto empire and the rest of their ever-multiplying businesses? But taking over the city of Washington under the guise of fighting a crime “emergency” puts Trump’s undeniable authoritarianism in the spotlight. According to internal Pentagon documents, the Trump administration is evaluating plans to establish a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” composed of hundreds of National Guard troops tasked with rapidly deploying into American cities facing protests or other unrest. In other words, Trump calling up the National Guard is about far more than carjackings or smash and grab robberies.
The president painted a dystopian picture of Washington, DC as a city that he wants to “take back” from crime. “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” he said, holding up a chart comparing D.C. ‘s murder rate to that of South American countries plagued by drug-related violence. Fact check: like most of our country’s big cities, DC suffers from way too much crime, including drug-related gun violence, but it’s been trending down since 2023 and calling it an emergency is a stretch. The only emergency is Trump’s struggling presidency.
President Trump deploying the National Guard to the nation’s capital is an insult to intelligence, one more of his feeble attempts at distraction. He doesn’t want us focusing on the Epstein sex trafficking scandal, or his failure to stop the war in Ukraine, or the shaky economic numbers as his ill-advised tariffs kick in, so now we have a conveniently manufactured “emergency” in Washington, DC. He has truly become our shameless distractor in chief. (Does he honestly think his MAGAs are going to forget about Epstein’s client list?)
MAGA’s Real Enemy isn’t People of Color or “Liberal Elites,” but Economic Inequality and Injustice.
Given they all have substantial minority populations and Democratic (mostly Black!) mayors, sending the National Guard into some of the nation’s largest cities—Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and of course, immigrant-infested Los Angeles—is more than a dog whistle to the MAGA base. If there’s anything Trump’s base likes it’s going after people of color, the dreaded “other” they are convinced is the source of their troubles.
There is no question that our cities have a long-term crime problem (urban crime took off in the 70s and peaked in the 80s and 90s), and we should acknowledge that the residents themselves are often the most supportive of an increased police presence in their communities. But where is Trump when it comes to tackling the underlying, fundamental causes of urban crime? It’s hardly a news flash that America’s big cities deteriorated because “white flight” gutted the tax base and created ghettos of Black poverty. Indeed, nothing puts our nation’s racial inequality on more dramatic display than our inner cities, and Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will undoubtedly make it worse.
We Need to Address the Terrible Income Disparity that’s on Display in Our Large Cities.
People shouldn’t be living in segregated ghettos, environments where crime festers and children are sucked into drugs, gangs, and gun violence even before they reach their teens. Yes, we should treat crime in our cities as if it’s an emergency, but it’s high time we address its multiple root causes rather than just putting on another show for Trump’s MAGA base.