As violent crime soars in Washington, D.C. , Trump vows a ‘federal takeover’
Donald Trump has never been a fan of Washington, D.C., and the feeling is mutual among most of its residents, who broke into spontaneous street celebrations when he lost the White House.
Donald Trump has never been a fan of Washington, D.C., and the feeling is mutual among most of its residents, who broke into spontaneous street celebrations when he lost the White House.
But the former president’s animosity has only grown since he left the city and as violent crime has continued to climb in the capital, while falling from pandemic-era highs in other cities, leading Trump to campaign on a “federal takeover of this filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation.”
Trump repeatedly promised to essentially occupy the capital with federal troops, a tactic he flirted with during the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in his final year in office, telling a conservative audience last year, “I will send in the National Guard until law and order is restored” and that he “wouldn’t even call the mayor.”
Washington has legitimately become a national outlier on violent crime, making 2023 the city’s deadliest in more than two decades, even as violent crime dropped in nearly every other city in America. Nearby Baltimore, for instance, infamous for its crime and blight portrayed in “The Wire,” saw its biggest drop in homicides on record last year.
In Washington, though, shootings, homicides and carjackings all soared, spilling into neighborhoods that have typically been spared that kind of violence, including the downtown area occupied by office workers, and making many longtime residents feel unsafe for the first time.
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