Washington, D.C., is such a hyperpoliticized city that it is nearly impossible to govern.
A Washington Post/Schar School poll found that 79% of the district’s residents oppose President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown in the city. The share of people who said they feel “very safe” in the city has risen from 26% in May to 39% now, with 78% of the total saying they feel at least somewhat safe in the city. As the dean of George Mason University’s Schar School told the outlet, “Trump’s overheated rhetoric about D.C. crime has evoked strong feelings among many residents offended by such characterizations of their city.”
Being “offended” is what guides these numbers. When asked what the city’s biggest problem is, 24% of residents said Trump, double the result from May. The second most popular was crime at 22%, steady from 21% in May. In fact, 50% of residents in the May poll described the city’s crime crisis as an “extremely” or “very” serious problem. That number has dropped to 31%.
As my colleague Byron York pointed out, “Has the Trump anticrime effort suddenly made fewer D.C. residents feel crime is a big problem? Possibly. But it seems more likely than an anti-Trump effect is at work here … now that Trump is emphasizing the seriousness of the D.C. crime problem, many residents are deemphasizing it.”
DC GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION GRANTS FUNDED SOCIAL JUSTICE CAUSES
That oppose-Trump-at-all-times attitude is how you end up with a police commander allegedly falsifying crime statistics to make it look like crime is on the decline. That is why Washington, D.C., has had over 1,000 carjackings in the last two years and a homicide rate nearly six times higher than New York City’s. Meanwhile, the district hasn’t seen a homicide in the seven days since Trump sent in the National Guard to police the district’s streets. Carjackings are also down 83%, robberies are down 46%, and overall violent crime is down 22%.
Washington, D.C., is 90% Democratic, and many of its residents work for or with the federal government. It is, first and foremost, a political city that prioritizes partisan national politics over functioning services or public safety. Washington, D.C.’s, politicized existence makes it fundamentally incapable of governing itself seriously, which is precisely why the city is under Trump’s stewardship now.
