Democrats are unwilling to own up to the high crime in the cities that they have long governed, such as Chicago and Washington, DC. However, as soon as Republicans respond and crack down on high crime, they are quick to jump to own the results of the crackdown.
Donald Trump’s recent crime crackdown in DC serves as a perfect example of this phenomenon.
When Trump issued his emergency, taking temporary control of DC’s Metropolitan Police Department and sending in the National Guard to help with the crime crackdown effort, Democrats screamed “constitutional crisis” and asserted that it was a “fascist” takeover of the city. Furthermore, they contended that there was no serious crime problem, despite data that suggested otherwise.
However, as Trump promised, crime in the District dropped precipitously, as numerous criminals were taken off the streets, and many residents expressed gratitude over how much safer the city had become. Funny, simply enforcing the law and holding people accountable for their crimes actually works to limit the amount of crime. Go, figure.
Well, now that the District’s crime has dropped significantly, and Trump’s temporary emergency order has expired, Washington’s Democrat leadership is patting itself on the back and dismissing the evidence from the last 30 days as having little to do with Trump’s crime crackdown.
DC Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser, DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, and DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb recently testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. They asserted that the significant decrease in crime was primarily due to their own crime-fighting programs.
According to Mendelson, “We enhanced penalties for crimes like assault and violent crimes committed on transit and in our parks and recreation centers. We increased the use of pretrial detention for individuals arrested for violent offenses and made it easier to prosecute carjacking.” He concluded, “These interventions have paid off. Violent crime overall is down more than 50% compared to 2023. Carjackings are down nearly 70%.”
The fact of the matter is that they can only boast of those numbers thanks largely to Trump’s crackdown.
The reason behind the Democrat city leaders’ effectively denying that Trump’s actions had anything to do with the dramatic decrease in the city’s crime is that Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that would increase federal oversight of the District. Republicans want to ensure that the crime reduction is maintained and that DC is not allowed to once again become one of the nation’s highest crime cities.
In that light, Republicans have proposed several bills, including one that would allow juveniles as young as 14 to be tried as adults for certain crimes. Unsurprisingly, a number of Democrats have objected to such tough-on-crime laws, with Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) asserting that it was racist and contending that it would disproportionately impact black teenagers.
Repeatedly, Democrats sought to spin Trump’s crackdown as either unneeded or ineffective. Furthermore, Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) ridiculously called it a “fascist takeover.”
That elicited an objection from Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL), who said, “She’s going to refer to me and my colleague like we were from the Third Reich. It’s insane. Do I look like a member of the Third Reich to you, Ms. Tlaib? Is that what I look like to you?”
The big irony here is that Democrat lawmakers have once again been caught on the wrong side of an 80/20 issue. Americans know that crime is a problem, and they want actual law and order enforced, not lame excuses or deflections against law enforcement based on bogus claims of racism. So long as they take the wrong side of a broadly popular issue, they will find themselves on the defensive.
