‘The Most Violent Moment in Recent History in DC Was January 6’
Trump excoriated for his move to take over law enforcement in the nation’s capital
Donald Trump is finding himself called out, again and again, not only for the transparency in which he’s once again trying to distract from the ongoing scandal roiling his administration, but also for his hypocrisy in condemning violence while taking over law enforcement in Washington DC.
Trump seized control Monday of Washington’s city police department, while also deploying the National Guard in the capital, as well.
In remarks at the White House, Trump ranted about the supposed “lawless” city while misstating and exaggerating true statistics about crime in the nation’s capital.
It became quickly apparent to a variety of commentators that this move was simply Trump’s latest attempt to distract attention from the ongoing scandal involving his government’s handling of documents related to the sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein, who died in jail in 2019, was a longtime associate of Trump’s, and Trump reportedly has been named multiple times in the so-called Epstein files.
“Again, no matter who you are, you want to know that your community is safe. But how much of this is about grandstanding, is about Donald Trump just bashing cities because this is another point of distraction for him with the Epstein files, with anger that he has domestically over this meeting coming up with [Russian leader] Vladimir Putin. There’s a lot of things that he would like to distract us from,” said Mara Gay, a member of the editorial board at The New York Times.
Bashing cities seems to be just another page from the racist playbook Trump and many in his orbit — like Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — when they compare US cities to places like Baghdad and Ethiopia, said MSNBC’s Eugene Daniels.
“They seem to hold their harshest criticism sometimes for cities that are majority Black and brown,” he said.
The truth is that there actually are constructive ways that Trump and the federal government could be helping Washington DC, according to Mayor Muriel Bowser.
“We need more prosecutors. We need more judges. There are other ways to help. Even we want to rebuild our jail,” she said. “And there are ways that the feds can help with that, but also just doing their part, cutting the grass, fixing the fountains, making sure that federal law enforcement is doing all of the policing that they can do.”
Multiple commentators and others highlighted Trump’s obvious hypocrisy in attacking crime in Washington DC after having fomented a violent insurrection in the city in 2021.
“And just as we go to break, I should note that the most violent moment in recent history in DC was January 6,” CNN host Dana Bash said on-air. “And it was an attack on the United States Capitol by a lot of people who were doing it in the name of Donald Trump, and it included the people who were hurt, included members of law enforcement.”
Rep Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman who represents the Maryland suburbs just outside of Washington DC, expressed mock surprise that after the events of January 6, 2021, Trump suddenly has figured out how to call up the National Guard in DC.
“They haven‘t defined what the emergency is, especially with crime rates at a 30-year low in the District of Columbia. And he‘s deployed the National Guard,” Raskin said. “At least I‘m happy to see that he acknowledges he has the power to activate the National Guard.
“That was what he refused to do four and a half years ago, when the Capitol and his own vice president and Congress were under attack by the mob violence that he unleashed against us. And he sat on his hands for many hours and then later asserted he somehow didn‘t have the authority to deploy the National Guard.”
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