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Returning to Washington, D.C., this week, we saw three soldiers on a street corner near the Washington Monument. The next morning, Carol went out for a run and, one block from our house, saw a car that had been t-boned and totally destroyed by a 14-ton armored military vehicle.

Later that morning, I ran into two soldiers at our subway station. “Where are you guys from?” I asked one of them. “South Carolina National Guard,” he said. “And what do you know about the Washington Metro?” I asked next. “Nothing,” he honestly replied. “It’s the first time I’ve ever been here.” Was that supposed to make me feel safer?

Welcome to Donald Trump’s Occupied Washington. The whole thing is a joke. But a sick and dangerous joke.

There is absolutely no justification for Donald Trump’s military takeover of Washington, D.C. What’s new? He is simply lying when, without any evidence, he calls Washington “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world.” Put that right up there with Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, Trump won the 2020 election and he didn’t know anything about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. Lies, lies, lies.

Take it from this D.C. resident. I’ve lived in Washington for 29 years. I’ve never been accosted, threatened or mugged. And I don’t know anybody who has. Washington is a beautiful, clean and safe city – for residents and for visitors.

Which is not to say that, like any other city, Washington doesn’t have a serious crime problem. There are some neighborhoods where I would not feel safe walking alone at night. Especially for residents of those neighborhoods, the fact that there is any street crime at all is a serious problem. But it’s a problem that the Metropolitan Police Department is quite capable of handling on its own.

Trump doesn’t mention that the attempted carjacking of a DOGE staffer – Trump’s alleged excuse for calling in the military – was thwarted by DC police, who caught and arrested the two teenagers involved.

The city does not need and does not want the Army and up to 1,100 National Guard troops patrolling the streets. In the latest Washington Post poll, 80 percent of Washingtonians, even those in dicey neighborhoods, oppose the federal presence.

In fact, as confirmed by the Washington Post, the crime rate per 100,000 in D.C. has fallen to its lowest point since before the pandemic. Violent crime has been on the decline since 2023, when a generational spike in killings rendered the nation’s capital one of America’s deadliest cities. DC’s homicide rate in 2024 was less than a third of the highs in the early 1990s. And 2025 continues that downward trend.

Trump’s own actions prove that his military takeover has nothing to do with keeping Washington residents safe. It’s all about creating a big distraction from Jeffrey Epstein and politicizing the military – just as he’s already succeeded in politicizing the Justice Department.

For starters, Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt admitted that the White House “reconfigured” D.C.’s crime statistics because they were too rosy, in order to back up the president’s claims of lawlessness in Washington. Plus, it’s no accident that six states asked to send in National Guard troops are all red states with Republican governors. Nor that mayors of three cities where Trump has sent, or threatened to send, troops – Los Angeles, Oakland and Washington – are Black women.

Most tellingly of all, look at where federal troops are deployed. You won’t find them in troubled neighborhoods like Congress Heights and Anacostia, whose residents desperately need more protection. Nope. They’re stationed at tourist attractions: the National Mall, Smithsonian, White House, Union Station and subway stops. And police records show that most people arrested by federal agents so far were immigrants. Yes, Trump’s soldiers are fighting crime by arresting people who’ve not committed any crime.

And, of course, it must be said that Donald Trump is the LAST person in the world to complain about crime in Washington. The worst crime spree in the city's history was the sacking of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, spurred and instigated by Trump himself – who then pardoned nearly 1,600 people who participated in the attack, including those charged with sedition and assaulting police officers. Mr. Law and Order, Trump ain’t!

But make no mistake. This is only the first step. If Trump gets away with it here, federal troops will soon swarm into every other city with a Democratic mayor – and his Napoleonic control of America will be complete.

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)

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