Trump's Hostile Takeover of D.C. Is Straight Out of the Summer 2020 Playbook

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. As he announced he was taking over Washington’s police department and deploying FBI agents and 800 National Guardsmen to patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, President Donald Trump on Monday seemed to gunning for a trip back to the unsettled summer of 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic and racial justice protests set America on edge. It was an aspirational time jump for Trump, who is in search of a way out of political troubles of his own making. “This is Liberation Day in D.C. We’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said, once again defaulting to a slogan he used just months earlier to hype tariffs that have left Wall Street panicked. He vowed to purge Washington’s public spaces of homeless persons, as he cast his temporary home as a hellish dystopia. “If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty,” Trump said. It’s impossible to ignore that Trump’s latest provocative move is coming as he faces a revolt over his promise to name names in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal, as well as widespread frustration over unresolved wars in Gaza and Ukraine that he promised to end on Day One, an economy on the brink, and protests against his crackdown on migrants, As he appeared in a standing-room-only White House briefing room Monday morning flanked by his national security Cabinet, Trump looked to bait his critics into an uproar, hinting he would escalate to active duty military members if needed. The tableau was one designed to send the national conversation spiraling, a maximalist favorite tactic for Trump to move off a difficult moment. “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people,” the President said. The District’s revamped police force, he said, would be empowered to do “whatever the hell they want.” In an historic first, Attorney General Pam Bondi will immediately take command of the Metropolitan Police Department, Trump told reporters. “Crime in D.C. is ending, and it’s ending today,” Bondi said in a statement that will certainly prove inaccurate. Trump and his team described the U.S. capital as besieged by chaos, and eager to be overrun by law enforcement. “You’ll have more police, and you’ll be so happy because you’ll be safe when you walk down the street, you’re going to see police, or you’re going to see FBI agent,” Trump said in a truly stunning foreshadowing of a police state, one that he signaled “will go further” than Washington. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon is ready to militarize Washington’s streets, not dissimilar to what happened in Los Angeles during an aggressive show against immigration. There, Trump called up 4,000 National Guardsmen to put down protests against detentions and deportations of persons suspected to be in the country unlawfully. The capital’s top prosecutor, former Fox host Jeanine Pirro, said the effort would go after “young punks” and “emboldened criminals” who, in her telling, terrorize residents and visitors daily. In Washington, juvenile prosecutions are currently handled by D.C. while adult cases are handled by federal officials; Pirro bemoaned that she lacked to the power to prosecute minors except in extraordinary crimes like rape or murder.  Put in the most simple terms, this is a day of sheer norm-breaking distraction from Trump that has zero grounding in fact. In 2024, violent crime landed at a 30-year low, according to federal data. Violent crime is down another 26% from 2024, according to the city. Year over year, sex crimes are down 49%, robberies are down 28%, assault with a dangerous weapon is down 20%, and homicides are down 12%. Regardless, Trump put on a show that seemed aimed at not just his base but at his critics, as he seems in the market for sparring partners. And they did not disappoint. “Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department. And zero credibility on the issue of law and order. Get lost,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said. As Trump and his team have veered from trigger to trigger, it has been a cascading escalation of testing limits that have left Democrats careening from topic to topic in prosecuting a political argument against the President. The FBI has agreed to set in to hunt down absentee Democratic lawmakers in Texas who have left the state to block a political move to redraw its congressional map. Trump has announced he would build a massive ballroom—twice the size of the Executive Mansion—on the White House grounds. He has dramatically scrapped whole slices of the federal workforce, ignored Congress’ spending plans, and swapped out top officials on the regular. Nothing, it seems, is beyond his wreckage.  All of which is leading to a point that seems to be as familiar as fated to fail. In his first term, Trump deployed 5,000 federal troops to Washington to quell peaceful protests championing racial justice after the murder of George Floyd that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. In his mind, Trump saw the show of force—low-flying helicopters blasting air down at protesters, Guardsmen clearing parks ahead of a photo-op, tear-gassing of activists—as core to his law-and-order image. That was a distraction from the perpetual confusion in that first year of Covid, which in itself was a distraction from much of Trump’s rampage through Washington. But months later, Trump lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden. This go ‘round, Trump is obviously going for a redo, and this time without any real pretense. Trump has long held a scorn for Washington, which as a stand-alone city operates similar to a state but without the autonomy, and its permanent population. Because of its unique standing, Trump and Congress both have power over the city and can meddle mightily in its local affairs but historically have been more nuisance than viceroy. Last year, no other jurisdiction broke more decisively for Kamala Harris over Trump, going 9-to-1 against Trump. Now, Trump is ready to show Washingtonians and other blue-city voters who is in control. It’s a move that seems destined to draw the ire of locals, yet whether it will reach anywhere near the levels found in the weeks after George Floyd’s murder remains to be seen. Regardless, this is where Trump likes to default: outrage and chaos, bluster and bravado. It usually serves Trump well—until it doesn’t. Make sense of what matters in Washington. 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