Saving Our Nation's Capital
Today President Trump held a press conference to announce steps he will take, and has already begun, to clean up the wave of crime, homeless encampments, and disorderly conduct that has swept over the nation’s capital.
No one should be surprised that this initiative is cropping up seven months after Trump’s return to the White House. He is an urban guy, a builder and brand-maker and he knows what drug infestations and rampant lawbreaking do to the livability of neighborhoods and cities.
Policy and political responsibility can be debated, but some things are fundamental. No one thrives if the streets and blocks on which they live are unsafe. What value is there in the right tax policy if one can’t cross a public park or drive an urban street without facing a thief, a hard drug addict, or a carjacker?
The point is straightforward: How can a nation be great again if its major cities – and even the nation’s capital – aren’t great again?
The liberal media want the D.C. fight to degrade into a statistical scrum – things are getting better, they say, citing a drop from astronomical crime levels in 2022 to slightly less astronomical ones now.
The truth is, the elites just want these issues to go away. Trump is viewing a much bigger picture. He genuinely wants next summer, the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, to be a true celebration, a serious teaching moment for Americans about our nation’s history and destiny. All of that leads him to want to invest not just public funds, but his own political capital to clean up the nation’s capital.
He doesn’t have to dig far to find examples of the urban decay infecting Washington, D.C. It’s impossible to keep up with the high-profile crimes this city has gotten used to. In early July, a 21-year-old intern was killed seven blocks from the Capitol by a stray bullet, likely fired by a 16-year-old boy who was also shot, along with a third person.
Will anyone in this city remember Eric Tarpinian-Jachym’s name a year from now? His devastated family, filled with excitement as he entered government service in this city, surely will.
Then there’s the most recent example: the brutal assault by a mob of youths on Edward Coristine, a DOGE staffer who had come to Washington to help Elon Musk identify and root out waste and abuse in federal programs. Coristine, age 19, was beaten by a group of teenage thugs as he tried to defend his girlfriend from being carjacked on a city street.
This happened at 3 a.m. The “troubled youths,” including a female, are all 15 years old. Do we need to ask what their home lives are like, another question the Left tosses aside in their endless hymns to false compassion?
How did our nation’s capital get to this point? Clearly, it’s not the only American city in this mess. One major cause everywhere is the collapse of prosecutions of young criminals. D.C. no longer prosecutes perps under the age of 18.
Progressives do this in the name of compassion. As with all the other leftist tropes and claims of empathy, this one ends up in disaster. Compassion without morality is a dead end.
It is also an invitation to adult thugs, who aren’t stupid. In the middle of the night, they can send an underage and isolated teen to commit acts for which they themselves might do jail time. Who would ever guess that might be a consequence of D.C.’s no-jail time practices?
Are things really this bad? Is President Trump overreaching? Take just the Navy Yard here in Southeast D.C. In recent years, this area has surged. New restaurants, sports bars. New apartment buildings. Its proximity to the Washington Nationals ballpark, the U.S. Capitol, the Museum of the U.S. Navy, and the D.C. waterfront has given it new life.
It’s now unsafe. In recent months, this area has been taken over by flash mobs - and we’re not talking about choruses singing Christmas carols. Over the weekend, another gang of juveniles descended, and gunfire rang out. Thankfully, this time, no one was struck by the bullets from the stolen weapon.
This is the atmosphere fueling the president’s response. More officers were on hand when this latest shooting came down – federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the FBI took part. This despite a curfew being called for 8 p.m. around the Navy Yard and 11 p.m. citywide for people under the age of 18.
The problems in D.C. though are not just around one neighborhood or one block. They have been developing for decades. It can be seen in the city parks, under bridges, in any open space. Tents and trash, needles and narcotics. That anyone would call these phenomena, and the Left’s indifference, “compassion” is ludicrous.
That Trump is dealing with this today is a good thing. But you can bet how many times you’ll hear from MSNBC and the AP that this is Trump the Authoritarian at work. You know the drill. They will claim the next step is martial law and an armed guard in every doorway.
Consider how ironic that is. The District of Columbia is a one-party fiefdom. Trump could reduce the crime rate to near zero and make the National Mall and surrounding monuments once again a monument to our nation’s history and character.
But there will never be a political benefit to him – or to future leaders from his party or his administration. The city’s Democratic supermajority will say “thanks” with invective and then reelect the same people who have brought their city to the brink of uninhabitability.
The Left condemns conservatives who don’t address urban decline and blames it on racial politics. When someone like Trump steps up, as he is doing today, and deals with our dangerous urban scene, he’s supposedly cracking down on minorities. There’s no way he can win.
But he will push on anyway. He and his administration are trying to save our country. The home of our national government, the city of monuments to Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts, of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice to defend that nation, is worth every ounce of the fight.
The Democrat Party Is Sinking
That was how CNN data guru Harry Enten recently described the Democrat Party’s image among the American people. The favorability rating of the party of Obama, Clinton, and Biden is at record lows.
Recent polls by CNN and the Wall Street Journal found the Democrat Party’s favorability rating at 28% and 33% respectively. In the Journal’s poll, only 8% of Americans strongly supported the Democrat Party.
It’s not hard to understand why. What is the party’s message to the American people?
“Elect us and we’ll open the borders again. We’ll make sure the number of abortions remains sky high. We’ll sick the FBI on you so the LGBTQ movement can force its propaganda on your children. We’ll force your daughters to compete against men in sports. And we’ll force you to pay for transgender surgeries for convicted felons.”
Here’s how much support there is for each of these policies according to the polling data:
- Open borders 21%
- Abortion on demand 30%
- LGBTQ material in classrooms 31%
- Men in women’s sports 18%
- Taxpayer funded transgender surgeries 26%
The vast majority of Democrats in Congress today supports all of these fringe positions—not one of which is supported by even a third of the American people.