President Trump declared Tuesday that Washington, D.C., would be “liberated” from “crime, savagery, filth, and scum,” announcing that local police would be placed under federal control and National Guard troops deployed to restore order. The move follows months of headlines about rampant assaults, carjackings, and murders in the nation’s capital.
“Washington, D.C. will be LIBERATED today! Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN! The days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people, are OVER!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, touting his earlier success in achieving “ZERO ILLEGALS” crossing the border in recent months.
Democrats immediately pushed back, claiming that crime in D.C. is already down this year. But those numbers are now in doubt. Police Commander Michael Pulliam was placed on administrative leave in May amid allegations he manipulated reports to make crime appear to have dropped dramatically.
According to BlazeTV’s Sara Gonzales, such statistical games are nothing new. She compared the alleged data manipulation to what she called misleading COVID-19 death counts. “They’re just cooking the books,” Gonzales said. “Anyone with eyeballs can see that D.C. is in the gutter and it needs something. If the D.C. police and Mayor Muriel Bowser can’t fix it, who better than President Trump to come in there and do that?”
The controversy over doctored stats may actually bolster Trump’s case for intervention. Supporters argue that underreporting crime doesn’t make streets safer—it just hides the problem until it explodes. With federal control, they say, the city’s policing will be accountable to the American people rather than entrenched local politics.
As National Guard troops begin patrols alongside federal agents, Washington becomes a test case for Trump’s broader law-and-order agenda. If the operation succeeds, it could set the stage for similar takeovers in other cities where crime and political paralysis have left neighborhoods unsafe.
For now, one thing is certain: the days of D.C. officials spinning crime stats to polish their image may be over—and the nation’s capital is about to find out what happens when the federal government takes the wheel.
