Trump's D.C. Distraction Is Straight Out of Summer 2020 Playbook
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. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Europe's concerns may be getting through as White House reframes Trump-Putin summit
It's beginning to feel like "Midnight Sun" diplomacy. In parts of Alaska, the sun doesn't set in summer, casting light through the night but leaving you disorientated. Ukraine latest: Zelenskyy reject's Putin's proposal The Trump-Putin summit is pitched as "transparent" but it's difficult to find any path to peace right now. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has reduced it to a "listening exercise" where will seek a "better understanding" of the situation. There isn't much to understand - Russia wants territory, Ukraine isn't ceding it - but Ms Levitt rejects talk of them "tempering expectations". It's possible to be both hopeful and measured, she says, because Mr Trump wants peace but is only meeting one side on Friday. It's the fact that he's only meeting that concerns European leaders, who fear Ukraine could be side-lined by any Trump-Putin pact. claims Mr Putin wants the rest of Donetsk and, in effect, the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. He's ruled out surrendering that because it would rob him of key defence lines and leave Kyiv vulnerable to future offensives. European leaders - including Sir Keir Starmer - will hold online talks with Mr Zelenskyy twice on Wednesday, on either side of a virtual call with Mr Trump and US Vice President . Their concerns may be getting through, hence the White House now framing the summit as a cautious fact-finding exercise and nothing more. The only thing we really learned from the latest news conference is that the first Trump-Putin meeting in six years will be in Anchorage. Alaska itself, with its history and geography, is a layered metaphor: a place the Russians sold to the US in the 1800s. Read more: A remote but strategic frontier where the lines of ownership and the rules of negotiation are once again being sketched out. On a clear day, you can see Russia from Alaska, but without Mr Zelenskyy in the room, it's difficult to see them conquering any summit. In the place where the sun never sets, the deal might never start.
Los Angeles Times
17 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump's unusual deal with Nvidia and AMD sparks concerns, legal questions
President Trump struck an unusual deal with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices that allows the companies to sell certain chips to China in exchange for giving the U.S. government a 15% cut of those sales. But the unprecedented agreement also has raised concerns from politicians and legal experts over whether the deal is legal and would pose a national security threat. Questions also linger about exactly how the deal, which was announced Monday, would work because the U.S. Constitution bars taxes on exports, although some experts said Trump could find a workaround. The U.S. government might receive $3 billion from the revenue split if China's demand for Nvidia's H20 chip — which is less powerful than the company's highest-end artificial intelligence chip — reaches $20 billion, according to a note from Bernstein Research. 'It ties the fate of this chip manufacturer in a very particular way to this administration that is quite rare,' said Julia Powles, a professor and executive director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy. Trump's agreement with the world's most valuable company could put pressure on other tech companies and major exporters to strike similar deals with the U.S. government, but it's still unclear what the implications will be internationally, she said. The deal is the latest example of how tech companies are seeking to curry favor with the Trump administration, which has threatened to impose tariffs on semiconductor companies that don't commit to investing in the United States. Apple faced potential tariffs as well, but committed to investing $100 billion more in U.S. manufacturing after Trump criticized the company for expanding iPhone production in India. Trump also placed restrictions in April around the export of certain AI chips, including Nvidia's H20 and AMD's MI308, over national security concerns. He's called for the resignation of Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan, who has faced scrutiny over his reported investments in Chinese companies, but changed his tune after meeting the executive this week. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have criticized the idea that tech companies should split their sales with the U.S. government in exchange for export licenses that allow them to resume chip sales in China. 'Export controls are a frontline defense in protecting our national security, and we should not set a precedent that incentivizes the Government to grant licenses to sell China technology that will enhance its AI capabilities,' Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the chair of the House Select Committee on China, said in a statement. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, (D-Ill.), a ranking member of that committee, said in a statement that the deal raises questions about its legality and how the funds will be used. 'The administration cannot simultaneously treat semiconductor exports as both a national security threat and a revenue opportunity,' he said. 'By putting a price on our security concerns, we signal to China and our allies that American national security principles are negotiable for the right fee.' The White House didn't answer questions about the agreement. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that 'the legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce.' On Monday, Trump defended the deal with Nvidia, stating that the H20 chips are 'obsolete' and less powerful than the company's more high-end Blackwell chip. At a news conference, Trump said he met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and initially asked for a 20% revenue split but they came down to 15%. 'We negotiate a little deal,' Trump said. 'So he's selling a essentially old chip.' Trump's remarks came after a report from the Financial Times over the weekend that Nvidia and AMD would pay 15% of their China chip revenue to the U.S. government. AMD didn't respond to a request for comment. An Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement that the company hasn't shipped H20 chips to China for months but it hopes that easing export restrictions will 'let America compete in China and worldwide.' 'America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America's AI tech stack can be the world's standard if we race.' For Nvidia, the stakes are high. Huang said in a May interview with Stratechery, a newsletter and podcast, that the Chinese market is about $50 billion a year. Restricting H20 chip sales means that the company is walking away from profits that could be used to compete with China in the race to dominate AI. Taylar Rajic, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said she's skeptical that legal concerns would halt the arrangement because it's unclear who would sue. 'I can't identify who would bring that suit forward,' she said. 'It wouldn't be Nvidia because they're the ones who negotiated this deal.' Meanwhile, Chinese officials have their own fears that Nvidia's chips could have location tracking or remote shutdown capabilities, though the company has denied those accusations. 'China obviously has its own concerns and its own national security considerations that it wants to take into account,' Rajic said. 'It just depends on whether or not they want to buy it from us too.'
New York Post
17 minutes ago
- New York Post
Controversial Princeton prof with Iran ties steps down amid criticism from dissidents, senators
A controversial Princeton professor with strong ties to the Iranian regime has quietly stepped down from the Ivy League school, following a campaign from dissidents to remove him. Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist, retired from his position after 15 years as the head of the school's Program on Science and Global Security on June 1, according to an announcement listing retiring employees on Princeton's website. The professor is controversial for being heavily involved in Iran's chemical and nuclear programs beginning in 2004, long before the country was known to have been building up its nuclear arsenal, according to Swiss journalist Bruno Schirra. Advertisement 4 Seyed Hossain Mousavian, an Iranian security specialist, quietly stepped down from Princeton University after 15 years and amid a federal crackdown on alleged antisemitism at the school. Getty Images The move comes amid the news Princeton could lose more than $200 million in grants from the Trump administration for not tackling antisemitism on campus, The Post has learned. Iranian opposition activists as well as Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a Princeton alumnus, had long urged the school to fire Mousavian. Advertisement 4 The Trump administration reportedly paused the payment of more than $200 million in grants. to the Ivy League school amid allegations of antisemitism. LightRocket via Getty Images 'It's a victory, but one has to wonder if he's staying behind the scenes somehow,' said Lawdan Bazargan, a former political prisoner in Iran, a human rights activist and member of the US-based Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists. The group has waged a two-year campaign to get the university to ditch Mousavian. 'We exposed the truth,' the group said in a press release last week. 'Mousavian is not a neutral scholar but a former ambassador of the [Islamic Republic of Iran] who defended the fatwas to kill author Salman Rushdie. Advertisement 4 Former Iranian Kurdish leader Sadiq Sharafkindi (left) and Nuri Dehkordi were two of the four opposition politicians killed in the Berlin restaurant Mykonos in 1992, while Mousavian was Iranian ambassador to Germany. Associated Press Shirin Ebadi, a former Iranian judge who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, has also previously accused Mousavian of supporting the fatwa. Before being hired by Princeton in 2009, Mousavian had also worked as a diplomat and editor of the Tehran Times, the English-language newspaper which is a mouthpiece for the regime. Mousavian was also Iran's ambassador to Germany in 1992 when four dissidents were murdered in the back of a restaurant in Berlin. Advertisement The group of dissidents which campaigned to get him fired from Princeton has previously alleged when Mousavian was ambassador to Germany, 23 Iranians were killed in Europe for being enemies of the mullahs. In 1997, a German court concluded that the Iranian leadership, including the foreign ministry, masterminded the murders and that the headquarters for plotting them was the Iranian embassy, but did not name Mousavian. During the trial, German newspaper Tagesspiegel reported a former Iranian spy, Abolghasem Mesbahi, said under oath, 'Mousavian was involved in most of the crimes that took place in Europe. 4 Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tours a nuclear facility in 2008. The country's nuclear program is much older than many Western intelligence sources had predicted. AP 'Specifically, in Germany, it concerns the crimes that were committed against Iranian opposition members.' Following the trial Mousavian was called back to Tehran. Mousavian, whose Princeton email address is still active and who is still prominently featured on the school's website, did not return a request for comment Tuesday. He wrote of his retirement on Twitter: 'After 15 years of service at Princeton University, I retired at my own request at the end of May 2025. Advertisement 'I am deeply grateful to the university officials for their support and especially for their commitment to freedom of expression.' The retirement coincides with the imminent publication of a 2004 interview with Mousavian by Schirra. The interview, which is now being published by the Middle East Research Institute, a US-based nonprofit that studies extremism, suggests Iran's nuclear program was secretly active for decades before Western intelligence sources warned of its existence. Advertisement 'After Iraq's attack [in 1980], we announced our defensive chemical and nuclear programs,' said Mousavian in the interview, who was then deputy of Iran's National Security Council. In April, Cruz urged the school to fire Mousavian, saying: 'His presence at Princeton makes students feel justifiably afraid for their safety.'
