Manufactured crime crisis lets Trump flex raw power over Democratic cities. Will Canada be next?

National Observer

20 hours ago

So now we see how the takeover by US President Donald Trump will unfold. It will happen one city police force at a time, perhaps slowly, or not, depending on the extent of the blowback elicited by this latest power grab.
The US president started Monday by ordering the National Guard to displace the local police force in the nation's capital of Washington. The pretext, which might be better called the pretense, is that the local police have failed to reign in rampant crime being perpetrated by individuals the president described as 'bloodthirsty criminals' and 'roving mobs of wild youth.'
There are no statistics to back this claim. Violent crime in the city is at a 30-year low. But that doesn't matter to Trump. All he needed was one incident to help him craft a narrative he could sell to his followers.
It was handed to him when Edward Coristine, a former employee with the Department of Government Efficiency, reported being terribly beaten in a car jacking incident. Local police responded and arrested two juvenile suspects. Other accomplices remain on the loose.
Trump shared a photo of the shirtless and bloodied former federal employee on his social media platform Truth Social, a shameless move to elicit a visceral reaction among Americans to the crime.
It goes without saying that one violent incident does not justify what amounts to martial law. The National Guard is a branch of the US military that is supposed to answer to both the state and federal government. Although typically called upon to deal with natural disasters and other state emergencies, Trump has been using it as a private military force to help enact his deportation agenda.
In June, he rolled over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom and sent the National Guard to Los Angeles to quell protests against workplace raids and mass arrests by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE agents. California, which depends on migrant labourers for its massive agricultural and service industry, opposes the crackdown on non-citizen residents. It has challenged the order in court, but whether Trump will heed the verdict if it doesn't go his way seems increasingly doubtful.
The move by US President Donald Trump to have the National Guard displace the police force in Washington puts him in the same league as Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. adriennetanner.bsky.social writes for @nationalobserver.com
Trump in a news conference Monday warned Washington was only the first of a number of large cities, all of which coincidentally voted against him, that could be in line for the same treatment. 'We have also other cities that are bad, very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles how bad it is…. New York has a problem.'
It begs the question, is crime the problem Trump is really talking about, or the fact that residents in large US cities tend to vote Democrat? It's worth noting that Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist and Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, is trying to make opposition to Trump's agenda the defining factor in the upcoming New York mayoral race.
While it's true that murder rates in US cities are high in comparison to other G7 countries, the statistics don't show the problem worsening. Looking at crime stats for Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, it appears local police forces are having some success lowering at least the most serious offences. But again, that won't matter to Trump, who used similar bogus arguments about the flow of fentanyl from Canada to the US as justification to slap tariffs on Canadian imports. Data shows the vast majority of fentanyl flowing into the US comes from Mexico, not Canada.
If there was any lingering doubt that Trump is a despot who will go to whatever lengths necessary to seize absolute control, it's been dispelled by this week's move against the Washington police force. This, and threats to control law enforcement in other Democratic cities well ahead of the 2026 midterms, puts Trump in the same league as Nicolas Maduro, who is widely thought to have rigged the 2024 election to cement his control over Venezuela. Trump's fondness for dictators like Hungary's Viktor Orban has never extended to Maduro, who is blamed for the flow of fentanyl to the US. The US recently upped a bounty for Maduro's arrest for narco-trafficking to US$50 million.
Attempts by Trump's own supporters who stormed the Capitol to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election failed because the Capitol Police overcame the mob. But imagine how that might have gone if Trump had a personal militia like the National Guard at his disposal.
So here we are in Canada, with only a fragile line at the 49th parallel separating us from a power-hungry despot who is deliberately harming our economy, repeatedly muses about annexing Canada as the 51st state and is pushing our Prime Minister to further entwine our military with his own.
It's a terrible position to be in. I'm with former NDP MP Charlie Angus, who is urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to forgo joining Trump's 'Golden Shield' missile initiative. Trump has shown he has no respect for laws or deals he doesn't like. He can't be trusted and the further away we can pull, the better. Sadly, our biggest threat is the dictator across our southern border.