Trump’s Military Campaign Against American Cities Expands

Failures

from the the-war-on-cities dept

Donald Trump has declared war on American cities, and he’s sending in the troops to prove it. As Rolling Stone rightly notes regarding Trump seizing direct control of DC law enforcement by deploying the National Guard:

President Donald Trump has expanded his military campaign against the United States by deploying armed troops to yet another major metropolitan area, announcing on Monday that he is sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C., to “liberate” the city.

This isn’t some emergency response to rising crime. This is the culmination of years of MAGA fantasies about using federal force against cities that refuse to kiss Trump’s ass.

It’s no secret that there’s a noticeable “urban/rural divide” in America, which has mostly been led by ambitious politicians who seek to stoke nonsense fears in rural voters by lying to them about life in American cities. But the divide has certainly expanded from “city voters lean this way while rural voters lean that way” to “the federal government needs to invade American cities.”

The irony is thick. The idea that the federal government might use the US military against American citizens has long been a conspiracy theory of the QAnon/MAGA crowd. Now it’s happening, with the QAnon/MAGA folks doing it to cities they view as insufficiently loyal to their dear leader.

Remember the massive conspiracy theory around the Jade Helm exercises a decade ago? Early MAGA types (helped along by political shitposters like Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Senator Ted Cruz) pretended it was an effort by Democrats to impose martial law by first “getting people used to seeing military forces on the streets.”

This ignored that the only ones who seem interested in actually putting the military in the streets have been similarly bad faith Republicans, like Senator Tom Cotton, who has been publicly advocating for US military forces to invade American cities for years, just because non-white people were protesting for their rights.

This latest military campaign, based entirely on lies about the state of crime in the cities, followed a similarly stupid campaign in LA, also based on lies. As Radley Balko points out in a recent post, the lies are just very, very sloppy. For example in the oft-repeated line (including in our comments by MAGA fans!) that DC has the 4th highest murder rate, nope, not even close:

Nope. The linked study is only a sampling of 23 cities. It does not purport to be a list of the 23 most dangerous or murderous or crime-ridden cities. It does not purport to be a comprehensive list of any kind. The point of the study was to compare year-over-year statistics among a diverse selection of cities around the country. D.C.’s homicide rate was the fourth highest out of these 23 cities. Not out of all U.S. cities.

This first bullet point also fails to contextualize the 27.3 per 100,000 figure for 2024. It was down from 39 in 2023. It’s down to about 22.7 this year. This matters, because Trump’s argument is that crime in the city is out of control due to poor leadership. That isn’t what’s happening.

Trump has also claimed that homicides in D.C. in 2023 were the “highest ever.” Not even close. The city’s murder rate topped 80 per 100,000 in 1991.

As of April, D.C.’s murder rate this year ranked not fourth highest, but 19th. It ranked behind red state cities like New Orleans, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Tulsa, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati.

The lack of an actual rise in violent crime to justify these moves doesn’t matter. And silly people arguing that Democrats need to accept Trump’s framing of this being about crime are being very, very short-sighted.

If it wasn’t lies about crime, Trump and friends would come up with other lies. It would be about immigration. Or culture. Or architecture. The reasons don’t matter. The truth doesn’t matter. This is entirely about the MAGA base wanting to invade and take over American cities because they hate the fact that those cities tend not to vote for them.

That’s it.

Two weeks ago the New Republic got a leaked DHS memo that made it clear that the Trump administration wasn’t reacting to any emergency, but has been deliberately planning to invade US cities.

It suggests that DHS is anticipating many more uses of the military in urban centers, noting that L.A.-style operations may be needed “for years to come.”

And Trump made it clear he’s itching to send troops to basically any city in a Democratic-leaning state that just (coincidentally!) has a Black mayor.

At a press conference Monday announcing that the federal government had seized “direct” control of D.C.’s police department and that the National Guard would soon occupy the city, Trump warned that if he and his officials decide they “need to,” he will deploy military forces to other Democratic cities, too. The president named a few, including Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore.

Again, if this were actually about crime, then Republicans might look at how the mayors in those cities have been very successfully reducing crime, often by refocusing the problem.

Baltimore, for example, has seen its murder rate drop at an astounding rate, hitting its lowest level in many, many years, and it’s in large part due to Mayor Brandon Scott realizing that you don’t stop crime by increasing policing, but by treating crime as a type of public health crisis that you fix by treating the actual symptoms, including poverty, racism, and historical violence (some of which is perpetrated by law enforcement).

Baltimore’s success in lowering violent crime rates not through increased law enforcement, but through better community support should be a lesson for anyone who actually wants to reduce crime.

Indeed, Balko’s piece also notes that if you look at the cities in the study Trump cited with the biggest increase in murder rates, more than half are in red states with Republican mayors:

Seven of the 23 cities in the study cited by the White House actually showed an increase in homicides last year. Four of those — including the top two (Indianapolis and Lexington) are in red states. The city with the largest increase — Lexington — has a Republican mayor. Send the National Guard to Lexington!

But MAGA folks don’t give a shit about crime in reality. It’s just a convenient excuse for them to exert control and power over those they see as refusing to kowtow to their unprecedented power grab.

Donald Trump has declared war on US cities because the people there don’t kiss his ass enough, and he’s sending in the troops, effectively saying that the military invasions will continue until the loyalty improves.

Filed Under: donald trump, militarization, national guard, rural urban divide, washington dc