President Donald Trump said Monday he would place the Washington, D.C., police department under federal control and deploy the National Guard, an escalation of federal power in his campaign to tighten control over the nation’s deep-blue capital city.
“This is liberation day in D.C. and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said.
Although crime in Washington hit a 30-year low last year, the president in recent days has seized on violence against a Trump administration staffer to cast the city as dangerous, pledging earlier Monday that “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR.”