Oops! FBI Chief Undermines Trump’s Main Reason for Taking Over D.C.
The Trump administration is deploying the National Guard to Washington over a supposed “public safety emergency”—but it can’t seem to iron out its reason for doing so.
Mere moments after the president claimed Monday that federalization of Washington’s law enforcement was warranted on the basis that the city was a crime-riddled hellscape, FBI Director Kash Patel said that wasn’t the case.
Instead, Patel boasted that the country’s homicide rate had hit an all-time low, effectively unraveling the administration’s rationale for forcing the Metropolitan Police Department and the D.C. National Guard to take over the nation’s capital.
“The murder rates are plummeting,” Patel said. “We are now able to report that the murder rate is on track to be the lowest in U.S. history.”
Kash Patel: "We are now able to report that the murder rate is on track to be the lowest in US history." (But I thought US cities are crime hellscapes? ????) pic.twitter.com/r4QbdG3mTX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2025
Violent crime has been on the decline in D.C. since 2023, funneling into a nationwide crime drop the following year that saw homicide rates plummet across the country, reported The Washington Post. In 2024, crime in the capital was down 35 percent, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.
But instead of relying on that data to inform whether to strip Washington of its autonomy, Trump referred Monday to outdated 2023 statistics, claiming that the city was crime-riddled and needed to be under the thumb of Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“If our capital is dirty our whole country is dirty, and they don’t respect us,” Trump said.
Trump also suggested that the same fate could befall other cities around the country, though he only specified liberal hubs.
“We have other cities also that are bad. Very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then, of course, you have Baltimore and Oakland. You don’t even mention them anymore, they’re so far gone,” Trump said, before promising that Washington would be cleaned up “very quick.”
Later, when asked explicitly if other cities were next on his list, Trump said, “We’re just going to see what happens. We’re going to have tremendous success with what we’re doing.”
But what is happening in Washington should serve as a dire warning to the rest of the country that the administration will advance its agenda with or without legitimate, fact-founded reason.
“Other cities are hopefully watching this … and maybe they’ll self-clean up and maybe they’ll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all the things that caused the problem,” Trump said.