As mayor calls US president ‘hyperbolic’, experts say portrayal of crime rooted in false and misleading claims
Donald Trump is deploying the national guard in Washington DC and seizing control of its police force, claiming that the nation’s capital has become “lawless” and is “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world”.
The president portrayed himself as DC’s savior, vowing to rid it of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse”.
He demanded unhoused people leave the city, or face eviction.
Trump’s portrayal of Washington DC, where he has been forced to reside as president, cutting short his time in his beloved Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, did not come as a surprise. He’s presented DC as a “nightmare of murder and crime” before, and already in February was reported to be mulling a law-enforcement crackdown.
