| Trump has been talking about the country’s violent urban areas for years, fueling his political ascent with dire and often exaggerated and inaccurate portraits of violent crime in big cities. He has scored political points about killings in Chicago and Baltimore and protests in Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon. He has singled out policies such as cashless bail and court practices that advocate rehabilitating teen offenders rather than sending them off to prison — arguing that liberal politicians bear as much blame as remorseless killers. As a result, the MAGA movement has embraced the critique as a core tenet. “The laws are weak,” said Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host serving as Trump’s U.S. attorney for D.C. “I can’t touch you if you’re 14, 15, 16, 17 years old and you have a gun.” Pirro is among many right-wing influencers who back up the president’s assertion that D.C. is a city under almost-constant threat. The amplification has been especially acute over the past seven days, since Trump posted on his Truth Social account about a member of his administration who was “left dripping with blood” after he was attacked by a group of youths around 3 a.m. Aug. 3 near Dupont Circle. In that period, discussion of crime in D.C. spiked nearly 300 percent among such influencers compared with the prior week, according to a Washington Post analysis of posts and podcasts from over 200 accounts. Trump himself has fanned interest in the topic with additional posts to Truth Social and X, as well as in fundraising emails. The MAGA influencer Benny Johnson said his family had seen “drug deals and arms deals constantly” outside their previous home in D.C., which he called “a deadly war zone” and “welfare narco-state.” Katie Miller, the wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, posted Monday on X that for years she hadn’t felt safe enough to bring her children “to museums and monuments without fear of being shot or car jacked.” And Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican politician tasked with overseeing the Trump administration’s dismantling of Voice of America, posted a picture of a syringe that she said her dog stepped on during their morning walk. “Just another day in Washington, D.C.,” she wrote, adding that her dog wasn’t hurt. Highlighting perceptions of lawlessness in D.C. is a well-worn playbook for Republicans looking to appear tough on crime. More than half a century ago, Richard M. Nixon declared that the nation’s capital was “fast becoming the crime capital of the world” and vowed to make Washington “an example of respect for law and freedom from fear.” In the turbulent 1960s, an era of rising crime and sporadic riots and protests in major cities, it was impossible to divorce this push from race. At the time, Washington was the only big city in the country where a majority of the population was Black. As president, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson championed civil rights knowing it could cost his party the South. And he declared self-determination for the District to be a crucial step in the cause. At a bill-signing ceremony on Aug. 26, 1965, he warned: “Those of you here in the District of Columbia, I want to warn you this morning, that the clock is ticking, time is moving,” Future president Gerald Ford (R-Michigan), then the House minority leader, accused the president of issuing “an invitation to trigger terrorism in the streets.” Trump’s most recent efforts capitalize on frustration that liberal policies are not yielding substantial results, said Andre Perry, director of the Center for Community Uplift at the Brookings Institution and author of a book on structural inequality. And the frustration extends across lines of party, race and economics. “There is no question it resonates,” Perry said. “It is a political tactic more so than anything else, to garner favor with their broader base and to peel off Black voters who are simply frustrated with the rate of change or the solutions or lack thereof from Democrats.” Untangling the root causes of crime, and who should face blame when crime rates balloon, is much more complex. Read the rest of their story here. | 
