President Donald Trump stood in the White House briefing room on Monday, flanked by Attorney General Pam Bondi, and painted a picture of Washington, D.C., spiraling into chaos — “crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse.” He invoked imagery of lawless streets, roving gangs, and a city teetering on collapse.
Then came the deployment order: the D.C. National Guard on the streets and federal control of the Metropolitan Police Department.
But there was just one problem. None of it was true.
According to the D.C. Police Department’s own data, violent crime in the capital has fallen by 26% since this time last year — which was already a 30-year low. Property crime is down, too. And D.C. isn’t alone. Every city on Trump’s list of supposed “next targets” — Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland, New York, and Chicago — is seeing similar historic declines in violence.
The Numbers Trump Didn’t Mention
- Los Angeles: Homicides down 20% in the first half of 2025, on track for the lowest total in over 60 years.
- Baltimore: Lowest homicide rate in 50 years, down 28% from last year.
- Chicago: Homicides and shootings both down 30% year-over-year, with violent crime overall down 25% since 2019.
- Oakland: Overall crime down 28%, homicides down 24% from 2024.
- New York City: Murders down 46% from last year, hitting the lowest number in recorded history.
Nationwide, the FBI reports that both violent and property crime rates in 2024 were the lowest since at least 1969.
Why the Lie Works Anyway
Despite these facts, a Gallup poll from late 2024 found that 64% of Americans believed crime was rising. That disconnect, experts say, is no accident. Civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis, author of Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, says sensational, decontextualized local crime coverage has primed the public to believe Trump’s narrative.
“How is this possible?” Karakatsanis asked. “The news media has been fearmongering for years.”
Pew Research data backs him up: crime is the most-covered local news topic after weather, with violent crime — though far less common than property crime — getting equal airtime.
The Authoritarian Playbook
Critics argue that Trump’s “emergency” is less about public safety and more about centralizing power. By framing progressive-run cities as dangerous and “out of control,” Trump creates a pretext to override local governments, send in federal forces, and redefine “law and order” in his own terms.
And the implications go far beyond D.C. On Monday, Trump warned that Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland, New York, and Chicago “will be next.” All have Black mayors.
“This is not about crime statistics,” one Democratic strategist told Common Dreams. “It’s about who gets to govern — and who doesn’t.”
Journalism’s Role in the Deception
The Associated Press drew backlash for reporting Trump’s claims and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s rebuttal as if they were equally credible “opinions.” Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedman called it a dangerous false equivalence: “No publication… needs to accept Trump’s claim that crime in D.C. constitutes an emergency as plausible and ignore the actual reasons for this authoritarian move.”
Karakatsanis says if there is ever a democratic recovery from the brink, part of it must involve “a rigorous reckoning” over how mainstream institutions “tolerated, accepted, peddled, and even celebrated the lies and mythologies of the far-right.”
In the end, Trump’s “bloodshed and bedlam” may be nothing more than a calculated fiction — but it’s a fiction with real consequences. If his plan works in Washington, America’s other cities could be next in line for a federal “rescue” they never asked for.