Trump’s DC Press Conference Was Genuinely Horrifying

Trump’s DC Press Conference Was Genuinely Horrifying

This is Liberation Day in DC and we’re going to take our capital back. We’re taking it back. Under the authorities vested in me as the President of the United States, I’m officially invoking section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. You know what that is? And placing the DC Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control. And you’ll be meeting the people that will be directly involved with that. Hey guys, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bull Work here with JVL and Andrew Edgar. We are here to talk about the announcement. Oh, welcome back JVL by the way. We’re here and you too, Edgar. Welcome back. We’re here to talk about the announcement that Donald Trump will be instituting home rule for Washington DC. Uh sending the National Guard uh to take over uh the law enforcement uh responsibilities here. Uh he is putting the DC Metropolitan Police under the um dress prudence of Pam Bondi, our attorney general. Uh he’s not ruling out the possibility of sending the military uh into our nation’s capital. He had a press conference. The the the press questions element of it went off the rails pretty quickly. uh the statement element of it was not much better, but it does add up to a fairly I don’t know chilling honestly uh decision by the president considering crime is fairly down uh in the nation’s capital. I mean still prom but it’s down. But uh JVL, why don’t you uh start us off? What were your main takeaways from this? I mean he wants to put the military in the streets of America’s cities, right? I mean it’s just as simple as that. We saw this in Los Angeles. Uh he’s going to do it here. I think we should all basically plan for this to happen in every blue state type city uh between now and the elections. And uh he he purpose I mean very very pointedly did not rule out doing more of this during this during this press conference. No. In fact, he went through a list of cities um and discussed them as if they were next targets. Right. Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago. I’m sure I’m missing a few. Not blue. Interesting. Not weirdly enough. Not Oklahoma City. No, nothing like that. That’s so bizarre. Um, the other thing, Andrew, that really just sort of jumped out. I mean, we can get to the hypocrisy stuff in January 6. I want to get to that in a second, but it was just sort of like the the the kind of embrace of of police brutality, like if they spit on you, we’re going to hit them back much harder. I mean, he’s just like outwardly embracing the idea that the cops should just come down incredibly hard without any uh apology on people who commit crimes, which look, it might be smart politics for him, but it is just an outward embrace of police brutality. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s I mean there’s there’s a couple different things that are that are going on here. One is that Trump is like channeling just sort of like this sort of broad grievance about crime in general. I mean, this is kind of his superpower forever. He’s like, I’m going to solve everything. that all the people who were in power before are are fools and dummies and and you know there’s there are real reasons why a lot of you know a lot of concerns about crime have come to the four especially coming out of you know co a few years ago when it was all really spiking everywhere um but I mean obviously that is no longer true but he is still sort of channeling that same kind of angst um and then and and it’s weird to like see him I mean this is all this is classic Trump too right he’s kind of going off his prepared remarks about law and order and about how you know we’re we’re going to we’re going to make the streets safe for tourist s and stuff. And then he kind of hops into his own register, which is uh you sort of speaking lovingly about about the the violence, you know, good violence, good violence, violence for a good cause of the of you know, you you don’t need a lot of police officers. You just need police officers to be able to do whatever the hell they want, as he said here. Uh he you know the the you have to be able to rush police officers though Andrew the capital police officers under certain circumstances not allowed to do whatever the hell they want. In fact they went too far right that was the problem. You know it’s a very very fine line that you got to cut. Okay. But but but but let me just put a bow on this because it’s it really is I mean he he’s explicit about it. He’s talking about um you know the stuff that’s been happening in DC recently and he’s talking about just sort of like roving gangs of of of juveniles in the city streets. He’s basically like you have to let police officers beat the hell out of them because this is another direct quote. That’s the only thing they understand, right? I mean that’s it’s really this kind of elemental like like you just have to unleash violence on the bad Americans to make things uh you know more orderly for the good Americans. And I I mean I don’t know what do you guys how do you guys think this is going to play? Like it’s it’s it’s grotesque in a lot of ways. Sure. But I’m struck I guess the to answer your question about how it plays and maybe you can pick this up too J. But like I’m kind of struck by how much of Trump’s worldview is just based around late 80s early 90s New York City. Like this is this is just Dinkens, right? And and Dinkens into Rudy, right? It’s like let the cops just be the cops. They can rough rough up a few Haitians. Who cares, right? Like they can do it. And then uh you know if we just reduce that you know visible crime people will reward you for it. And I just feel like so much of what he does is based around that worldview. Totally. It’s Donald Trump views the entire criminal justice system through the lenses of Bernie Gettu. Right. And if you’re not of a certain age or you didn’t grow up in the the New York metro area those names won’t mean anything to you but go Google them. Yeah. Exactly. You’ll figure it out. Um it is again the it’s all they them and in-group outgroup because again the the calls to violence are all as you know I I brought up the capital police in January 6th because this shows it isn’t really about crime. It isn’t about police. It’s about using force against the out group. Right? In this case, the out groupoup happens to be, you know, like black teenagers or homeless people or something. But, but if all of a sudden they’re great patriots who are trying to overthrow the United States government, well, hold on now. Don’t don’t go getting crazy, right? And that’s it isn’t really about crime. It is just naked fascism. Like, I’m I’m sorry. It’s just naked fascism, right? It isn’t it isn’t just uh you know, hey, he’s trying to clean up the streets. He’s just like uh Duterte or something. Darte from the the Philippines or something like that. That’s not what this is. It’s that’s how it’s being coded. And how will it play? I mean, I I have no idea, but it would not surprise me if it all plays very well because Americans have shown over course the last decade that they have a real taste for us versus them politics. And maybe not all of them, maybe not a majority of them, but like do you think 40% of America likes this sort of thing? I do. Well, I I thought the in most telling line, well, one of them was when he started talking about the uh the tourist from Iowa and Indiana who wants to just come to the nation’s capital and can’t because they’re going to get mugged. And I think a lot of people who don’t live here probably have this perception that you just literally cannot walk down the street, which is ridiculous. Can I ask you guys a question? Have you ever heard of the place called Aniston, Alabama, either of you? I have not, but I’d be willing to bet they’ve got a pretty high murder rate per cap per 100,000. They have, according to FBI data, a this is a quote whopping 3,434 violent crimes per capita. This is a town of 22,000. There’s about one violent crime for every seven people. It is one of the most violent places in the country. We’re not sending anyone there. I mean, I’ve been wanting to go there as a tourist, Sam, for years. And I’ve just been terrified to go because I feel like if I step across the line into that town, I wish we could send the National Guard in there to clean things up. There are tourist attractions there. It’s the site of a couple Greyhound bus bombings uh during the civil rights movement. So, fun place. Not sure I’m going to go there in my family. Um let’s talk about the uh hypocrisy and irony here. Republicans uh with Trump’s signature took a billion dollars out of the DC budget uh during last government funding fight um money that could be used for public safety measures. They said they were going to put it back. They have not. This was a promise that Chuck Schumer made with Donald Trump in order to get his signature. Chuck seems to have gotten played on that one. And then of course January 6, I mean we cannot talk about this without talking about January 6. They defaced uh a DC building, the capital. It’s a federal building, but it’s in DC. They spat on and hit and harmed and led uh to the deaths of several uh Capitol Hill police officers and then Trump pardoned the people who did it. And the fact that that was not neither of those questions were asked in the press brief. I mean maybe we were recording this kind of middle of the uh press, but that’s shocking to me. Like those are just blatant hypocritical acts. But Andrew, am I wrong? Well, the important thing, Sam, is that if if you’re from Iowa or Indiana and you come to DC, you should be allowed to do what you want, right? If you just want to go around to the monuments and visit some restaurants and have a good time, you should be able to do that unmolested. If you want to storm the US capital on Donald Trump’s behalf and and you know try to hang Mike Pence, uh that’s fine, too. you know, people from Iowa and Indiana are in charge. Uh, and we are catering to the I actually, not not to go off on too much of a tangent, I went to a Trump rally in Iowa, right right ahead of the caucuses last time around. Uh, and uh, and I happened to chat up a couple of people who were wives of of January 6 uh, prisoners, political prisoners, as they would say, who were at that time in prison. I’m now they’re out. Um, so who knows? Yeah, maybe maybe they’ll be coming back on a on a tourist uh, uh, uh, trip. But no, I mean it’s it’s obviously it’s exactly what JBL said, right? I mean, it’s the the you you you back the blue provisionally, which means you back the blue most of the time because most of the time uh they are just sort of, you know, in in in a face off with, like you say, the the gangs of black teenagers in the streets of DC. But, but when it comes to a faceoff between, you know, DC capital police and a and a more protected class even than than the police, which is our brave uh MAGA patriots, uh it’s it’s it’s pretty clear which side you have to get on for that one. I got a question for you. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Do you guys think they’re going to the Republicans and Trump are going to try to repeal the is the 1973 legislation granting home rule to do you think that’s where the this heads that this is a sort of a preemptive got to make sure that Democrats don’t really pursue DC statehood? One of the ways we can do that is by repealing this legislation. So that was um there was a little bit of reporting around this this morning that that is in fact the the end goal here for a few of them, right? like um guy named Mike Davis who’s kind of in the shadows of the legal warfare stuff for conservatives. That’s that that that’s what he wants. Um and it certainly seems that way. And um I think to a degree what we’re seeing here is just sort of like um it is sort of a test run to see what they can get away with and if they can do that, right? Like touch the hot stove, see how big a reaction you get. And look, I mean, if they if they I think we all expect them to turn around and say, “Hey, we got this under control. Look at what the federal government can do.” so on and so forth. Um, but yeah, I mean I I don’t know how would that how does that work practically? You got to put up for legislation obviously. I mean, I’m assuming Democrats don’t go for it. So, I don’t know how that works in theory, but I do think it’s the end goal. Yeah. Andrew, do you have thoughts on it or no? Or is it the is it the case that like Trump never cares about legislating on anything? Like he just likes doing stuff he can sign an executive order on and then declare victory? Yeah, I I I don’t know the ins and outs of the home rule stuff. But it was interesting today listening to Trump talk about uh legislation because he mentioned that a couple of times, but his his big thing for for legislating, he was not talking about, you know, anything in particular of like the the ins and outs of of how DC is going to fair. He was just talking about sort of like the big policy policy strokes like we’re going to end cashless bail. Um, and you know, then then, uh, uh, uh, Janine Piro got up and talked about how, you know, we’re gonna stop judges from from, you know, coming down too leniently on the I mean, it’s all on these offenders. It’s all it’s all um, it’s not a policy program, right? It’s all it’s all just in servants in service of this this sort of broad generic sense that criminals are being treated too nicely. They’re getting away with too much. People are letting them do all this stuff. And that’s why uh you know that’s why there’s this sort of lawlessness that you see on the news. Jav, let me ask you this to close it out. So you you’re predicting that it’s gonna this is a test case. They’re going to do it in other cities. Let’s talk about DC specifically. What’s the next couple weeks going to look like, do you think? I mean, I I assume that a big part of this is really tied to homelessness and that Trump just hates the idea there being homeless people around his presidential palace and that I I just assume that they’re going to do something like cleansing basically, you know, just make all the poor people disappear or shove them into a part of the city that Trump never goes to. He said it. He said it in his post. Move them away from the city. He’s going to take him and move him away from the city. And uh but this is I mean this is all part and parcel with the entire fascist. I’m sorry to like I come back from vacation. I’m just like I don’t know. Can’t we just say the f- word? Like it’s fascism. This feels like this is this is that right? And it’s it’s all what they he started this press conference talking about the new ballroom that they’re building, right? And it’s going to be very real. Going to be done faster than you can even imagine. It’s going to be so beautiful. And uh I again this is this is U and Kusay Hussein type stuff and like you know why is he building a presidential ballroom on this compound to make it look like Mara Lago North? Is it because he plans on leaving in 3 years? I don’t [ __ ] think so. Right. And uh I I don’t know man. Like maybe it’s just I come back with no no forks to give after being away for a week. But, uh, it all looks really bad. And when you com when you combine I know these seem very desperate, but combine this with the like, hey, we don’t like the labor statistics, so we’re going to we’re going to make it so that nobody can trust the the economic numbers coming out of the federal government, right? Uh, and it’s because that’s just the way it is now. You can’t we can’t trust the numbers coming out of the federal government. Why do that? And the answer is because they think they can do pretty well in a post-truth world where people are just reduced to are are we listening to our guys or their guys, right? And there is no more objective reality anymore. Uh we just obliterate all of that. There are no homeless people, right? Look, see the homeless people are all gone. Doesn’t matter. We just warehouse them someplace else or something off the street. Like this is that’s very interesting because he could have done this in a different way. Okay, let me just kick the tires on this one. Crime is decent. Crime in DC is done. It is statistically. He’s been president for 7 and 1/2 months. In theory, this would I don’t think he would ever done this, but in theory, he could have said, “Hey, look at me. 7 and 12 months in, crime’s down. I’m doing the job.” But that’s not what he did. That’s not what he did. He said, “It’s out of control, and I need to get in there.” So, I do think, you know, I don’t read into it what you will, but there is something of well, not something. It’s all about to me creating this reality that doesn’t exist so that people are impressed by you or give you the permission to do things that otherwise you wouldn’t get. Um c can I say one one other thing on that too which is that just just to illustrate the way they’re totally playing with monopoly money with all of this stuff right along lines of what you were just saying Sam when when Doug Bergam then got up uh at the press conference secretary of the interior got up to talk about homelessness specifically in DC he said during Joe Biden they let homelessness run rampant around here and we’re cleaning that up. That was kind of the the the the narrative he gave specifically on national parkland in DC and the circles and the triangle parks in DC. I covered this stuff while it was happening coming out of the pandemic uh in 2020 and 2021. What happened is in 2020 during Donald Trump’s presidency, park police relaxed a lot of the guidelines about camping in on public land. And that meant there were a lot of these homeless encampments that sprung up in DC uh in 2020. and and as the pandemic kind of dragged on, people got really sick of those because they were just kind of like everywhere and and sort of in a bunch of like hight traffic and business areas and things like that and it c created a lot of tension and in mid 2021 in in Joe or in Joe Biden’s first year, uh the park police basically started to crack down on that and and that sort of did it didn’t go away because I mean they’re homeless people, right? They’re around. You can’t just like put them all in jail and say you can’t be on the street anymore. Um but but but the the stuff that Bergam was talking about was a Trump firstterm phenomenon that then was was dealt with in certain ways in Joe Biden. But none of that matters, right? I mean like it’s no nobody’s going to fact check him and be like that. It’s it’s all again it’s all this broad strokes. Who’s addressing your grievances? Who agrees with you that this stuff is a problem? uh and and you put it all in Joe Biden and you say Donald Trump is is going to come clean it up and and there are a lot of possible outcomes but the guaranteed outcome is that Trump gives himself more and more permission to acrew more and more power to himself uh no matter what happens. Can I just say one more thing? I this is a the difference between Democrats and Republicans u is again Democrats are you know Democrats confront homelessness. It’s like well what policy levers could we push to ameliate this? Should we be building more affordable housing? You yimies versus the the socialists and right and uh you know and and Republicans just come in and it’s like we’re going to disappear them. And I like I just I don’t know like uh if America is okay with that and not even all of America if 40% of America is okay with that then that’s what we’re going to get and we’re moving to like a post policy world and uh a world which is really really different from what existed in America for the last 50 years. Hard agree. Uh let’s leave this by listening to Donald Trump compare DC unfavorably to Baghdad. Some charts. These are different cities throughout the world. Red is okay. The red is a place called Washington DC. Look at these. Baghdad is we doubled up on Baghdad. Panama City, Brazilia, San Jose, Costa Rica, Bogotaa, Colombia, heavy drugs, Mexico City, I’ve mentioned, Lima, Peru, all double and triple what they are. So, do you want to live in places like that? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. And I think the people in this room, if you wrote correctly, you’d see, look at the kind of numbers we have. DC 41 per 100,000 number one that we can find anywhere in the world. Other cities are pretty bad, but they’re not as bad as that. All right, there you have it. Uh we are worse than Baghdad here in our nation’s capital. Andrew, JVL, uh thank you guys both. Really appreciate it. JL, so you bring up such sunshine in your return from vacation. It’s like, uh yeah, how did we survive without this without you this past week? I’m sure you’re all much happier without me for a week.

JVL, Sam Stein, and Andrew Egger take on Donald Trump’s latest press conference — part authoritarian cosplay, part surreal stand-up routine. From talking about “good violence” and floating military takeovers of blue cities, to comparing DC to Baghdad and rambling about a new presidential ballroom, the spectacle was as bizarre as it was alarming.

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