Morning Joe - Trump takes over the D.C. Police Department

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Trump takes over the D.C. Police Department

For American citizens, January 20th, 2025 is Liberation Day. We're going to have a very free and beautiful nation. It's going to be Liberation Day in America. This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back. We're taking it back. President Trump announcing yet another Liberation Day. Do you not feel liberated? Are you not liberated?

That's a little. What are you talking about? That's a little gladiator thing. But before we start that, we're going to talk about that a lot. But today is a, yeah, yeah, we definitely are. A big day. So if this is, in fact, Liberation Day for the great people of Washington, D.C., I don't know if you'll look at it that way for one Alex Coursen, Willie Guys.

He today, he's in, it's not his liberation day. Our executive producer. He becomes the father of two teenage girls on the same day. Simultaneously. Liberation day. Same day, not Liberation Day. Liberation. Well, for them.

His girls are so sweet. Grown up. They are talented. They are so positive. They are so full of promise. And as of yet, as of yet, if you're watching way too early, don't be worried. They have yet distill a milk truck as they get away from the LAPD. So they are wonderful girls, so very talented.

But Willie, two teenage girls on the same day. I had one, and she's love of my life. Man, it's a lot, right? Yeah, congratulations to Alex. I mean, beautiful girls. I always tell people when they dread the teenage years, which are complicated. no question it's not inevitable that they become what's the word you can say on TV jerks you know like there's just assumption well you got teenagers that's not inevitable you

have some say in the matter it'll never happen with these girls they're perfect yeah they're wonderful I remember acre when they were babies a oh my gosh they were so little and now they're 13 oh my god well that's amazing Alex are you nervous well they're numerically teenagers today, but they've been teenagers for at least a couple of years now, so we're in it. Yeah, they sued for their own liberation several years ago, but the judge said no. So no, they're, yeah, they all seem to become teenagers well before the 13th birthday. But anyway, great news, great news there. And yeah, I mean, Willie, you, you know, you're not quite on the other side. I am on the other side of it, and it is, there are some bumpy roads, but there's some bumpy roads, but I'll tell you, it is, it's wonderful, absolutely wonderful, right?

It is. It's an absolute joy. One recommendation, take their phones and throw them into the Central Park Reservoir. That's also, that's helpful. Do that. Ours don't have phones. Let them go outside. Oh, they don't have phones. Good, good, good move. That's good. That's number one. Very good. Number two, number two, and this is very important. If you want to right now, just get your wood carving kit out, get, get like a piece of wood and just put in there, the answer is no, and just hang it up somewhere prominently in the house. Just point to the sign. Just, just, I just, yeah, just go like, yeah, wear a t-shirt. Hey, hey, dad, listen, our friends are going to drive DeMil walk.

Just point up here and just the answer. answer is no. You'll be amazed how much it helps. Okay. We will get to the news and we congratulate you, Alex, of course. By the way, on Washington, D.C., we're going to go through the federal takeover of the police department and whether the president will extend this action to other major cities. The president also discussed his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, amid pressure from Europe, leaders to include Ukraine's president in those talks, and we'll dig into President Trump nominating an economist who has been critical of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to become its next commissioner. So, Joe, I think this isn't the first time that's happened.

No, it's not the first time that's happened. There have been other agencies where he's put people in charge that have talked about, you know, getting rid of the departments or, uh, pairing them down, I will say you talk to anybody that helps run this economy. You talk to anybody that's a CEO that depends on the United States continuing to have the full faith and credit and the trust of people and governments around the world. They don't want to screw around with this. They want to get somebody that's actually going to get real numbers out there. And if they don't, well, just looks out to Argentina. And that's what you have to look forward to. Willie, this first story we're doing this morning, though.

This is a fascinating story because so many people have been calling me over the past couple of days going, you know, like Washington should have gotten involved years ago. This place is dangerous. It's a mess. It's a wreck and whatever. And then they'll go on Twitter, go, this is the worst outrage of all time. The shocking. Which I understand.

It's like people need to express their concerns about Donald Trump going to. We saw what happened back in 2020 with the National Guard. Certainly can't have any repeat of that. Don't want the federalization of the entire city. But, man, I don't care what the crime statistics say. Crime has been a problem in this city for the 32 years. I've been living inside and outside of the city. It's just, you know, even now, we, Meek and I, we're talking to somebody who lives in the city.

these are all Democrats who said, you know, our friends won't walk more than three blocks in D.C. at night without feeling, complete opposite of New York City, where I walk 40, 50 blocks at night and not think twice about it in New York City in midtown, downtown. I mean, New York is a safe, safe place. Washington, D.C., man, it's door to door. I mean, I get one of those bikes, you know, me. I love riding the bikes around over. right around. And I go door to door. I don't slow down. It's very dangerous there. Good. Glad the crime rates are going down. But there is no sense of security for people who have been living in that city for 30 years. And the question is, what is the remedy to that? The crime

stats are down. They were high, you know, relative to previous years. They are in fact down. But it doesn't feel safe to a lot of people, as you say, Joe. So the question is, what do you do about that? And a lot of people disagree with the president's choice here, which he's deploying the National Guard now to Washington, effectively taking over the city's police department. He made that announcement yesterday, putting Attorney General Pam Bondi in charge. As we heard a minute ago, he called it Liberation Day for the nation's capital amid claims. From him and others, the D.C. is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. This issue directly impacts the functioning of the federal government and is a threat to America,

really. It's a threat to our country. 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 you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore.

They're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C. and we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say. You'll have more police, and you'll be so happy, because you'll be safe. When you walk down the street, you're going to see police, or you're going to see FBI agents.

We're going to have a lot of agents on the street, and you're going to have a lot of, essentially, military. And we will bring in the military if it's needed, by the way. No, no, no, no, don't bring you the military. You know, Willie, what's interesting about this list, first of all, I don't know what problems he has in New York City, again, crime in that city and quality of life in that city, though after COVID went down. I mean, my God, I think New York City is safer now than it's been in like 55 years, 60 years. I mean, the stats are just off the charts. And throughout most of New York, people just don't feel the menace that you feel not only in Washington, D.C., which, by the way, Washington, D.C. is a special case. It's the nation's capital. And again,

my beef going back to my days in Congress always was, well, why isn't Congress doing more? I mean, they're really letting the nation's capital be guided by the lunacy of Mary and Barry and some people on the city council that have some crazy ideas about, you know, stopping the police from doing their jobs. But it's the nation's capital. So I think Congress and the president should have stepped in 30 years ago. But the president left some cities off the list, of course, red state cities. That actually some of the most dangerous cities in America, whether you're talking about Memphis, Tennessee, Birmingham, Alabama, or a lot of other cities in red states that are per person just as dangerous are actually. more dangerous in Washington, D.C.

Yeah, I mean, he put Baltimore on there, he put Chicago on there, he put L.A. on there, noteworthy, that the governors of all three of those states are serious candidates to run for president in 2028. That's another piece of this puzzle as well. So the question is, what will these National Guard members do? Remember, they were called up to Los Angeles. They kind of milled around, weren't sure what their role was. They're not allowed to arrest people, so they were kind of providing protection to police officers

who were working, ICE agents in that case, who were working. And in D.C., more than 800 National Guard members will now be activated. A spokesperson for the Army says most of those troops live locally, likely be deployed in shifts of about 200 soldiers each. That'll start later this week. Their central duty, they say, will be to support federal agents, many of whom have already been deployed to the city. You can see their presence in the streets already.

Officials with the Drug Enforcement Administration have begun to clear harm. homeless campsites, while 120 FBI agents have been authorized to work various shifts, a senior law enforcement official tells NBC News that number is expected to rise in the coming days. The president is able to take over D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department for up to 30 days under the city's Home Rule Act. This is the first time, though, a president ever has done so. Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser expressed her disappointment yesterday, but made clear she does plan to comply with the president's order. While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented,

I can't say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we're totally surprised. My tenure will be appropriate for what I think is important for the district. And what's important for the district is that we can take care of our citizens. And if people are concerned about a president's ability to have the MPD police department be responsive to the Department of Justice, the time to address that is when we're talking about statehood for D.C. If people are concerned about the president being able to move the National Guard into our city, the time to do that would have been when the Congress had a bill that it could have done.

given control of the D.C. National Guard to D.C. Yeah, you know, the question is we have a question, really, Mika, about safety and security. As long as the president focuses and the FBI focuses and the National Guard focuses on safety and security and not being an ominous force in that city, but just providing support in a partnership role to the D.C. police, that'll be a great thing. If they step over that. line. Obviously, that's something that we can do two things at once. And if they move into a more ominous role, that is something that we need to, obviously, and everybody needs to bring up with real concerns. But I will, you know, I will just go back to the fact that, you know,

the people that are cheering this on privately are not like right-wing Republicans, are not mega people. A lot of our friends are in the media. And also Democrats had worked on Joe Biden's campaign that worked on other campaigns that are saying, yeah, I'd like to feel safe walking around this city. If the federal government can be a positive partner in keeping the street safe while again forming a partnership with the D.C. police and not taking over, then I, at least the people I've spoken with that live in D.C. day and day out, see this as a positive step. I think it's also reasonable to be concerned, especially given events during Trump's first presidency and also the January 6th situation from beginning to end and even some of the

language he has used along the way. But let's figure out how this is going to work as far as we know. Joining us now, former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger. He's an MSNBCC. law enforcement analyst. Thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. What's your sense of how this will work? Well, I will tell you, after listening to the press conference yesterday, I feel much better this morning. Just in the last 24 hours, Chief Pam Smith of the Metro Problem Police Department

has spoken with Terry Cole, the interim commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Department, for the next 30 days. They have spoken. They had, Mr. Cole has told Chief Smith that we would like MPD to lead this effort. He wants this to be a collaboration. And frankly, that's the only way I see this as being successful. As, you know, as a former police chief, if somebody would have came, come to me and said,

hey, we're going to bring, you know, 500,000 more long. enforcement officers in to assist you, what's not to like about that? You could certainly make an impact on crime with that kind of surge. But this is going to be a temporary thing. Make no mistake about that. This is not something that can be sustained over a long period of time. So I'm very I'm very, I'm very, I'm very, yeah, I'm very encouraged that Chief Smith and Mr. Cole have talked about this being a collaboration and that MPD is going to to basically lead the decisions on how these resources are deployed. So, Chief, as someone who led the Capitol Police up until just a couple of months ago, who understands Washington very well,

we're hearing two different versions of the story of crime in that city. We're hearing that the crime rates are down 26 percent violent crime rates overall. That's an impressive number, but we're hearing more anecdotal stories that it still doesn't feel safe. What is your sense of the direction anyway that crime has gone in Washington lately? Well, there's no question that it has gone down over the last couple of years. But I think that, you know, we heard Joe talk about how he feels. Every resident of D.C., everybody, I mean, I've lived around Washington, D.C. for the last 40-plus years. And I will tell you, I feel very comfortable in most of the city.

I know that there are places in the city that it's probably not as safe to be walking around after dark. But, you know, as somebody goes to the theater, goes to restaurants, my family spends a lot of time in D.C. I feel like the city is safe. but it's a big city. It's like every big city in this country. They do have crime. They do have crime spikes. If you looked at two years ago, they had a spike in homicides. And they were up over 200 homicides. Well, now that has been significantly reduced. Violent crime has gone down over the last couple of years. So it is trending in the right direction. And so my hope is that this action, this surge of of federal resources does have an impact on the city. But again, you can't come in for 30 days,

you know, shoe homeless people off and then leave and expect that everything's going to just remain the same. People will come back. Crime will sort of level off to where it typically is. But make no mistake. The Metropolitan Police Department does a great job at trying, at first of all, at delivering police service to the residents of D.C. And, just finished with one of the point. The president was surprised and remarked about he had no idea that the Metropolitan Police Department had 3,500 officers. And he said, my God, that's an army. And if you look at the statistics for a city of 700,000 people, 3,500 cops is a lot of cops.

It's one of the highest, you know, per capita, you know, police department. However, this is a unique police department. They have responsibilities that other cities do not have. Every day, the Metropolitan Police Department is dealing with demonstrations and protests and other responsibilities associated with the fact that this is the nation's capital. So I think if you ask Chief Smith, if you ask, you know, going back to, I've been friends with every police chief, you know, back through Chuck Ramsey. And if you asked every police chief, they would tell you, no, we need more cops. And, you know, and that would be a good investment.

But, again, it's, D.C. is just like so many other cities that it does have crime issues. A lot of the crime issues are in particular areas of the city. And my, my question is, will we find the, you know, the same surge in northwest and northeast as we find in southeast? So, you know, we need, the whole city needs to, you know, could benefit from these federal resources. And I hope it's not just law enforcement that there's other support services for the homeless, for, you know, to reduce truancy, all those kinds of things that will impact the crime. I hope that there's investment as well. Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief and MSNBC Law Enforcement analyst Tom Manger. Thank you very much for your insights this morning.

So we're going to talk about this issue more in just a moment. We're going to sneak in a quick break. Also ahead on Morning Joe, President Trump says he's going to see what Vladimir Putin has in mind. When the two leaders meet in Alaska this week, we'll play you those comments as he lays out what a ceasefire deal could look like. Plus, the president's set to nominate an economist from the Conservative Heritage Foundation to the lead, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We'll dig into that announcement. We're back in just 90 seconds. Tragic emergency.

And it's embarrassing for me to be up here. You know, I'm going to see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday. I don't like being up here talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was. All right. That was more from President Trump yesterday. Yeah, let's bring in. I mean, I don't think, I don't think Putin's going to be saying, hey, how is the crime around? Yeah, now. I think they've got bigger fish to fry there. It's looking pretty bad right now in Ukraine. We can we can talk about that. When you bomb, when you bomb apartment buildings intentionally and intentionally kill little children and intentionally kill grandmothers. and intentionally target churches and intentionally target. Yeah, no, they'll have plenty to.

I'll have gracious plenty, as my grandmother would say, they have gracious plenty to talk about in Alaska, not Russia. Let's bring in Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and MSNBC political analyst Eugene Robinson, managing editor at the bulwark, Sam Stein is with us and senior writer for The Dispatch and Calmness for Bloomberg Opinion, David Drucker joins us, as well, of course, the co-host of our...

fourth hour contributing writer at the Atlantic. Jonathan Lemire is with us this morning. And Joe, I think that this news out of Washington, it's fair to say that there are a lot of people who feel like something needs to be done. I think the question is, given this president's patterns in the past and how he has tried to use law enforcement or not use law enforcement, raise. This is some questions. Well, you know, I mean, L.A. was interesting.

It was certainly frightening, but it ended up being kind of a bus where the Marines were standing around looking at each other saying, why are we here? So hopefully they learned something with Los Angeles. They just don't send out Marines and have them standing around when Marines themselves will start asking, wait, what are we doing here? This seems like a bit of an overreach. But we'll see what happens with Washington. I first want to, we're going to stay away from the Lemire for now.

He's, you know, LeMere and I, we had a rough night last night. It's a second rough night we've had with our Red Sox keeping us late, only to lose one-run games. Yeah, late. I know that upsets really very much. But I'm just looking at the screen, and right now I say, let's go to David Drucker. He seems to have the most interesting shot. And, you know, it is a visual medium, my man. It is a visual medium.

Nice depth. So, David, talk about this balance. And we've been talking about, I don't know if you heard it in the first block, we've been talking about all of our friends who have been calling us who are Democrats or members of the media who say, man, something needed to be done in Washington 30 years ago. But let's just say some of their forward-facing positions are far different than what they're saying off the screen. Talk about what you're hearing, but also any concerns you think Americans should have about this move. You look, this is where Trump has a knack for taking an issue where he could be baldly embraced, which is something he says he wants. But he talks about it in a way that maintains the polarization around him and everything he does. Look, I live on Capitol Hill.

I've lived here for 20 years. My wife and I are raising our kids on the Hill. If we thought it was incredibly unsafe, we wouldn't do that. Having said that, there was a spike during the pandemic. which was the last year of Trump's first term, right? Action like this actually made a lot of sense then, if you really want to look at it, but it continued into Biden's term. And in fact, so much so that Joe Biden joined with congressional Republicans to veto a criminal justice reform act

passed by the D.C. City Council because they thought it was soft on crime and made D.C. residents unsafe. So this has been a bipartisan concern. I think as the police chief was getting at, as he's learned the details of what this effort might look like, he feels a little bit better at it. And yesterday, we didn't get a lot of details. We got a lot of the president's bravado. But it's very hard to tell people that everything's fine because crime statistics show everything's fine when they have this sense of being unsafe.

And even though things are much better than they were at the height of the pandemic, and immediately afterwards, they're not the way, they don't feel the way they felt before the pandemic. And just like with an economy, you can scream at voters all day long that the macro indicators, the unemployment rate and economic growth and everything shows everything's fine. When they're feeling the pinch or when they have anxiety around making ends meet, they don't want to hear that. They want to hear that somebody is doing something to fix a problem, particularly as visceral as public safety, meaning your ability to stay alive and just feel at ease every day. And so I think that if this is handled in the right way, I think that

you know, Americans might look at this and D.C. residents in particular might look at this and say, wow, that was great. And, you know, the other thing the chief got to is that D.C. is a mixture of city land and federal land. I mean, it's scattered. There's no rhyme or reason to it because you have federal parks and monuments all over the place. And so the issue of clearing homeless encampments, for instance, is one where I remember during the pandemic as they proliferated because you couldn't have people in shelters because of COVID. When you had concerns about who were in these encampments and whether or not they were threatening and sometimes they were, you'd call the city and they'd say it's federal land, we have no jurisdiction.

Then you'd call the federal government, and there are 26 agencies, and you're trying to figure out who to get to, to get health. All of which is to say, again, if the details are right and they do something for the permanency of this, and don't just focus on the monuments and the museums for show, it could make DC overall safer. It would make people feel better, and there is something to it, even if the way Trump talks. about it can be a real turnoff and concern for so many Americans, for all of the reasons that we discuss on this program all the time. Right. Right. And, you know, if there is a partnership, a lasting partnership, this is something that can be part of the legacy. It really can. But if it's just for partisan reasons or just attacking it because, you know, for political reasons,

that won't work. So you're exactly right. And I will say it is, it is maddening, Gene, when you hear people say, well, the crime rates are down. And yet, you know, people, people don't feel any safer. Now, I live in, you know, I spend a lot of time in New York City. New York's a big, liberal town. And I will tell you, I will walk night and day in New York City. I will not walk night and day in D.C. I know both cities.

It's not that I'm afraid. It's like, I just have a pretty good sense where, where there's a more ominous threat and where there's not. And I want to read you a text from a someone who, I won't say their name, but we'll just say that they're very liberal. And he says this may sound controversial, but I'm not totally opposed to Trump's National Guard move in D.C. I know he's doing it for politics, but crime remains rampant. I've had too many friends carjacked, shot at. of us will walk more than three blocks after 8 p.m. 13-year-olds are committing many of these crimes

quite a change from a decade ago when things were much calmer. Well, that actually sounds like the D.C. that I lived in when I lived a block behind the Supreme Court. And, you know, every three days, one of my neighbors was getting held up at gunpoint. I mean, there has been a crime problem in D.C. At the same time, obviously, a lot of concerns. Will this Will this look like June of 2020? I'm curious, as a longtime resident of Washington, what are your thoughts, first of all, on safety and security in Washington, D.C. and whether this is needed. And secondly, what are you going to be looking at as this is rolled out, this so-called

partnership has rolled out? Well, you know, you're right that Washington, D.C. is not the sort of Mayberry RFD. of New York City, right? You can't mean, it's in New York is, you know, 8 million people. Yeah, sure, you walk around New York any time of night. That's because it is, you know, quote, the city that never sleep. There are always people around. There are crowds around in New York.

You know, the streets, at least where I have walked around New York late at night are pretty well lit. Now, it's clearly a lot safer there than it was 40 years ago. However, you know, 40-odd years ago, when I first came to Washington, there were neighborhoods like U Street, Northwest, and H Street, Northeast, and down around the Navy Yard, where you didn't walk, you ran, whether it was, you know, whatever time of day it was. Those were strolling places today, those are areas of vibrant, not just nightlife, but life all day with restaurants and fancy furniture stores and fern bars, the equivalent. I mean, it's, so there has been a big change in the city. And it's reflected in the growing population when I came here, the city's population. was dwindling as people moved out of what they saw as a failing city.

In recent decades, the population of Washington has increased as people have moved in. Now, what has happened is that a lot of people, like your friends in Washington and my friends in Washington, react justifiably to that sharp increase in crime that we saw, which peaked in 2023. For the decade before, really, this had felt like a really safe place. All of a sudden didn't feel that safe anymore. There was this spike in carjackings, which was a particular problem, but horrifying, terrifying. And now that spike has dramatically come down. not just in carjackings, but in all sorts of violent crime, as you say, the numbers don't necessarily translate to feelings. I'll point out just a couple of things. When I was, when I first was

covering D.C. as a, I covered the city as a local reporter, I think there was something like nine police agencies that had arrest powers in D.C. The Metropolitan Police, the U.S. Park police, the Capitol Police, the Uniform Secret Service, the FBI. So the cooperation working together between the D.C. Police Department, the Metropolitan Police and other police agencies, is nothing new. It's something they're really quite accustomed to. All the Chiefs talk. So I think in operation, this may go more smoothly. And if they can deal with some of the sort of Public order crime that's taking place. Large groups of teenagers gathering and sort of wilding, which has happened, especially

around the Navy Yard, other places. That really gives a sense of insecurity. That's a specific kind of problem that a bigger police presence might help. And that would be going a long way, I think, toward alleviating this feeling. Let me just add a couple things here. One is I think we're all sort of in agreement that the city needs to feel safer. that a surgeon resources obviously would help. It would help in any city, really.

I mean, you have a surgeon resources. You clamp down on crime. That's a good thing. But in defense of D.C., to Eugene's point, this is a dramatically different city than even when I moved in in 2004. Back then, U.S. Street was nothing. 8th Street was nothing. They've become vibrant.

Great places to live, great places to eat. The city is fantastic in that respect. There are parts that are problematic, of course. Trump compared it unfavorably to bad. Baghdad yesterday? That's ridiculous. I mean, just ridiculous. And I think we need to just sort of level set a little bit here. This is not a hellhole. It's a great place. Crime is trending down. It could get better. One thing that could help with what Trump is complaining about, such as truancy, homelessness, street repair, guardrails. He had a fixation on guardrails,

for instance, yesterday. One thing that might help is the fact that the Republicans in Congress, with Trump's signature took a billion dollars out of the D.C. budget in one of the government funding bills. There was an agreement to restore that billion dollars to D.C. That money is not returned. A billion dollars would go a fair way to making this city the beautiful shining capital that Donald Trump wants. I would love to see him put his shoulders into that one. That might actually help a little bit. But I think, and Willie, maybe this is a good one of a few or Joe for you, I thought the most revealing comment from yesterday had nothing to do with necessarily crime in D.C. It was when Trump said something very specific.

He said people in Iowa want to come to D.C. for tourism and they don't feel safe about it. He was not playing to necessarily to the DC audience when he made that press conference. He was playing to people who have a perception of what D.C. is like and who believe that the capital city is overrun by, you know, youth crime. which is problematic in certain parts, but it's not the case. And I think, look, this guy, Trump, is shaped by his experiences in New York City in the 70s and in the late 80s and in the early 90s. I think he understands that being tough on crime really did work for people like Rudy Giuliani. He believes that this is good politics, and maybe he believes it in his bones, too, that this is smart.

But I think that's what's happening here, is that he looks at this, he thinks that we're a good cudgel that he can use. that he can appeal to people in the middle of the country who have a war perception of what D.C. actually is like. Well, I mean, again, I've lived in D.C. on and off for over 30 years. And it's kind of like when I first started flying into JFK, and JFK was just trashed back in the late 90s, early 2000s. And I looked at the airport, I got, what? This is the gateway to America for the the rest of the world. It's a garbage dump. And they started to fix it. I will tell you, watching all of my friends being held up, not all of my friends, but a lot of my neighbors being held up on Capitol Hill back in the 1990s at gunpoint. Yeah. You know, and watching a lot of

the chaos. And I will just say bringing up recently, watching what happened after COVID and then watching how unsurious the city council was passing one law after another law, after another law that made Washington, D.C. less safe. Just looked at it and said, these people aren't serious people. And by the way, I'm not dealing with ambiguities or whatever. I'm hearing from a lot of friends, a lot of other people that, you know, and it's not just over the past three days. been hearing it over the past five years, including this year. You know, people living in supposedly

a nice part of town, downtown where they're shootings, where they're still carjackings, where they're still muggings, where people are still getting the hell beaten out of them walking to a restaurant. Now, I understand Donald Trump, again, we'll play to Middle America, but this is what separates New York, I mean, Washington from Philadelphia, for many of the other cities that we're naming. it is the nation's capital. And I do want people from Iowa, people from Nebraska, people from New York City, people from all over America to be able to come to the nation's capital, to be able to walk at night to dinner, to dinner, and not not be afraid that they're going to get mugged or beaten up, Sam.

So, again, I get your point. And I do understand that it's kind of like David said, is Donald Trump going to be able to take something that's going to be an 80-20 issue and turn it into a 20-80 issue because he overreaches or because he vilifies the wrong people. Well, I think Vegas probably would put that at 50-50 odds right now. But I do think there is a feel for people who live in D.C. People who visit D.C. That this, I would love this place.

I hate to keep bringing up New York City. But I would love this place to be like New York City. New York City transformed. If we had a great, by the way, that author yesterday that was on about New York from 86 to 90. I mean, I was in New York and 86 to 90 several times. That was a scary place. That was Fort Apache, the Bronx, baby. And the 70s was even worse.

They turned it around. And I saw how they turned it around. And yes, and I will say his name, Giuliani. I saw how that in Bratton. I saw how they turned it around, and I've always asked, why can't we have that for Washington, D.C.? Why can't we turn Washington around the way New York City was turned around? I don't know, Sam. I don't know.

I think we're talking to, I do think we're talking the same language to a large degree. I think it's just context, right? Like, D.C. has made real, real progress for two decades straight. And, yeah, there was a huge setback in the pandemic area. And trust me, I had friends who witnessed some pretty hands. of stuff on the hill and had to move from the hill because of the ramping crime there. And over the past two years, more progress has been made. So I do think it's not, I don't think we're speaking different language.

I think, of course, any surge in federal resources to help combat a crime problem will help with the crime problem. And of course, everyone wants the capital city to be a place where everyone can visit and feel comfortable. No one is arguing that. My point is simply that it's not Baghdad. It's really not Baghdad. Right.

And I just want to make clear. It's not Baghdad, and there's not people running in the streets with, I mean, I think that's the issue here is that we're not just dealing with a crime problem where people are breaking in and robbing. We're dealing with, and I know, because I was visiting D.C. a lot in recent years. I had a daughter living there, and just it was, you know, what you could see, anecdotal evidence. That would be every time I went to get coffee, I would see one, two, or three drug-addicted people milling around screaming in the street. I then thought, well, where do homeless people go and looked at a homeless shelter that looked too unsafe to enter?

This is in Washington, D.C. And this is on the city government. This is years and years of streets that don't feel safe, but also have very disturbing situations playing out on them. And so, Willie, the question that I have is, what is the National Guard going to do about that? Because it's not just crime. If you focus on crime, which the numbers are going down, of course, that makes sense to ramp up and have a presence, I guess. But that's not exactly what's plaguing Washington, D.C.

It's from rats to homelessness, to people who need help, to mental health care. I mean, this is a multifaceted problem that the president is addressing with the National Guard. And that's what a lot of critics of this move have said. If you want to help us with crime in D.C., great. Thank you. We would appreciate it. Let's build out all the things you just talked about, but we don't need troops in the street. It's always dangerous to make policy by anecdote. My friend got beat up, so the city's dangerous or it feels dangerous.

But that does matter. It's true. It's like the New York City subway, those statistically very safe. If you're down there with your young child, sometimes you look around at people on the platform, and you do feel a little bit unsafe. So when Governor Hockel, a few months back, sent the National Guard into the subways for a short time, some people criticize it, but as Joe's pointing out privately, a lot of families in the city said, thank you.

It's nice to see that guy down there, and I feel safe. So it is a complicated picture. Stats tell one story, and then there's the feel on the ground for people who live here. So Jonathan Lemire, the president, floated the idea of. of taking this policy to Chicago, to Baltimore, to L.A., say this is just the beginning of coming attractions. We'll see if that actually happens. But what's your sense of how he's viewing this? The military, the National Guard, as law enforcement. Is this something he might use other places as well? This is something they toyed with in the first term. You remember in 2020

during the George Floyd protests, he talked to his advisors about deploying the U.S. military on American streets, was talked out of that. That's not something. that is traditionally done. I mean, Washington is a unique case. It is the nation's capital. Obviously, the federal government has more sway there. He has more authority in other places. I mean, we should also note that President Trump has very little relationship with the city itself.

It's not just that he didn't get much in the way of votes there. But unlike a lot of his predecessors, he doesn't go out and about and do anything in the city. You know, most of that he sees is when he, you know, on the weekends, occasionally goes out to his golf course in suburban Virginia. And I've been in the prep pool on that many a weekend when he goes out there. there. And sure, that on the route he takes, you pass a couple homeless encampments, or at least they used to be there. I think they have since been cleaned up. I'm sure that in his mind reinforced these images. But, you know, it's been well covered the difference between perception and reality. And there is. There's a feeling. I'm in D.C. a lot. There's a feeling at

time. Certain neighborhoods don't feel safe. But I think you hit on something here. Is he try to take this to other cities where, you know, does he try to deploy the National Guard in other, we must note, deep blue cities for the most part? Some of them, as Reverend Al Sharp and point, and out first yesterday, have minority mayors, black mayors, you know, that's something, and those are frequent antagonists for this president, who I do think, you know, at the very least, and maybe there's some good intentions here too, but at the very least sees this as a political opportunity to play to his base and also change the conversation from many of the other topics we've been on lately. Well, and it's an opportunity for Democrats to not overreact

and actually come out and talk about the need to support safer streets. And they can do things at once. They can say, we want safer streets. If there's something that the White House and Congress can do to partnership with Washington, fantastic, we want safer streets as well. But we don't want any constitutional lines gone past. Gene Robinson, you have been the Washington resident the longest, so I think we should have you summarize everything, tell us how we're right or wrong, and tell us how this is going to end. Gene, go. It's yours. Well, there is absolutely no comparison between the Washington,

D.C. of today and the Washington, D.C. that I came to in the year 1980. That Washington, D.C. was a genuinely dangerous place. It was a place where you not only felt that you were in peril in some neighborhoods, but in fact, you were in peril in some neighborhoods. And there were, you know, all the overlapping pathologies, the sort of open-air drug markets that were everywhere. I think the police department was probably larger at that time, but there were these overlapping pathologies that made Washington a pretty rough place, comparable to a lot of cities. I mean, I had also lived around Detroit, you know, and that was no picnic. Now, today, again, it's not like Manhattan where there are people walking any time of the day or night.

Manhattan, four in the morning. There's people out. You kind of feel that protection that comes from a crowd. In Washington, you see, that's not the case. Downtowns have been hollowed out across a nation that has kind of happened here as well. And there's one word that David Drucker used, which we should come back to maybe in a later segment, which was truancy. There's a huge truancy problem in the D.C. schools, especially at high schools. And that's where a lot of those kids are coming from who, again, gather in numbers and create public disruptions and some measure of danger occasionally that people are reacting to. So there are lots of deeper things that need to be worked with, worked on. But is it a bad thing if there's more of a police presence?

I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. And we'll see, you know, I hope it works out well. Eugene Robinson, Sam Stein, David Drucker. Thank you all very much for being on this morning. And coming up on Morning Joe, President Trump is still talking about land swaps between Russia and Ukraine as part of a possible ceasefire deal. We'll dig into that and the president's other comments about his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin. Also ahead, we'll show you the big announcement from Taylor Swift while appearing on her boyfriend's podcast. Look at us doing pop news.

Morning Joe is coming right back. The Los Angeles say they still are looking for two suspects involved in a high-speed car chase that spanned the city over the weekend. NBC News correspondent Camila Bernal has details. High-speed chaos. Move out of the way, folks. Two people carjacked vehicle after vehicle, including this semi-truck in a wild and dangerous pursuit, lasting more than an hour in Los Angeles. It started Sunday truck, and it's now empty five freeways.

It started Sunday just after 10 p.m. north of the city. The Sheriff's Department says the pair stole a Ford F-150 at gunpoint. NBC Los Angeles reporting from the air as the events unfolded. The officers are saying that the suspects opened fire on them. As they made their way south, they drove the wrong way. and repeatedly tried to swap cars. Thankfully, that person had their door locked. But eventually found their next getaway.

The driver just ran out. The driver said you can have it. Oh, my gosh. They sped off in a milk truck. Again, they drove in the wrong direction. The California Highway Patrol backing off out of safety concerns. In the streets of downtown Los Angeles, police again trying to catch up. They steal another car.

go into residential neighborhoods. But despite the many eyes on them, in an underpass, the two got in a black vehicle and according to the sheriff's department, in the end, got away. NBC's Camilla Bernal reporting from L.A., still ahead.