Today, Explained - Trump's "tough on crime" spree

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

President Donald Trump thinks he solved crime in the nation's capital. Let’s take a look at the data (which he says is dubious). This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. The National Guard on patrol carrying rifles near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Where'd you go for the long weekend? If you spent most of your time online, you couldn't escape the rumors that the president was dead. Trump hasn't been seen in days. The bruises on his hands, Vance said he's ready to take over if something happened. If Trump's dead, they should bury J.D. Vance alive with him, like they did with pharaohs and their cats. Imagine not believing Trump is dead just because there's no evidence. Where's your sense of whimsy and joie de vivre? By Sunday, Donald Trump himself had to weigh in.

Never felt better in my life. Also, D.C. is a crime-free zone. I'm alive and I fixed D.C. On Today explained from Vox, we're going to assess that second claim because it's bold. It is a literal statement that President Trump has freed

700,000 people in this city who are living under the rule of criminals and thugs. He literally liberated D.C. And he wants to do Chicago next. Support for this show comes from OnePassword. If you're an IT or security pro, managing devices, identities, and applications can feel overwhelming and risky. Trellica by OnePassword helps conquer SaaS sprawl and Shadow IT by discovering every app your team uses, managed or not.

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We asked Olivia George from the Washington Post over to answer one question. Did Donald Trump solve crime in D.C.? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that Trump and other White House officials have been quick to claim victory for improving conditions, citing, among other things, a 12-day stretch without a homicide. But in the last 11 days, we've had no murders. And that's the first time that's taken place in years, actually years. We always have a murder a week. They call it a murder a week. You come here from Iowa.

You come here from Indiana. You come here from Idaho because you're so proud of your country. You love your country. And then you get murdered. Your son gets murdered. Your daughter gets murdered. You get murdered. See the media?

You get murdered. Trump erroneously claimed was the first time that that had taken place in years. It's not the first time. That's right. It's not even the first time this year. He's also said things like people are flocking back to D.C. It's been one of the first time. the most dangerous cities, and we are turning things around.

Nobody wanted to come here. They didn't want to come here and get murdered. I have a friend of mine. And at the same time, continued to talk about the other things that he would like to implement in D.C., you know, wading into policy debates ranging from an expansion of the death penalty. Capital, capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C.,

we're going to be seeking. the death penalty. To things like improving the quality of the grass and eradicating the city's rat population. I'm very good at grass because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place. I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world. But out of the White House, it's been a continued message of we are seeing results and we are proceeding with full force. Good afternoon, everyone.

I am Muriel Bowser. I'm the mayor of Washington, D.C. What's been interesting is that the mayor of D.C. last week gathered a, hosted a press conference in which she presented herself a very rosy picture. We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance. What MPD has been able to do in this city? She recited how carjackings are down. 87% reduction. Murders are down.

Other instances of violent assault and violent crime are down. So this surge has been important to us for that reason. And she said, quote, we greatly appreciate the surge of federal officers. That comment has drawn. you know, pretty swift rebuke from D.C. Council members and residents alike. You know, it's funny. This whole time that Trump has sort of taken over D.C., you've seen any number of posts on social media or even reported pieces of journalism about the sort of confusing manner in which he's done it. You've seen National Guard troops picking up trash in the District of Columbia. We're out here supporting the National Park Service and trying to keep D.C. in the federal areas.

Clean. Trash duty. Like a half dozen of them standing outside of a crispy cream. Federal police officers from four to five different agencies helping a passed out drunk woman. And yet in neighborhoods in D.C. where there is significant crime where people are worried about their safety, typically eastern neighborhoods, southeast, northeast, D.C., you don't see a National Guard presence. Everybody's asking where all these, you know, additional forces are, but we don't see them anywhere. It seems like it's more of a spectacle for those that are visiting. I haven't seen the National Guard depoy.

You don't know exactly where they are, what communities they're going into. Do we know what exactly he did and what exactly he accomplished, if anything? So you're right. There's this kind of drumbeat of viral videos, of people being detained. Of small kind of acts of protest and heckling and residents voicing their disapproval. Get out of our neighborhood. Don't us go now.

And every single day we see the White House present their recap of what they call the successes of the previous night's operation. Since President Trump's intervention, there have been more than 1,28,000. three arrests right here in the District of Columbia. And yet, basic information about the charges, where people were arrested, who was arrested, who were they arrested by, continues to be kind of unusually elusive. The lack of specifics and the gaps in details about who is being arrested and why continues to fuel the frustration.

that many residents are feeling in this very unusual moment. And I think is why the mayor's comments about greatly appreciating the federal surge, you know, stirred some disappointment and anger from residents is because there was a view that it was kind of at odds with the lived experience of residents in D.C. right now. Why would the mayor of Washington sanction a takeover of her city? I'll start by saying that she does not use the word takeover. For many months now, you know, throughout Trump's second term,

we have seen the mayor hone this approach of, for lack of a better phrase, not wanting to poke the bear. Not wanting to kind of use similar tactics to other Democratic League does around the country who are much more forceful sometimes in their disapproval of the president and his tactics. Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks

have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy. Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever-more alarming grabs for power. Just to show a brazen abuse of power and brazen force. There's no reason for them to come here.

And this is in large part because of the unique vulnerability of D.C. to the exact kind of federal intervention that is now in full swing. So Trump has said that he wants to see the death penalty imposed on every person convicted of murder in D.C. And that announcement, you know, if it transcends to an attempt to implement that, is likely to endure intense political and legal pushback. In D.C., most homicides are prosecuted under local law. But U.S. attorneys can seek the death penalty for certain crimes under federal statutes.

those laws cover some but not all homicides. So there are a couple obstacles in place for Trump's vision of an expansion of the death penalty to actually become a reality. One broader note that I'll make to that point is that it's yet another example of the president fixating on a wide a range of policy issues and of life issues in the district. When the initial declaration of a crime emergency was declared in early August, I think there was a hope among local officials that his interest would quickly wane, he would turn his attention elsewhere, and what we've seen with this drumbeat of additional statements that the president has made on a wide range of issues from the death penalty to the quality of grass in D.C.

it's showing us that the interest isn't waning. The fixation isn't shrinking. Why do we think that is? D.C. in some ways, represents more than itself. You know, I think it's important to view the steps that he's taking in the district in the broader context of his criticisms, of liberal policies, of the kind of, you know, hellscape that he paints democratic-run cities. And at the same time, D.C. is uniquely vulnerable to Trump's efforts to try and overturn and interject and correct those policies that he disagrees with.

The D.C. National Guard, for example, is the only National Guard unit that reports directly to the president. So that was one tool that was already at his disposal and that he was well within his right to command them and order them those troops to deploy onto D.C. streets. And this is why D.C. is so important, not because what happens to this town, really, of 700,000 people is so important for the country, but because it feels like Donald Trump is trying to create some sort of template here. But, of course, he is allowed to do this stuff in D.C. for the most part. But he isn't necessarily elsewhere, or it might upset a lot of people elsewhere. He's already threatened to do the same. In Chicago, do we know if the administration is going to try and use D.C. to justify taking similar actions in other American cities, blue cities, left-leaning cities? In rhetoric, it definitely appears that they are. They are touting that successes in D.C., in very clear-cut terms, painting the steps they have taken here as a success story. But as we've discussed, it's important to note that it can't just be a copy and paste situation because D.C. is in a very unique place due to its lack of statehood.

The key takeaway is that the rhetoric the president uses to describe D.C. is part of a broader push to kind of present democratic-run communities as these hellscapes that he is positioned to rescue from their danger and their kind of decay. But he does not have the same tools at his disposal that he does for D.C. Read Olivia George at Washington Post.com. Trump may not have solved much of anything in D.C., but he's not going to stop talking about crime

because it's a winner for him. We're going to tell you why when we're back on Today Explained. It is a literal statement that President Trump has freed 700,000 people in this city who were living under the rule of... Today explained Sean Ramos from here with Andrew Procop from Vox, who writes about politics. Andrew, you wrote that taking over. over D.C. doesn't poll well, but crime is still Trump's best issue. How come? Polls repeatedly and pretty strongly show that the public or majority of the public, more of the public, trusts Republicans and Trump over Democrats on the issue of crime. In polls that ask

about, you know, more than a dozen different issues, crime turns out to be Republicans single best one. I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor. If you think that crime is a serious problem, you want to vote for the party that seems united around the idea that we should do something about it, not a party that's kind of split among, oh, you know, is policing or enforcement of law is really a good idea or not? And Trump has found many ways to signal that he is on the tough on crime side.

And often voters think when you ask them about the specific things that Trump is proposing, they say he's too tough on crime. Like they say, you know, that's a little too far for me. And yet they still trust him more than Democrats because, you know, at the end of the day, Trump is trying to signal I'm on the side of voters like you, law-abiding citizens who are worried about criminals. and Democrats are on the side of the criminals. All they worry about is getting criminals out of prison, preventing them from being convicted, preventing our police from doing what's necessary to crack down on criminals. So that kind of messaging has been really effective

at hurting the Democrats' brand when combined with the very real struggles in cities to get the rising crime rates under control in the early 2020s. And he's framing this as like a left-front. versus right issue. As, you know, Democratic control D.C. and Chicago and Baltimore, they need my help. They're not going to solve their own crime issue while he's sort of ignoring cities like St. Louis or Memphis that are in red states but also have crime issues. How are Democrats responding or handling this in recent weeks? Yeah. So if you listen to Trump and Trump officials, they say this is just

all about violent crime. Democrats have not taken the problem of violent crime in city seriously and Trump is taking it seriously. We're going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old and we're going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington decent. And the instinct for many Democrats has been to argue that violent crime is actually no big deal and that we shouldn't be worried about it so much. Mr. President, I can give you all the data you need to show that crime is down. It's working.

Our policies are working. The biggest crime scene that hurts everyday Americans in Washington, D.C. right now is 1,600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That's the crime scene that we need to clean up. Minority leader Hakein Jeffries said that, oh, well, you know, crime in D.C. is all, you know, already trending downwards near record lows. So this is obviously fake and political. Violent crime in Washington, D.C. is at a 30-year low.

Donald Trump has no basis to take over the local police department and zero credibility on the issue of law and order. Get lost. It's definitely clear that crime in D.C. has declined since its peak in 2023, but that peak was very high. And the murder rate, at least, is still something like twice where it was in 2012. But I think my broader point is that it is a political loser for Democrats. When we look at polls, polls show overwhelmingly that the public thinks that crime in cities is a very

serious issue. A new associated press poll shows crime remains a top concern nationwide. The poll found that 81% of Americans say crime is a major problem in large cities. And, 66% say it's a problem in the country as a whole. And any time 81% of the public thinks something and Democrats and Progressive's instinct is to be like, no, you're wrong. It's not actually. That's a bad political place for them. And Democrats have kind of fallen into this bad political place because of the past decade of discourse on criminal justice and crime issues within the Democratic coalition. Progressives have focused so much on mass incarceration and police violence as the two

biggest sort of urgent moral causes in America. And any concern about crime in cities was viewed as inconvenient, political, perhaps racially coded. And so a habit has formed for Democrats to kind of say, crime in cities is no big deal. It's fine. Anyone who worries about it is like a whiner or a racist. And in April 2024, the Pew Research Center asked registered voters whether they thought the U.S. criminal justice system was generally too tough on criminals or not tough enough. Sixty-one percent said not tough enough and a mere 13 percent said too tough. This really goes to show that among the public, the belief that the criminal, that the criminal criminal justice system is too harsh on criminals is kind of a fringe view.

But this is a core belief of progressive activists, and it has become quite important to the Democratic Party coalition over the past decade. I know it's early yet, but have we seen Democrats pivot on crime at all in the two or three weeks since Trump threatened and then did indeed take over D.C.? I think it's been awkward. not really sure how to talk about it in a convincing way. The Democratic polling firm Blue Rose Research tested many different possible messages on this for Democrats and found that the best testing one was to say, this is just all a distraction from his high tariffs and bad economic management that's ruining the economy. So according to that, research, the best strategy is to change the subject away from crime entirely. What's happening here in Washington, D.C. is just a stunt. To manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he's deeply unpopular, the one big, ugly bill is deeply unpopular,

ripping health care away from millions of Americans is unpopular. It's just a distraction that Donald Trump wants to utilize to take our eyes off of his tax bill that's ripping away Medicaid from more than a... Now, a lot of Democrats don't believe this. They think that, oh, actually calling out Trump's authoritarian. warning the public about his abuses of power, the danger steps down the road he's taking, will pay off. This is how the authoritarians operate. They declare an emergency and then they think that the rule of law isn't govern anymore. What voters are looking for is which party they trust on an issue and which politician they trust on an issue.

And also the question of like, who is on my side? Trump uses the crime issue to signal that he is on the side of ordinary law-abiding Americans and not criminals. That's why he brings it up constantly. And when Democrats respond by saying, actually, Trump trying to crack down on criminals is dangerous and bad, they, like Trump will just respond by saying, oh, that proves that they're on the side of the criminals. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to protect you ordinary law-abiding citizen. And I think that is kind of the heart of Democrats' dilemma on this issue and why responding to it has been so difficult for them. Andrea Kristen's daughter and Andrea Kristen's daughter were on the mix. Laura Bullard, TB4T, G-O-G.

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