Convicted Felon Trump Lies About Crime Rate In D.C., Deploys Troops

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, a convicted criminal who pardoned 400 violent felons who assaulted police officers in his name, on Monday announced he was deploying National Guard troops and seizing control of the capital’s police force to deal with crime there, which he falsely claimed was “totally out of control.”

“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., 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.”

Trump previewed his action Sunday and early Monday in a series of social media posts.

“The Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

In reality, the crime rate in the District of Columbia has been falling for two years and is now as low as it has been in decades.

Trump, though, cited the 2023 crime rate as he held up charts comparing Washington’s crime rates to that of major cities around the world. He also suggested police should use violence as they work if people they arrest try to resist.

“They fight back until you knock the hell out of them, because it’s the only language they understand,” he said.

Authoritarian experts warn that Trump, who previously deployed both the California National Guard as well as active-duty Marines in Los Angeles, is actually trying to accustom Americans to the idea of having federal troops on the ground in cities — a foreign concept in this country for most of its history.

Trump on Monday said that this plan could serve as a model for what he does in other cities around the country.

“Other cities are hopefully watching this ... Maybe they’ll self clean-up,” he said. “I’m going to look at New York in a little while ... If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster.”

Trump also seems fixated on “beautification” of the Washington, which appears centered on getting homeless people off of the streets.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” Trump wrote.

U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a chart as he speaks during a news conference to discuss crime in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 11, 2025. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS via Getty Images

As he began his campaign to regain the office he had left in disgrace after his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt, Trump faced four separate felony indictments — one federal and one by Georgia prosecutors based on actions leading up to that day; another federal prosecution for his refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him to his Mar-a-Lago country club in South Florida; and a fourth based on his $130,000 hush money payment to adult actor Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 election.

He was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush money case, but the federal prosecutions were dismissed after he won the November election based on the Department of Justice’s longstanding practice not to prosecute a sitting president. The Georgia case was also delayed indefinitely, and the presiding judge in the New York case did not even fine Trump based on his imminent return to the presidency.

On the day he took office in 2025, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 of his followers who had been charged, and in many cases convicted, of crimes for their actions on Jan. 6, after Trump told them to march on the Capitol to coerce lawmakers and his own vice president into awarding him a second term even though he had lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Some 400 of those had assaulted Capitol and D.C. police officers with their fists, sticks, a baseball bat and other assorted weapons.

More than 140 officers were injured that day, some gravely. One died hours later and four others died by suicide in the coming weeks and months.

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Notwithstanding this, however, Trump continues to lie that his supporters did nothing wrong that day.