September 2, 2025 • 21 mins
In this episode of One Thing Trump Did, we look what the Trump administration's deployment of the National Guard in Washington D.C. to fight crime has meant for the Nation’s Capital - and whether that could mean further deployments into other American cities. Jeremy is joined by Mitchell Miller, the Capitol Hill Correspondent for WTOP News in Washington D.C. #DC #NationalGuard #Deployment #Crime #Safety #MurielBowser #Pritzker #Chigaco #LA #Illinois
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to One Thing Trump did, available exclusively on the
Middle Podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson, and if you're a
regular listener, you know that every week on this show
we pick one thing coming out of the Trump White
House to focus on and break down in a nonpartisan
way with someone who knows what they are talking about.
And our one thing this week is the deployment of
the National Guard in Washington, d C. To deal with crime.
(00:38):
That deployment began on August eleventh and was done because
of an executive order by President Trump declaring a crime emergency.
Under the law, the president can maintain control over policing
in the Capitol for up to thirty days. And this wasn't,
of course, the first time this has happened. Earlier this year,
the National Guard was sent to Los Angeles after protests
(00:59):
erupted there. Now the President is threatening to send National
Guard troops to other cities, including Baltimore and Chicago. Here's
Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker with a strong public rebuke
to the threat of a deployment in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed
military intervention, and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned
into a war zone by a wanna be dictator. No
one from the White House or the Executive Branch has
reached out to me or to the mayor. No one
has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been
(01:35):
made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in
identifying any actions that might be helpful to US. Local
law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no
requests for federal intervention. None. Donald Trump wants to use
the military to occupy a US city, punish his dissidents,
(01:58):
and score political points. Earlier today in the Oval Office,
Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for
me personally to say, mister President, can you do us
the honor of protecting our city? Instead, I say, mister President,
do not come to Chicago.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Joining me now is Mitchell Miller, who's Capitol Hill correspondent
for Washington, DC's news channel WTP News. Mitchell, thank you
so much for joining us.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, and it's hard to tell exactly what things are
like there unless you're there. You're there. What is it
like in DC? Now? What do you see when it
comes to the National Guard.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, it's really interesting because the portrayal of DC and
I've lived here for over twenty five years, is that
we are under siege, that there are two thousand National
Guard members fanned out across the city. Federal agents are
making arrests all over the city. But unless you are
in some of those particular areas, you don't really notice
(03:01):
a lot of difference. It's very it's kind of at
a dichotomy. If you go down the National Mall, you're
going to see a lot of National Guard members there,
and many of them are just posted along the mall.
Some of them most recently have been collecting trash. They've
been putting out mulch. They do not make arrests, obviously,
they have a major presence. If you go by Union Station,
(03:24):
for example, there have been large armored vehicles there, there
have been personnel there. They are not by and large
in any of the neighborhoods where there is a lot
of crime, particularly east of the Anacostia River in what
are wards seven and eight, which is where the most
violence occurs now. There have been federal agents fanned out
(03:45):
in some of those areas, as well as areas around
DuPont's Circle, which is in the central part of the city.
They make a lot of traffic stops, they make a
lot of low level arrests, and then of course there
have been a lot of arrests related to immigration. Close
to about four hundred people have been arrested on various
charges for not being documented in the United States. So it's,
(04:08):
like I said, it's kind of a surreal situation. I
just looked out recently over the National Mall from my
perch here in the US Capital, and you would not
notice anything different right now as you're looking down the mall.
So it's a very strange situation to be honest.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Well, and I have to say, I've lived in DC
many times throughout my life, and I used to always
go take a walk around the National Mall at night
by myself, often with headphones on. It's not a high
crime area when it comes to Washington, d C.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
No, not at all. I mean, you look at where
the National Guard has been deployed, for example, down by
the Lincoln Memorial. You never hear about crime around the
Lincoln Memorial. So that's kind of the fascinating thing for
people that live here. They don't really, many of them
don't really fully understand why the National Guard is deployed here.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
So what does that tell you that it's like for
the cameras, or that they aren't allowed to do kind
of the crime reduction stuff that the president would like
them to do. So they're doing this stuff that they
can do, which is to protect the buildings on the
National Mall and maybe do immigration related stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's largely a photo op
along the mall. Of course, that's an area where as
you well know, tourists are making heavy traffic down there,
so they see this and kind of wonder what's going on.
But unless you go to some of these central streets
in the district at night where the federal agents and ice,
which has been talked about the fact that many of
(05:36):
them don't have masks, they make these traffic stops, people
are really kind of surprised when all of these people
are in those areas. But at the same time, the
National Guard, as you know, they can't make a rest
so they can make a presence here, but they are
really here kind of for show.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
How do the residents of Washington, d C. Feel about this?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
It's interesting, there's a mixed view. I think that many
of the people in for example, those high crime areas,
they welcome the fact that there is more of a
federal presence as well as more police presence. These people
have been calling for years to get more patrol officers
in those parts of the city other parts of the
city where there's not as much crime. And those people
(06:22):
that are critical of President Trump just think, as you suggested,
that a lot of it is just for show that
they don't really see the real need of what the
National Guard is doing. So if you look at the
polling within DC, most people are generally opposed to this. However,
if you look across the country, most people say crime
(06:43):
is a huge issue. I think there was an Associated
Press poll that set about eighty percent of the American
public think crime is a big issue. However, it is
interesting that over fifty five percent I believe, said they
did not think that federal troops should actually be involved
in the fight against crime.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah. I have to say, the last time I lived
in Washington, which was granted back in two thousand and eight,
I knew so many people that had been violently mugged
in Northwest d C. That every time I would walk
home from NPR, where I was working at the time
up to Adams Morgan, where I was living at the time,
I would take the same route so that I could
be in lit streets with people around, because I was
(07:24):
worried about that. That being said, when you look at
the statistics right now, crime is down year over year
by a lot across the country. But in Washington, d C.
As well, as you think about the twenty five plus
years you've been in DC, does it feel like crime
is particularly better, worse, or about the same as it's
been all along.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I would say overall, it's better to give you just
a quick thumbnail of my personal history. I came here
back in the mid to late eighties to go to
grad school, and I lived in a very bad part
of DC in northeast along the H Street corridor, which
was the scene of the nineteen sixty eight riots. It
had a lot of bad years. I actually chased down
(08:05):
a guy who robbed a convenience store along there because
I was so tired of all the crime that had
happened in my neighborhood. I had my neighbors the first
week that I lived here. I moved here from Michigan,
and my neighbors robbed me. So I'm very familiar with
the amount of crime in DC. I've had in the
home that I live in now, I had somebody break
(08:26):
into the house while I was in the house, and
I chased the guy and he eventually dropped my laptop
and some other things while I was running him down.
So I don't want to mitigate the fact that there
has been serious crime over the years, but it was
most heavy, I think in those crack war years in
the late eighties early nineties. Just as a comparison, we
(08:46):
were having close to four hundred and fifty to five
hundred murders a year. Right now we're standing at a
little over one hundred murders a year. So it's really
changed a lot. And just one other personal anecdote, one
of the biggest changes, and it's happening right now, is
the drop in carjackings. I unfortunately was the victim of
(09:08):
an attempted carjacking right outside my house in daylight, at
like four point thirty in the afternoon. A couple of
young guys. Fortunately for me, they weren't armed. One of
them pulled me out of my car. I don't know
what happened, but I guess the adrenaline kicked in because
I was just tired of hearing about all this crime.
So I pulled him out of the car. Then a
(09:29):
second guy got into my car. He started to do
something in the car. I pulled him out of the car,
and then I started scrapping with these guys on the street. Well,
then a third person pulled up in a truck, which
it turned out later was stolen. Surprise, and finally, just
as situational awareness, I thought to myself, you know, I
(09:49):
haven't yelled at anybody, so I just started yelling so
that I would get my neighbors to come out because
I live on the street with row houses, and that
the trick. People started running out of their house and
yelling at these guys, and they all jumped in the
truck and they took off. I later joked, by the
way that one of my neighbors had one of those
(10:12):
cameras from their doorbell, and you could see me getting
thrown to the ground, and I said, I really wish
you would have had the video of me throwing these
guys out of the car, But you know, take what
you can get.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, we now know that you are a badass, so
that's clear to everyone listen. Just back to the National Guard, though,
how did the troops feel that you've been able to
talk to or hear about their feelings about being put
in this position of doing what they're doing, but also
doing things, as you said, like mulch putting mulch down
(10:45):
and like beautification efforts in DC.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Well, a lot of them are actually given cards that
tell them what they can say or can't say, and
a lot of them don't want to talk. But those
that do, they've indicated frankly that a lot of them
are kind of bored.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
You.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Now, these are young people that have been deployed from
these six different states as well as the DC National Guard,
and you know, they want to be helpful and they're
certainly not going to undermine the overall mission that they've
been given, but when people ask them about what they're
actually doing, they feel like they're not really being fully utilized.
(11:20):
There's been a few incidents where they've helped out with
local authorities when things got a little out of hand,
but again, they can't do any rests, so a lot
of the times they're just walking along the mall staring
at their phones. They want to be doing something but
even some of the people that are higher up in
the National Guard that you know don't want to speak
(11:44):
publicly and identify themselves. They've indicated they would just like
to be more useful in any way they can.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Now the President wants to extend beyond the thirty days.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
What might happen, Well, Congress is coming back, so by
September tenth, they're going to have to decide whether or
not they're going to extend this thirty day crime emergency.
And this is required under the Home Rule Act enacted
in nineteen seventy three that Congress must extend this if
it's to happen. Now, as you know, President Trump is
(12:16):
indicated he may do an end around lawmakers, which they
of course wouldn't like, at least Democrats wouldn't. He has
indicated that he might declare a national emergency and say
that he can get get around it this way. We
also have pending legislation when lawmakers return that would extend this.
Some proposals would extend it indefinitely, others would extend it
(12:38):
one hundred and eighty days. There is widespread support among
Republicans to do this, so it's very possible that it
could be extended for quite some time. The only way
it could really be blocked is if in the Senate
the Democrats, as Senate Minority Leader Schumer has threatened to do,
pull off a filibuster and they block, and then we'll
(13:00):
see what the president will do.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
All right, We'll stay with us because in a moment
we're going to talk about some of the larger issues
this is bringing up, including President Trump's authority and the
old one DC statehood. One thing Trump did with WTP
News is Mitchell Miller will be right back. Welcome back
(13:36):
to one thing Trump did exclusively on the Middle podcast feed.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. We're talking about the deployment of the
National Guard to Washington, d C. And the threats from
the Trump administration to deploy troops to other major cities
as well. I'm joined by WTP News Capitol Hill correspondent
Mitchell Miller. Mitchell, DC is a special case among cities
because it is a federal district. What kind of authority
(13:56):
does the president have beyond what you have just been
talking about before the break, Well.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
The president certainly has the authority to activate the National Guard,
and that's exactly what he has done. What's different about
d C than states is the mayor of d C
cannot activate the National Guard. Of course, any governor of
a state can do so. So that puts d C
in a very unique situation, and it puts the mayor,
(14:22):
Muriel Bowser, in an odd situation in which she, generally,
while supporting the help that law enforcement is getting locally,
does not really appreciate the National Guard two thousand members
being sent here, and yet she cannot do anything. We
have a DC delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who's a longtime
(14:44):
lawmaker who for years has tried to get the mayor
to be able to make that call to activate the
National Guard, and then, most infamously, of course, the mayor
could not make that call on January sixth, when people
were mobbing the capital here and I was in the
capital that day and for several hours we were wondering
(15:06):
what was going to happen. And as you know, the
National Guard was not activated and that was ultimately the
President's call until much later in the day, and by
that time much of the capital had been ransacked. So
it's a very unique situation.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Has the mayor been speaking out a lot about this
or has she been pretty quiet just not to anger
the president.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
She recently held a news conference where she was kind
of treading political water. She knows that the President can
go after her in a heartbeat. The fact that he's
talked about providing two billion dollars to not only fight
crime but also to beautify DC, she has welcomed that,
even though the details are pretty scant at this point.
(15:51):
But at the same time, the things that she has
spoken out against the most forcefully has been in connection
with ice agents, and these agents with face masks and
people popping out of nowhere and pulling delivery drivers off
of their mop head for example, sometimes not identifying themselves.
The charges are not really clear to the people, and
(16:13):
of course there's concern from the mayor as well as
the police chief about how that could affect the relationship
between local law enforcement and people that they rely on
to help get community involvement and fighting crime.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Now, for our listeners who haven't lived in Washington, d C.
Or don't know that much about it, there are what
seven hundred thousand just about residents of DC who have
no representation in Congress that can vote. You mentioned Eleanor
Holmes Norton. She is a non voting representative in Congress.
They have no members of the Senate. There's been long
(16:49):
a call for statehood in DC or some solution where
maybe they become part of Virginia or Maryland or both
so that they have representation as other citizens of the
United States do. Is this whole situation renewing calls for
DC to become a state.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
It is among Democrats, of course, but really they are
going out and not really being answered because the Republicans,
let's face it, they control the House and the Senate,
the White House, they have supporters at the US Supreme Court.
So it's a really long slog for Democrats to try
to get to become a fifty first state. And even
(17:25):
though there's been this call, as you know, for many,
many years, to provide DC residents of voting Congress, I
just don't see it happening anytime soon. Even when President
Obama had control of Congress. If any time it was
going to happen, that was going to be it. But
they couldn't push it across the finish line. So I
think this is going to be a rallying call for
(17:47):
a lot of Democrats in d C. But I just
don't think it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Do we have any sort of data yet on what
kind of an impact the deployment has had on crime
and DC so far?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yes, it's definitely going down. However, it had been trending
downward since the start of the year. There was that
infamous release from the Justice Department that had gone down
close to twenty five or thirty percent for the compared
to the prior year.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
So it was.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Already going down. And now, of course, when you have
all these National Guard troops out, you have federal agents
out making arrest There's been more than thirteen hundred arrests,
well over one hundred guns seized. There's no question that
it has brought crime down. The question is was it
necessary to take this step. I actually looked back at
(18:37):
some of the figures that you can do on a
tool that DC provides, and it's interesting. In twenty twenty,
when President Trump was in his first term, during this
period from January to August eleventh, which is when he
declared this crime emergency, in that year, there were one
hundred and fifteen homicides. This year when the emergency was declared,
(18:59):
there were close to one hundred or there was about
ninety nine, so you could argue that at that time
it was deadlier in DC. But yet the President's rhetoric,
of course, has been that this has just been the
worst it's ever been and that they're definitely cleaning things
up now. There are some pieces of truth to that,
as the White House points out every day with the
(19:20):
arrests being made, that the crime is going down. The
question is how long will this last? And as you
were pointing out, with these other cities, is this really
a tenable way to take on crime when you're going
from city to city, whether it's Chicago or Baltimore, which
the President is called a hellhole?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Right? So what would be your advice or thoughts for
people in these other cities like Chicago and Baltimore where
this may be coming to very soon.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Well, I think that they need to lean on their
local leaders and make sure that they're doing everything they
can to fight crime and to make sure that those
numbers are going down and to illustrate the fact if
it is in fact going down, to make that clear. Obviously,
we have people like Governor Pritzker and others Wes Moore
and Maryland who are pushing back very very hard. Obviously.
(20:15):
Also though for Democrats, this is a tough issue because Republicans,
you know, who doesn't want to bring down crime.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Now.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
What's interesting also is the House Speaker Mike Johnson was
recently asked in an interview on CNN whether or not
he would want the National Guard sent to Shreveport, Louisiana,
which is actually has a higher per capita violent crime rate,
or it did it over the past year than d C.
He was asked, would he call in the National Guard there?
(20:42):
He said, well, that's not my call, any kind of
sidestep the question, But there are certainly cities across the
country that have major crime problems. The question is can
you always galvanize a federal force to come in and
do something about it.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah. We just recently did an entire show call in
version of our show about crime and learned that the
two cities with the highest crime rates in the country
are murder rates maybe are Memphis and Saint Louis both
in what we would call red states right now. Mitchell Miller,
Capitol Hill, correspondent for WTP News in Washington, d C.
(21:18):
Thank you so much. Great to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Great to talk to you too, and.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Thanks you for listening to One Thing Trump did. It
was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode will
be in your podcast feed later this week. We're going
to be talking about the challenges of Generation Z and
if you like this podcast, please rate it wherever you
get your podcasts and write a review. Our theme music
was composed by Noah Haid. I'm Jeremy Hobson and I'll
talk to you soon.
Welcome to One Thing Trump did, available exclusively on the
Middle Podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson, and if you're a
regular listener, you know that every week on this show
we pick one thing coming out of the Trump White
House to focus on and break down in a nonpartisan
way with someone who knows what they are talking about.
And our one thing this week is the deployment of
the National Guard in Washington, d C. To deal with crime.
(00:38):
That deployment began on August eleventh and was done because
of an executive order by President Trump declaring a crime emergency.
Under the law, the president can maintain control over policing
in the Capitol for up to thirty days. And this wasn't,
of course, the first time this has happened. Earlier this year,
the National Guard was sent to Los Angeles after protests
(00:59):
erupted there. Now the President is threatening to send National
Guard troops to other cities, including Baltimore and Chicago. Here's
Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker with a strong public rebuke
to the threat of a deployment in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed
military intervention, and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned
into a war zone by a wanna be dictator. No
one from the White House or the Executive Branch has
reached out to me or to the mayor. No one
has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been
(01:35):
made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in
identifying any actions that might be helpful to US. Local
law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no
requests for federal intervention. None. Donald Trump wants to use
the military to occupy a US city, punish his dissidents,
(01:58):
and score political points. Earlier today in the Oval Office,
Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for
me personally to say, mister President, can you do us
the honor of protecting our city? Instead, I say, mister President,
do not come to Chicago.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Joining me now is Mitchell Miller, who's Capitol Hill correspondent
for Washington, DC's news channel WTP News. Mitchell, thank you
so much for joining us.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, and it's hard to tell exactly what things are
like there unless you're there. You're there. What is it
like in DC? Now? What do you see when it
comes to the National Guard.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Well, it's really interesting because the portrayal of DC and
I've lived here for over twenty five years, is that
we are under siege, that there are two thousand National
Guard members fanned out across the city. Federal agents are
making arrests all over the city. But unless you are
in some of those particular areas, you don't really notice
(03:01):
a lot of difference. It's very it's kind of at
a dichotomy. If you go down the National Mall, you're
going to see a lot of National Guard members there,
and many of them are just posted along the mall.
Some of them most recently have been collecting trash. They've
been putting out mulch. They do not make arrests, obviously,
they have a major presence. If you go by Union Station,
(03:24):
for example, there have been large armored vehicles there, there
have been personnel there. They are not by and large
in any of the neighborhoods where there is a lot
of crime, particularly east of the Anacostia River in what
are wards seven and eight, which is where the most
violence occurs now. There have been federal agents fanned out
(03:45):
in some of those areas, as well as areas around
DuPont's Circle, which is in the central part of the city.
They make a lot of traffic stops, they make a
lot of low level arrests, and then of course there
have been a lot of arrests related to immigration. Close
to about four hundred people have been arrested on various
charges for not being documented in the United States. So it's,
(04:08):
like I said, it's kind of a surreal situation. I
just looked out recently over the National Mall from my
perch here in the US Capital, and you would not
notice anything different right now as you're looking down the mall.
So it's a very strange situation to be honest.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Well, and I have to say, I've lived in DC
many times throughout my life, and I used to always
go take a walk around the National Mall at night
by myself, often with headphones on. It's not a high
crime area when it comes to Washington, d C.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
No, not at all. I mean, you look at where
the National Guard has been deployed, for example, down by
the Lincoln Memorial. You never hear about crime around the
Lincoln Memorial. So that's kind of the fascinating thing for
people that live here. They don't really, many of them
don't really fully understand why the National Guard is deployed here.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
So what does that tell you that it's like for
the cameras, or that they aren't allowed to do kind
of the crime reduction stuff that the president would like
them to do. So they're doing this stuff that they
can do, which is to protect the buildings on the
National Mall and maybe do immigration related stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's largely a photo op
along the mall. Of course, that's an area where as
you well know, tourists are making heavy traffic down there,
so they see this and kind of wonder what's going on.
But unless you go to some of these central streets
in the district at night where the federal agents and ice,
which has been talked about the fact that many of
(05:36):
them don't have masks, they make these traffic stops, people
are really kind of surprised when all of these people
are in those areas. But at the same time, the
National Guard, as you know, they can't make a rest
so they can make a presence here, but they are
really here kind of for show.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
How do the residents of Washington, d C. Feel about this?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
It's interesting, there's a mixed view. I think that many
of the people in for example, those high crime areas,
they welcome the fact that there is more of a
federal presence as well as more police presence. These people
have been calling for years to get more patrol officers
in those parts of the city other parts of the
city where there's not as much crime. And those people
(06:22):
that are critical of President Trump just think, as you suggested,
that a lot of it is just for show that
they don't really see the real need of what the
National Guard is doing. So if you look at the
polling within DC, most people are generally opposed to this. However,
if you look across the country, most people say crime
(06:43):
is a huge issue. I think there was an Associated
Press poll that set about eighty percent of the American
public think crime is a big issue. However, it is
interesting that over fifty five percent I believe, said they
did not think that federal troops should actually be involved
in the fight against crime.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah. I have to say, the last time I lived
in Washington, which was granted back in two thousand and eight,
I knew so many people that had been violently mugged
in Northwest d C. That every time I would walk
home from NPR, where I was working at the time
up to Adams Morgan, where I was living at the time,
I would take the same route so that I could
be in lit streets with people around, because I was
(07:24):
worried about that. That being said, when you look at
the statistics right now, crime is down year over year
by a lot across the country. But in Washington, d C.
As well, as you think about the twenty five plus
years you've been in DC, does it feel like crime
is particularly better, worse, or about the same as it's
been all along.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I would say overall, it's better to give you just
a quick thumbnail of my personal history. I came here
back in the mid to late eighties to go to
grad school, and I lived in a very bad part
of DC in northeast along the H Street corridor, which
was the scene of the nineteen sixty eight riots. It
had a lot of bad years. I actually chased down
(08:05):
a guy who robbed a convenience store along there because
I was so tired of all the crime that had
happened in my neighborhood. I had my neighbors the first
week that I lived here. I moved here from Michigan,
and my neighbors robbed me. So I'm very familiar with
the amount of crime in DC. I've had in the
home that I live in now, I had somebody break
(08:26):
into the house while I was in the house, and
I chased the guy and he eventually dropped my laptop
and some other things while I was running him down.
So I don't want to mitigate the fact that there
has been serious crime over the years, but it was
most heavy, I think in those crack war years in
the late eighties early nineties. Just as a comparison, we
(08:46):
were having close to four hundred and fifty to five
hundred murders a year. Right now we're standing at a
little over one hundred murders a year. So it's really
changed a lot. And just one other personal anecdote, one
of the biggest changes, and it's happening right now, is
the drop in carjackings. I unfortunately was the victim of
(09:08):
an attempted carjacking right outside my house in daylight, at
like four point thirty in the afternoon. A couple of
young guys. Fortunately for me, they weren't armed. One of
them pulled me out of my car. I don't know
what happened, but I guess the adrenaline kicked in because
I was just tired of hearing about all this crime.
So I pulled him out of the car. Then a
(09:29):
second guy got into my car. He started to do
something in the car. I pulled him out of the car,
and then I started scrapping with these guys on the street. Well,
then a third person pulled up in a truck, which
it turned out later was stolen. Surprise, and finally, just
as situational awareness, I thought to myself, you know, I
(09:49):
haven't yelled at anybody, so I just started yelling so
that I would get my neighbors to come out because
I live on the street with row houses, and that
the trick. People started running out of their house and
yelling at these guys, and they all jumped in the
truck and they took off. I later joked, by the
way that one of my neighbors had one of those
(10:12):
cameras from their doorbell, and you could see me getting
thrown to the ground, and I said, I really wish
you would have had the video of me throwing these
guys out of the car, But you know, take what
you can get.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, we now know that you are a badass, so
that's clear to everyone listen. Just back to the National Guard, though,
how did the troops feel that you've been able to
talk to or hear about their feelings about being put
in this position of doing what they're doing, but also
doing things, as you said, like mulch putting mulch down
(10:45):
and like beautification efforts in DC.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Well, a lot of them are actually given cards that
tell them what they can say or can't say, and
a lot of them don't want to talk. But those
that do, they've indicated frankly that a lot of them
are kind of bored.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
You.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Now, these are young people that have been deployed from
these six different states as well as the DC National Guard,
and you know, they want to be helpful and they're
certainly not going to undermine the overall mission that they've
been given, but when people ask them about what they're
actually doing, they feel like they're not really being fully utilized.
(11:20):
There's been a few incidents where they've helped out with
local authorities when things got a little out of hand,
but again, they can't do any rests, so a lot
of the times they're just walking along the mall staring
at their phones. They want to be doing something but
even some of the people that are higher up in
the National Guard that you know don't want to speak
(11:44):
publicly and identify themselves. They've indicated they would just like
to be more useful in any way they can.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Now the President wants to extend beyond the thirty days.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
What might happen, Well, Congress is coming back, so by
September tenth, they're going to have to decide whether or
not they're going to extend this thirty day crime emergency.
And this is required under the Home Rule Act enacted
in nineteen seventy three that Congress must extend this if
it's to happen. Now, as you know, President Trump is
(12:16):
indicated he may do an end around lawmakers, which they
of course wouldn't like, at least Democrats wouldn't. He has
indicated that he might declare a national emergency and say
that he can get get around it this way. We
also have pending legislation when lawmakers return that would extend this.
Some proposals would extend it indefinitely, others would extend it
(12:38):
one hundred and eighty days. There is widespread support among
Republicans to do this, so it's very possible that it
could be extended for quite some time. The only way
it could really be blocked is if in the Senate
the Democrats, as Senate Minority Leader Schumer has threatened to do,
pull off a filibuster and they block, and then we'll
(13:00):
see what the president will do.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
All right, We'll stay with us because in a moment
we're going to talk about some of the larger issues
this is bringing up, including President Trump's authority and the
old one DC statehood. One thing Trump did with WTP
News is Mitchell Miller will be right back. Welcome back
(13:36):
to one thing Trump did exclusively on the Middle podcast feed.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. We're talking about the deployment of the
National Guard to Washington, d C. And the threats from
the Trump administration to deploy troops to other major cities
as well. I'm joined by WTP News Capitol Hill correspondent
Mitchell Miller. Mitchell, DC is a special case among cities
because it is a federal district. What kind of authority
(13:56):
does the president have beyond what you have just been
talking about before the break, Well.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
The president certainly has the authority to activate the National Guard,
and that's exactly what he has done. What's different about
d C than states is the mayor of d C
cannot activate the National Guard. Of course, any governor of
a state can do so. So that puts d C
in a very unique situation, and it puts the mayor,
(14:22):
Muriel Bowser, in an odd situation in which she, generally,
while supporting the help that law enforcement is getting locally,
does not really appreciate the National Guard two thousand members
being sent here, and yet she cannot do anything. We
have a DC delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who's a longtime
(14:44):
lawmaker who for years has tried to get the mayor
to be able to make that call to activate the
National Guard, and then, most infamously, of course, the mayor
could not make that call on January sixth, when people
were mobbing the capital here and I was in the
capital that day and for several hours we were wondering
(15:06):
what was going to happen. And as you know, the
National Guard was not activated and that was ultimately the
President's call until much later in the day, and by
that time much of the capital had been ransacked. So
it's a very unique situation.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Has the mayor been speaking out a lot about this
or has she been pretty quiet just not to anger
the president.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
She recently held a news conference where she was kind
of treading political water. She knows that the President can
go after her in a heartbeat. The fact that he's
talked about providing two billion dollars to not only fight
crime but also to beautify DC, she has welcomed that,
even though the details are pretty scant at this point.
(15:51):
But at the same time, the things that she has
spoken out against the most forcefully has been in connection
with ice agents, and these agents with face masks and
people popping out of nowhere and pulling delivery drivers off
of their mop head for example, sometimes not identifying themselves.
The charges are not really clear to the people, and
(16:13):
of course there's concern from the mayor as well as
the police chief about how that could affect the relationship
between local law enforcement and people that they rely on
to help get community involvement and fighting crime.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Now, for our listeners who haven't lived in Washington, d C.
Or don't know that much about it, there are what
seven hundred thousand just about residents of DC who have
no representation in Congress that can vote. You mentioned Eleanor
Holmes Norton. She is a non voting representative in Congress.
They have no members of the Senate. There's been long
(16:49):
a call for statehood in DC or some solution where
maybe they become part of Virginia or Maryland or both
so that they have representation as other citizens of the
United States do. Is this whole situation renewing calls for
DC to become a state.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
It is among Democrats, of course, but really they are
going out and not really being answered because the Republicans,
let's face it, they control the House and the Senate,
the White House, they have supporters at the US Supreme Court.
So it's a really long slog for Democrats to try
to get to become a fifty first state. And even
(17:25):
though there's been this call, as you know, for many,
many years, to provide DC residents of voting Congress, I
just don't see it happening anytime soon. Even when President
Obama had control of Congress. If any time it was
going to happen, that was going to be it. But
they couldn't push it across the finish line. So I
think this is going to be a rallying call for
(17:47):
a lot of Democrats in d C. But I just
don't think it's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Do we have any sort of data yet on what
kind of an impact the deployment has had on crime
and DC so far?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yes, it's definitely going down. However, it had been trending
downward since the start of the year. There was that
infamous release from the Justice Department that had gone down
close to twenty five or thirty percent for the compared
to the prior year.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
So it was.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Already going down. And now, of course, when you have
all these National Guard troops out, you have federal agents
out making arrest There's been more than thirteen hundred arrests,
well over one hundred guns seized. There's no question that
it has brought crime down. The question is was it
necessary to take this step. I actually looked back at
(18:37):
some of the figures that you can do on a
tool that DC provides, and it's interesting. In twenty twenty,
when President Trump was in his first term, during this
period from January to August eleventh, which is when he
declared this crime emergency, in that year, there were one
hundred and fifteen homicides. This year when the emergency was declared,
(18:59):
there were close to one hundred or there was about
ninety nine, so you could argue that at that time
it was deadlier in DC. But yet the President's rhetoric,
of course, has been that this has just been the
worst it's ever been and that they're definitely cleaning things
up now. There are some pieces of truth to that,
as the White House points out every day with the
(19:20):
arrests being made, that the crime is going down. The
question is how long will this last? And as you
were pointing out, with these other cities, is this really
a tenable way to take on crime when you're going
from city to city, whether it's Chicago or Baltimore, which
the President is called a hellhole?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Right? So what would be your advice or thoughts for
people in these other cities like Chicago and Baltimore where
this may be coming to very soon.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Well, I think that they need to lean on their
local leaders and make sure that they're doing everything they
can to fight crime and to make sure that those
numbers are going down and to illustrate the fact if
it is in fact going down, to make that clear. Obviously,
we have people like Governor Pritzker and others Wes Moore
and Maryland who are pushing back very very hard. Obviously.
(20:15):
Also though for Democrats, this is a tough issue because Republicans,
you know, who doesn't want to bring down crime.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Now.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
What's interesting also is the House Speaker Mike Johnson was
recently asked in an interview on CNN whether or not
he would want the National Guard sent to Shreveport, Louisiana,
which is actually has a higher per capita violent crime rate,
or it did it over the past year than d C.
He was asked, would he call in the National Guard there?
(20:42):
He said, well, that's not my call, any kind of
sidestep the question, But there are certainly cities across the
country that have major crime problems. The question is can
you always galvanize a federal force to come in and
do something about it.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah. We just recently did an entire show call in
version of our show about crime and learned that the
two cities with the highest crime rates in the country
are murder rates maybe are Memphis and Saint Louis both
in what we would call red states right now. Mitchell Miller,
Capitol Hill, correspondent for WTP News in Washington, d C.
(21:18):
Thank you so much. Great to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Great to talk to you too, and.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Thanks you for listening to One Thing Trump did. It
was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode will
be in your podcast feed later this week. We're going
to be talking about the challenges of Generation Z and
if you like this podcast, please rate it wherever you
get your podcasts and write a review. Our theme music
was composed by Noah Haid. I'm Jeremy Hobson and I'll
talk to you soon.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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