WASHINGTON (AP) — The President donald trump As he spoke to a Rose Garden audience about his efforts to quell violence in the nation’s capital, his words were drowned out by the wail of car sirens as if on cue.
“Hear the beauty of that sound,” Trump said with a laugh, adding: “Those are not politically correct sirens.”
Just like at a low-key event, posthumous award of Presidential Medal of Freedom to conservative activist charlie kirkthis moment encapsulates how President Trump’s push for law and order at all costs became a highlight of his second term.
He has dispatched troops to Democratic-majority cities and directed federal agents, often with their faces hidden behind masks, to round up people in the country illegally. He suggested that American cities could become militarized. training ground ” and was teased. invoke the Insurrection Act Therefore, political opponents cannot use the courts to thwart his plans.
Now settled into his second term, Mr. Trump has adopted the tough-on-crime approach he campaigned on, something he failed to achieve in the face of naysayers who often checked his most extreme instincts during his first four years in office. In the process, the Trump administration has at times trampled on law enforcement norms, with critics claiming that the president has weaponized the Justice Department and used it to attack it. pursue political opponents.
On Wednesday he promoted the results of repression In the Oval Office, it was dubbed “Operation Summer Heat.” President Trump, flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, said the FBI had arrested more than 8,000 people.
President Trump said he talked about crime during last year’s campaign, but never expected it to become such a big focus in his second term.
“Now it’s like a passion for me,” he said, adding that his actions “far exceed” what he vowed to do and that “we’re only at the starting point.”
In some ways, it’s the perfect realization of an idea Trump has had since his early days as a real estate mogul during New York’s rough days in the 1970s and 1980s, when crime was rampant and city dwellers wanted a crackdown.
Mr. Trump’s efforts have drawn resistance from local leaders. His plan to send soldiers was chicago and portlandOregon, has so far been blocked by legal challenges. He said he was confident he would prevail on appeal, but did not rule out using the Insurrection Act as a workaround if necessary.
But elsewhere, his moves dramatically changed daily life. Earlier this year he took control of the California National Guard The National Guard was deployed in response to protests over immigrant attacks in Los Angeles. Washington DC and memphisTennessee.
President Trump is considering similar actions in Baltimore, New Orleans and New York. threatened bostonsuggests that next year’s World Cup matches near Foxboro could be rescheduled if law enforcement doesn’t step up action.
“Please bring back our police.”
President Trump’s eagerness to be as tough as possible on criminal suspects, whether guilty or innocent, quickly gained public attention more than 30 years ago. He inflamed racial tensions by calling for the death penalty. central park fivea group of black and Hispanic teenagers wrongly convicted of rape in 1989.
President Trump took out a full-page newspaper ad with the headline, “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back the police!” Those convictions were vacated in 2002 after evidence was found linking the serial rapist to the crimes. Today, the case is remembered by activists as evidence of a criminal justice system biased against defendants of color.
“That very same spirit is at work now,” said Pastor J. Lawrence Turner of Mississippi Boulevard Church of Christ in Memphis. Turner said Trump has “demonized” and “targeted” Memphis, a city that is 62 percent African-American and has a black mayor and county chief.
“President Trump seems intent on viewing us the same way he has viewed other people of color throughout his first term and perhaps throughout his public life,” Turner said. “We are unleashing this president on this second term.”
First semester affair
President Trump took up some of the same political positions during his first term during protests over racism and police brutality sparked by the 2020 presidential election. murder of george floydwhen he sent troops into the streets of Washington and into Portland. However, his advisers at the time firmly opposed many of his calls for a broader deployment of the military to quell the unrest.
Mark Esper, Trump’s former secretary of defense, later told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that Trump asked during the protests whether the National Guard could be tougher on demonstrators. “‘Can’t you just shoot him? Shoot him in the leg or something,'” Esper said he recalled Trump saying.
However, President Trump’s signature bipartisan accomplishments His first term was a 2018 criminal justice reform measure aimed at reducing the federal prison population and addressing sentencing disparities, after lobbying from advocates such as Kim Kardashian.
But Trump came under attack from the right over his policies during the 2024 Republican primary and said little about his criminal justice reform bill during the campaign. Instead, they lashed out at criminals, drawing cheers with calls for the death penalty for drug traffickers and those who murdered police officers. cashless bail bond and other measures aimed at reversing systemic biases in the justice system.
“We’re going to save every city.”
President Trump now sees tough-on-crime as a winning political agenda, and the more he pushes for it, the stronger he will become.
“We’re going to save all our cities and make them essentially crime-free,” he said Wednesday.
The change also reflects a shift away from the burden placed on Trump by his chiefs of staff and generals, who have long seen it as their responsibility to rein in his most extreme impulses. replaced by supporters.
“This time he has people around him who not only support what he’s doing, but encourage him,” said Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. “It’s absolutely horrifying that something like this is happening.”
Politically, President Trump’s tough-on-crime stance will benefit his party heading into next year’s midterm elections. recent voters Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center We found that the government’s tough approach to crime manifested itself in the following ways: One of President Trump’s biggest issuesamid discontent over the economy and the response to immigration.
Statistics show that a majority of Americans (81%) think crime in big cities is a “major problem.” Violent crime is decreasing nationwide In response to the pandemic-era surge.
“Making all Americans safer”
The White House rejects suggestions that President Trump’s crime crackdowns have anything to do with race. The National Guard is used in different cities for a variety of reasons, he said.
Washington is pushing to fight crime, and Republican state leaders in Tennessee have urged Memphis to replicate it, the paper claims. As in Los Angeles before them, the goal in Portland and Chicago is to protect federal authorities working on priority issues such as immigration enforcement.
White House press secretary Abigail Jackson said Trump’s actions were a fulfillment of a campaign promise, saying, “The president’s bold actions in cities across the country are making all Americans safer.”
Still, the deployment of troops to cities gives President Trump an opportunity to paint his Democratic opponents as soft on crime while exaggerating how serious the problem really is, often in apocalyptic terms. And he exaggerates the consequences of his oppression.
He suggested for weeks that Portland was “on fire,” and declared Washington “a raging hellhole when I got here.” President Trump is now suggesting that crime in Washington is down to zero. That’s not true either.
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the administration’s efforts are an extension of President Trump’s brand, which he described as “openly using race to foster division, strengthen his base, and use it to usurp power that the president does not have or should not be considered to have.”
In fact, President Trump now routinely speaks of criminals as irredeemable people.
“They’re sick,” he said recently. “We’re going to eliminate them.”
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Colvin reported from New York.
