- President Donald Trump is firing back at critics of his military crackdown in Washington, D.C.
- The president claimed that he’s been wrongfully vilified for taking over the D.C. police and sending in the National Guard to patrol the streets
- Trump said some have called him a “dictator” for his actions, but also alleged that “a lot of people are saying” they’d like to have a dictator in charge
Donald Trump is firing back at critics of his federal crime crackdown in Washington, D.C.
On Monday, Aug. 25, Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office as he signed a slate of new executive orders, including one directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to train a new National Guard unit specifically tasked with “ensuring public safety and order in the Nation’s capital.”
“When I see what’s happening to our cities and then you send in troops, instead of being praised, they’re saying you’re trying to take over the Republic,” Trump, 79, told reporters of his critics. “These people are sick.”
“They say: ‘We don’t need him. Freedom, freedom, he’s a dictator, he’s a dictator,’ ” Trump continued. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator.’ I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”
Trump doubled down on his comments during a Cabinet meeting the following day.
“The line is that I’m a dictator, but I stop crime,” he said on Tuesday. “So a lot of people say, ‘You know, if that’s the case, I’d rather have a dictator.’ “
“But I’m not a dictator,” he continued, “I just know how to stop crime.”
On Monday, Aug. 11, the president announced that he was seizing control of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and deploying the National Guard into the city in order to fight crime and target the city’s homeless population. In addition to those forces, federal agents with the FBI, Border Patrol and ICE have joined street patrols.
Trump put Attorney General Pam Bondi in charge of the city police and warned he was ready to deploy other military forces “if needed” to address the “public safety emergency.”
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Since the start of Trump’s crime crackdown, arrest numbers have risen throughout D.C. So, too, have demonstrations from civilians who are protesting the presence of armed guards and military Humvees on their streets, curfews in certain areas and pop-up ICE checkpoints.
In Dupont Circle last week, a group of protesters was circled by a National Guard Humvee as they chanted, “Danger! Danger! There’s a fascist in the White House!”
On Aug. 13, Trump indicated that he planned to extend the initial 30-day takeover of D.C. police, as well as expand the crackdown to other U.S. cities.
“We’re going to need a crime bill… and it’s going to pertain initially to D.C.,” he said in the midst of announcing the 2025 Kennedy Center nominees. “We’re going to use [D.C.] as a very positive example and we’re going to be asking for extensions on that long-term.”
“That’s going to serve as a beacon for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other places all over the country,” Trump continued. “Our whole country is going to be so different and so great. It’s going to be clean and safe and beautiful, and people are going to love our flag more than they’ve ever loved it. And we’re going to do a great job.”
Trump declared the public safety emergency even as D.C. data showed a sharp drop in violent crime over the past year and a half. Justifying his aggressive actions, Trump claimed without evidence that D.C.’s crime data was falsified to downplay the severity of the issue.
