In Hubris, We (Don’t) Trust
Terry H. Schwadron
Aug. 12, 2025
We already understood that Donald Trump’s ego has no boundaries.
What we may not have understood is that being president of the United States is not powerful or intense enough an experience to leave him with time left over to run city functions in Washington, D.C., or even New York City.
Of course, he doesn’t deal with the real work of those jobs any more than he does of the presidency.
Trump seems to want the recognition that he’s in charge rather than being in charge. The emergent Trump style is to radiate irrational goals without evidence of the work to make it so. It’s the pattern we see in economics, immigration, environment, education and more.
And so, enter crime in Washington, and Trump’s declaration that he is taking over the city policing functions altogether, a surprise to the sitting police chief, and adding 800 National Guardsmen to boot. The D.C. Home Rule Act allows the president to respond for 30 days to “emergencies,” to which Trump is now adding his personal view of rampant crime and the blight of homelessness. There is no indication that Trump will obey a month’s limit.
Trump, who refused to recognize the crimes even against police in the Jan. 6 rioting in his behalf, apparently envisions that he can respond to the perception of crime. If Trump were to start with the facts, he would recognize that violent crime, property crime, crime in every category is down over a year ago.
But a single carjacking attempt and beating of Edward Coristine, 19, a former DOGE staffer known as “Big Balls,” by two 15-year-olds, male and female, neither from D.C., who were arrested and charged, now represents a crime wave that has Trump deploying agents from multiple federal agencies to offer blanketing nighttime patrols — for a week. In fact there were other assaults the same night, but Washington police responded, noting that there is a existing curfew in place for teens in the city.
Rather than fulfilling their usual tasks, more than 100 Park Service police, Homeland Security, ICE, ATF and FBI agents were on nighttime patrols this weekend outside D.C. nightclubs. Reportedly they were in marked cars, and making their presence known to keep assaults from happening. More than 120 FBI agents, investigators rather than patrol personnel, are being reassigned temporarily from cases to night patrol duty, according to news reports, and, more importantly, Trump is considering calling out about a thousand National Guardsmen with no apparent plan in place.
Of course, this is the same FBI that is firing agents with no reason for assignments in the past that have included investigating Trump. And the courts are still ruling on Trump’s deployment of National Guardsmen in Los Angeles — where there was a least a large series of protests that may have provided some fig leaf of emergency response. It is unclear what duties or authority these Guardsmen would have on the streets, since they are not legally allowed to make arrests.
It’s another instance of Trump turning to increased law enforcement force on the streets, particularly in tandem with a promise to round up the homeless and ship them off — somewhere out of sight of his limousine caravans and political television coverage.
Washington Home Rule
Trump wants at least to consider overturning Washington’s home-rule laws and run the entire city himself. It comes as Washington residents want the government to consider making the District of Columbia its own state, never mind let the elected mayor and city council run a city.
The lack of communications and coordination between the White House and city officials over the policing issues shows the ineffective arrogance of Trump’s declaration.
Trump has often expressed frustration about crime and homelessness in the nation’s capital, which he sees, like the Oval Office itself, rather more like a museum piece that should highlight overbearing U.S. power and dominance, not a place to live.
In March, Trump offered an executive order, Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, “to ensure effective federal participation” in the enforcement of immigration laws and redirecting resources to apprehend and deport migrants in Washington” and monitor anything looking like a “sanctuary city.”
Until 1973, when the home-rule law was adopted, the president could appoint local officials in Washington. Congress retains the authority to amend or block D.C. laws, and did so in 2023 when it nullified a crime bill that would have eliminated most mandatory minimum sentences, and it holds budget control over the city and its law enforcement efforts.
Still, it remains difficult to see Trump caring about snow removal or emergency response to drug overdoses or city rents or services altogether. To him, a successful capital city is an inert object that reflects no crime or distasteful homelessness. For Trump, running Washington means using another political stage for, say, insisting on the returned adoption of “Redskins” for the Washington football team — something that fits his “anti-woke” campaigns but does absolutely nothing for people who live in and around the city.
His oft-expressed interest in New York City, where he has no municipal authority, is the same. He wants an immigrant-free, crime-free, homeless-free environment ripe for developers to make money — seemingly his singular motive for getting up in the morning. His promised intervention in the current city mayor’s race revolves around battering the socialist Democratic label and beliefs of Zohan Mamdani and immigration roundups, not a better approach to rat control, city traffic or affordable housing.
In Trump’s world vision, running Washington just requires a couple of social media posts and the occasional executive order. It’s hubris and the wrong tool as well as the wrong job.
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