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The Opinions

It’s been a summer full of Trump’s overreach. Our round table convenes to discuss.

By Jamelle BouieMichelle Cottle and David French

Produced by Vishakha Darbha

President Trump deployed the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and is threatening to do so in other American cities. On this episode of “The Opinions,” the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle is joined by the columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French to debate what Trump is really talking about when he talks about crime and the risks of using the military as a police force.

Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Michelle Cottle: We’re going to talk about President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in my backyard and his taking control of the Washington, D.C., Metro Police force.

Trump claims he’s doing this because of a public safety emergency here in the District, though in fact, violent crime is at a 30-year low. But I have lived here for more than 30 years. I am well aware of Washington’s long-term crime issues, and you know what’s not going to help? Cheap political theater.

So there’s a lot to get into here. But first, the requisite time stamp. We’re recording this on Wednesday morning, so all this news is still fresh. People are trying to figure things out. The situation is fluid, so who knows — by the time this reaches your ears, Trump may have indeed saved Washington from what he has called our bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.

So let’s get to it. First, I want first reactions to this. Jamelle, kick us off.

Jamelle Bouie: My first reaction, I guess, comes in three parts. The first part, as you pointed out: There is no public safety emergency in Washington, D.C. Crime is — as you said — at a 30-year low ——

Cottle: Or at least violent crime is.

Bouie: Violent crime is at a 30-year low. I think it’s worth emphasizing that most of these troops are deployed to areas running the White House, National Mall, downtown, so on and so forth. If you were to make a heat map of criminal activity in Washington, D.C., you would find that it is not in those places. If you were going to do this, you would put soldiers in other places. And this gets to a reality about crime that’s important to understand: Most violent crime happens in specific, discrete geographic areas among specific individuals.

It is not the case either in D.C. or New York or wherever that you are particularly likely to be the victim of a random violent crime. What is the case is that people in networks where there are people who do violent crime are more likely than not to be victims of violent crime. So when you begin to actually understand the social geography of crime as well as the physical geography of crime, all this makes even less sense as a measure.

Second, I think this is a sign of the president’s weakness. A president who is capable of ordinary negotiation, compromise and deliberation would not be leaning on this — or on emergency powers in general. Third, the fact that the president is, in many ways, quite weak should not diminish the danger of this situation, especially since he has announced his intention to do similar things in other cities, which is, I think, a pretty profound violation of basic ideas about power in the United States that go back to even before the founding.

Cottle: David, is this even legal?

David French: That’s a great question. The answer is … probably? We’ll see. The “probably” part is that, look, the president has more authority over the National Guard in Washington, D.C., than anywhere else — more inherent, automatic authority. The Guard is under his direct control.

Whereas in the States, the Guard is under the control of the governors unless it is federalized. Here you don’t really have to go through that step. Also, there’s been a longstanding D.O.J. position that the Guard can be used for law enforcement purposes in D.C. more than in other places, without violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which is this post-Reconstruction law prohibiting the use of federal troops for law enforcement.

However, a lot of these things are just theories. Much of this is untested because presidents have historically been really reluctant to call out the troops.

Now, we’ve seen him do this at the border. We’ve seen him do this in Los Angeles. And the legal authorities for doing all of this are, in many cases, pretty ambiguous. So the concepts are not fully tested in court, but if he can do it anywhere in America, he can do it in D.C. So I think the legal attack on this is going to fail. A more interesting question is the federalization — putting the D.C. police department under federal control.

Again, D.C. is not a normal city. There’s a Home Rule Act, but ultimately, Congress is responsible for D.C., and so there’s much more leeway and flexibility in taking control of this local police department. But it’s not supposed to happen after 30 days; there has to be congressional authorization. Now, of course, Jamelle and Michelle, will this Congress absolutely stand up to this president? No, of course not. So it won’t really matter in the real world. What we are dealing with here is a very carefully chosen city for this intervention.

Bouie: In terms of D.C. being carefully chosen, it’s also a city where the president’s reliance on tropes about crime — and dystopian crime, and all these things — I think is, I wouldn’t say more effective, but there might be a more willing audience for it. For the simple reason that D.C. has long been known as a majority-Black city. It’s not quite majority-Black anymore; I think it’s just under half. But it has this identity.

And that identity is very much a part of the president’s demonization of D.C. as kind of a John Carpenter-esque hellscape — demonization of the residents of D.C. as essentially incapable of self-government. It plugs into longstanding tropes about the ability of Black Americans to exist in mainstream society — to put it in the most sterile way I possibly can.

Cottle: Yeah, I mean, nothing melts Trump’s butter quite like the chance to militarize things, but he is hardly the first Republican to play politics with the city. The District has been a favorite target for years. Nixon liked to hate on D.C., and I do think you’re right — and I like the way you put it, the most sterile way you can put it — but there’s also just his tendency to demonize all things Washington.

I think at this point you can look at how people responded to tens of thousands of federal government employees having their jobs threatened or taken away. Plenty of people were like: Oh, that’s great, they deserve it, “deep state,” blah, blah, blah. They pretend that Washington, D.C., is some kind of hellscape, as you put it, that needs somebody to come in and just bulldoze it. Which makes the rest of the country a little more likely to be like: Meh, whatever.

Bouie: I’ll say what is interesting is there hasn’t been much polling, but the one poll I’ve........

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