President Donald Trump announced a state of emergency in Washington, D.C., during a press conference Monday, claiming with no evidence that the city is gripped by a crime epidemic. He pledged to deploy the National Guard and extend the authoritarian order to other Democratic cities.

“We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore—they're so, they're so far gone,” he said. “We're not going to let it happen. We’re not gonna lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C., and we're going to clean it up real quick. Very quickly, as they say.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Joined by U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, Trump weaved a story of violent youth, crumbling infrastructure, and chaos in the nation’s capital. He also demanded that homeless residents leave the city.

Trump’s claims are contradicted, of course, by reality. Violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year-low, and Baltimore and Oakland have seen similar drops in crime.

Trump’s occupation of D.C. is consistent with his repeated threats to control the capital by force.

And his promise to deploy federal troops in other Democratic-run cities on similarly false pretenses has been a hallmark of his second term. Citing lies about violent immigrant hordes as the reason for his inhumane immigration policies, Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles in June without Gov. Gavin Newsom’s consent.

With his polling numbers underwater amid his refusal to release the Epstein files, Trump appears increasingly focused on distracting the public—opening up egregious investigations on political and legal opponents, while trying to entrench the GOP’s minority rule through aggressive and unpopular gerrymandering and attacks on voting rights.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos