Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser played nice for a few days with President Donald Trump, but it would now appear that she just got the memo from her party.
Democrats have been pushing the authoritarian narrative against Trump for months, and his federalization of D.C. poured gasoline on that fire.
While initially saying she would work hand-in-hand with the feds, Bowser has now flipped the script.
This is the narrative that Democrats and the media have been pushing against Trump for months. We can go back to February, when a piece showed up on ForeignAffairs.com called “The Path to American Authoritarianism.”
All of a sudden, this became the new theme to attack Trump. In March, The Guardian did a report quoting several former government officials, including Steve Schmidt, a political strategist and former campaign operative for George W Bush and John McCain, who stated, “Donald Trump is producing a Washington television show from the Oval Office that’s authoritarian in nature. You go on TikTok and see the deportations scored to songs and videos released by the administration. It’s a theatre of the absurd. It’s a theatre of malice. All of it is desensitising people to the use of authority and power.”
In April, NPR published a piece highlighting comments from scholars, including Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and co-author of How Democracies Die, who stated, "We've slid into some form of authoritarianism. It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy."
This narrative was picked up by congressional Democrats and talking heads, who continued to use that word every time they talked about Trump regarding the D.C. takeover.
Initially, Bowser welcomed the approach by the government. Just prior to Trump’s formal announcement, Bowser had stated, “He’s interested in being in neighborhoods, fighting crime in neighborhoods.”
When asked about the additional federal officers and possible National Guard support, she seemed to welcome it.
Bowser told reporters that she was going to see “how to make the most of the additional officer support.” While talking to community leaders, Bowser stated, “My expectation, though it can change, is that they will deploy the Guard on federal properties -- that includes parks, monuments, federal buildings.”
There was never aggression in her tone, and Trump, for his part, had been complimentary to Bowser, saying she had done everything she possibly could, but she needed help. This seemed like a partnership, and I had even given props to Bowser for not taking the expected Democrat approach, but that just changed.
During a town hall event, Bowser decided to go on the attack against Trump, stating, “This is a time where community needs to jump in and we all need to do what we can in our space, in our lane, to protect our city and to protect our autonomy, to protect our Home Rule, and get to the other side of this guy, and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push.”
And there it is… the talking point that Democrats have been driving home, so I am going to guess that Bowser received a phone call from leadership to stop being nice to Trump and start issuing the talking points against him whenever possible.
This is why I was so adamant in other reports about Trump using old stats to justify this move. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to send Trump out to the media with stats from 2023, but it was just foolish. Again, like you, I have seen the stories of the brutal attacks, rapes, murders, and muggings in the city, but sending Trump out with old data to justify such an extreme move is only going to backfire… and now Dems are launching a massive attack against Trump and the GOP.
This could have been a big win, but now, I am just not sure. In order for Trump to be able to flip this, he is going to need to show a significant number of arrests and a dramatic drop in crime rates, or Dems will just use it to continue to feed that authoritarian narrative they have been pushing to take back the House in 2026 (and as you read, that is exactly what Bowser was pointing to in her attack).
