Donald Trump may have a lot of flaws, but he has truly learned how to play the game in D.C.
He has become an expert at setting traps on key issues, and Democrats keep walking into them.
The president did just that on the issue of males in women’s sports, and he did so again by deploying the federal government to help fight crime in major cities.
I was very open about the fact that I did not like Trump's decision to federalize D.C., mostly due to the risky optics involved.
I thought it would be better to work as a partner with local leadership, still allowing Democrats to cry to the high heavens about an offer to step in to help a Black female mayor of the city, and that is exactly why Democrats would have decried the move. It’s always about race and sexism for Dems, so that would have set the table.
Regardless, Democrats pushed back, calling Trump, among other things, an authoritarian.
They also started to revive their hopes of making D.C. a state, but that would go directly against our Founders's design and the fact that D.C. was set up to be the central hub of our government, not its own state.
Now, after seeing success in D.C. in terms of locking up felons and preventing crime, Trump has put Chicago on his radar for his next crime reduction project, but Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker gave him an earful, as did the Windy City's mayor, Brandon Johnson.
Rather than accepting help to fix the crime issue, Johnson stated, “The Governor, the Cook County Board President, and I are in complete alignment: Chicago is not calling for a military occupation of our city. We are currently evaluating all of our legal options to protect the people of Chicago from unconstitutional federal overreach.”
Pritzker added, “Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is — a dangerous power grab.”
Dems are looking to score political points by pushing back against the bad orange man, but sentiment on social media from locals has been quite different. They want their streets cleaned up, so this is setting itself up to be quite the showdown.
Liz Peek just posted an opinion piece on Fox News, believing that Trump set the trap, and the Democrats took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.
She starts her piece, “President Donald Trump wants to drive down crime in some of our most dangerous cities. Democrats are furious, coming down hard -- once again -- on the wrong side of an issue that affects millions of Americans.”
Peek concluded, “President Trump is betting that the residents of cities plagued by violence and theft will welcome his assault on crime. He’s probably right. Democrats should wise up.”
It is a great piece, and I highly encourage you to read it when you have a few minutes to spare. I agree with just about everything she said, as her analysis is on point, but I still think Trump could have achieved the same result by simply offering help rather than federalizing the capital city. And again, I agree that something needed to be done, but I am just looking at the big picture in terms of arming Democrats with an “authoritarian” theme that can be used against the GOP in the upcoming 2026 and 2028 election cycles.
