National Democrats and media critics slammed President Donald Trump’s choice to deploy the National Guard to the crime-ridden streets of Washington, DC as ineffectual and unnecessary — or worse, a dangerous sign of creeping fascism.
As it turns out, one week after Trump’s emergency order commandeering local police quietly expired, his action was a lesson in how quickly empowered law-enforcement officers can clean up a city.
Thirty days after Trump’s August order, the crime statistics are undeniable: Both violent crime and property crime have dropped by roughly a fifth, and carjackings alone declined by 37%.
The dramatic change in DC’s public spaces is impossible to deny.
The district’s many tent cities — havens for public drug abuse that stood undisturbed since the days Black Lives Matter riots raged — have been cleared out and their denizens sent packing, proving that it didn’t take a miracle, just a commitment to cleaning up the mess.
The before-and-after scenes in the halls of Union Station, a gorgeous monument to travel that welcomes thousands of tourists and commuters daily, are stunning.
Where for years the bright marble was stained with food and smelled of urine, today a clean and vagrant-free station once again feels safe for all comers.
For Democrats willing to listen, the political lesson of DC is clear: No one who works with Trump in such an effort will be punished for it, if they deliver on the changes that citizens demand.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, proving herself a savvier leader than many in her party, knew the stakes.
She wants her legacy to be the return of Washington’s football franchise to the district, 30 years after it fled to the safer environs of Prince George’s County, Maryland — and the development of a vast new stadium complex that will bring new commerce and even a Super Bowl to her city.
But achieving that goal with a police department nearly 1,000 officers short of a full force was impossible.
She needed the help of federal reinforcements — and in deciding to cooperate with Trump, her citizens have reaped the benefits.
That’s why it’s encouraging to see not one but two bills meant to address DC’s crime predicament pass the House this week with significant bipartisan backing.
The measures, introduced by Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and Texas Rep. Brandon Gill, both Republicans, will prevent criminals between the ages of 18 and 24 from being sentenced under juvenile guidelines, and will lower the age teens can be charged as adults when prosecuted for violent crimes.
These bills are so commonsense, and as locals know so long overdue, that even Trump-hating Democrat Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia voted for both of them.
If avowed partisans in Congress can acknowledge it’s time to get tough on urban crime, why are national Democrats still fighting so hard to keep their cities riddled with violence?
It’s hard to comprehend how their dedication to soft-on-crime policies can be so zealous that they’re willing to accept the loss of restaurants and retail because people fear venturing out, or the exit rush of families who know it isn’t safe to raise their kids in a Democrat-run city.
What the District of Columbia’s experience shows us is that even cities with significant crime problems can turn them around rapidly, if leaders have the will to bring sufficient resources to bear.
It is an object lesson Democrats would be wise to understand — one that fueled their electoral success in the past.
But by embracing the anti-cop faith welcomed by the radicals in their own coalition, they have instead become the party of inner-city chaos, reigning over places where no one feels safe while paying high taxes for the privilege of living on dirty streets.
A Democratic Party that wants to win again should learn from this experience.
Until it does so, Republicans should be grateful that leftists’ burning Trump hatred makes them willing to punish their own citizens while refusing federal help.
And voters in crime-ridden blue cities, whose leaders won’t accept anything with Trump’s name on it, can look to DC and see just what a strong push toward law and order could bring them.
Ben Domenech is editor at large of The Spectator and a Fox News contributor.
