On this warm, tranquil August evening, a handful of tourists strolled across the broad lawns of the National Mall, home to the United States’ main American political institutions. Washington DC looked more like a sleepy administrative metropolis than the criminal dystopia depicted by Donald Trump. Yet just hours earlier on Monday, August 11, the American president took drastic measures, announcing a federal takeover of the local police and the deployment of the National Guard. “I am announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlum, squalor and worse. This is liberation day in DC, and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump declared at a solemn press conference at the White House.
The picture he painted was chilling. The president claimed that “our capital has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people.” He held up a chart illustrating that Washington’s situation was more critical than Baghdad, Bogotá and Mexico City – “places that you hear about as being the worst places on earth.”
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