Networks challenge Trump’s D.C. police takeover using disputed crime stats

Knees jerk at the broadcast networks every time President Donald Trump makes a dramatic move. They’re going to denounce his verbiage as too reckless. They’re going to suggest he’s mangling all the facts. They’ll suggest his motives are racist and extremist. 

We heard all this on ABC, CBS and NBC after the president announced he was going to take command for a month of the D.C. police and call on the National Guard to combat crime in the nation’s capital. 

It started right away on Monday, August 11. On ABC’s “World News Tonight,” anchorman David Muir began by insisting it was the Democrats who owned the facts: “Tonight, President Trump ordering the National Guard to take over policing of the nation’s capital. Tonight, the mayor of Washington pushing back with the crime stats, and what they actually show.” 

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White House reporter Mary Bruce, one of Joe Biden’s most agreeable stenographers, offered smug opposition in ABC’s clipped style: “President Trump declaring a public safety emergency in D.C., painting an apocalyptic picture, adamant crime is spiraling out of control. But his depiction stands in stark contrast to the official figures, which show crime in the capital is actually in decline. Violent crime recently hitting a 30-year low, down 26% since last year. Burglary down 19%. Murder down 12%.” 

FBI and Border Patrol officers arrest a man after he allegedly assaulted law enforcement with a sandwich along the U Street corridor during a federal law enforcement deployment to the nation’s capital on August 10, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)

ABC and CBS didn’t acknowledge that these “official figures” are rigged – that an officer was suspended for manipulating the crime statistics to show improvement – those “historic lows” the media touted. 

ABC also failed to mention their own colleagues were telling a different tale on their streaming channel, ABC News Live. Anchor Kyra Phillips described the scene near ABC studios in DC, just blocks north of the White House:  “I can tell you firsthand here in downtown DC where we work, right here around our bureau, just in the past six months, there were two people shot, one person died, literally two blocks down here from the bureau. We can talk about the numbers going down, but crime is happening every single day because we’re all experiencing it firsthand, working and living down here.” 

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This underlines how the statistics don’t match people’s experience. In May, a Washington Post poll found that 91% of DC residents see crime as a problem, with 51% saying it is an extremely serious problem. Moreover, it is in particular Black and low-income residents who are most concerned about it. They live in the neighborhoods with the worst crime. 

Over on “CBS Evening News,” co-anchor Maurice DuBois offered a fractured fact check: “The president said, despite evidence to the contrary, that crime of the nation’s capital is out of control. It has actually been declining since the pandemic.” That’s wrong. Violent crime spiked in 2023, which allows all the talking points about it coming down since then. The locals are not impressed if the annual number of murders comes down from 274 to 187. They don’t want to become a crime statistic. 

On Monday, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas began: “The president’s D.C. takeover, declaring a crime emergency and taking control of the city’s police department, and sending in the National Guard. Washington’s mayor calling it ‘unsettling and unprecedented’ as protesters take to the streets.” 

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White House reporter Gabe Gutierrez used the official stats against Trump, but added skeptics: “The head of the police union tells NBC News the crime stats have been manipulated. And any talk of a recent drop in crime is ‘preposterous.’ Still, the D.C. City Council calls the federal police takeover ‘a manufactured intrusion on local authority’ and the mayor says it caught her off-guard.” 

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It’s fascinating that none of the networks pointed out Mayor Muriel Bowser is a Democrat. The city council has 11 Democrats and two independents. The elected DC Attorney General, Brian Schwalb, is a Democrat. These networks don’t want you to think that Trump’s “targets” here are partisan adversaries. They’re somehow nonpartisan public servants. 

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, co-host Michael Strahan pushed claims from House Democrats (in this case Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin) that any focus on DC crime is a distraction from the Jeffrey Epstein case. 

 In May, a Washington Post poll found that 91% of DC residents see crime as a problem, with 51% saying it is an extremely serious problem. 

On Tuesday’s “CBS Evening News,” reporter Scott MacFarlane was pushing leftist fears of Trump power lust with local liberal activist Ron Moten, who said “my only caution is, one thing can lead to the next thing. You can take the police department today and we wake up and they take over our city.” MacFarlane replied: “They might not give it back.” Moten repeated: “They might not give it back.” 

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While pundits like MSNBC host Joe Scarborough worried Democrats were falling into a trap by being aggressive crime denialists, the networks stuck to the liberal frame. “PBS News Hour” Amna Nawaz proclaimed on Thursday: “It’s all part of a federal crackdown in the nation’s capital launched by President Trump, citing a crime emergency that the data doesn’t fully support.” 

This approach signals that these leftist networks think “the data” always reliably lands on the liberal point of view, on “the right side of history” and the storyline of America’s problems with racism. This arrogance is especially audacious when the statistics they’re using are literally “fake news.” 

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