Shame on President Trump for sending federal troops to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., and shame on him for hinting he might send more of them to Baltimore.
And shame on all those playing into Trump’s hands. I mean the ones making the fool’s argument that crime is down in D.C. and in Baltimore, and therefore all our streets and homes are perfectly safe and we don’t need any help.
It’s absurd to suggest such a thing.
But we don’t need this empty Trumpian charade masquerading as a legitimate attempt to fight crime.
Crime may be down, but not in our heads it’s not. Crime may be down, but there are still areas of town where the police are utterly overwhelmed and those who live in such places are legitimately terrified.
Notice I mentioned overwhelmed “police.” The cops are the ones who know what they’re doing out there. Do they sometimes abuse their power? Yes, and we need to hold them accountable when they do. But they’re the ones who have been trained in the day-to-day business of stopping street thugs.
If Trump really cared about crime in Baltimore and Washington, he knows there’s a better way to fight it: send funding to hire more full-time, real-life police instead of temporary, make-believe assistance.
Those troops out there now in Washington were trained in soldiers’ tactics, whether it’s close-order drill or navigating a tank.
They’ll be standing around for the next month questioning why they’re missing their jobs, away from their families, forced to take part in a public relations distraction by this con man president trying to take our minds off his other blunders.
They’re out there to make it start feeling normal to Americans to have soldiers in our streets. They’re out there so the next time there’s some kind of mass demonstration that this president doesn’t like, and he sends out hundreds of troops again, it’ll seem like the newest definition of “normal.”
It won’t even matter if the demonstrations are peaceful — not if they’re making Trump look bad, whether it’s a demonstration for abortion rights, or a demonstration against Trump for selling out Ukraine, or a demonstration (watch out for it, it’s coming) against granting Ghislaine Maxwell a pardon.
And maybe it won’t even take a mass demonstration.
Trump launched this sudden charade against crime when a former DOGE employee in Washington was carjacked by a couple of teenagers. Call out the troops! Next time, maybe it’ll be one of Trump’s bully-boy ICE officers getting beaten up for bullying innocent immigrants. Call out more troops!
In November of 1938, when the madness in Europe was just beginning to kick in, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish refugee living in Paris, walked into the German Embassy and assassinated Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath.
Hitler was waiting for an excuse for something dramatic, and here it was.
That killing became the justification for the night of Nazi barbarism known as Kristallnacht.
In the aftermath of that ex-DOGE employee’s carjacking, all Trump did was call out troops. After all, he’s no Hitler.
He’s just trying to put us all in the mood.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
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