What's really behind Trump's crime crackdown?

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1:13BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Donald Trump has sent troops onto the streets of America yet again. Here in Washington DC, the National Guard are lining them all. They're visible on the streets, ready to take on what he says is a dangerous crime wave. Is it? Is he allowed to do this? Will he do it in other cities? That's what we'll be talking about today. Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. God spared my life for a reason. Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. A star is born I'm not just MAGA, I'm dark, gothic MAGA. This is what happens when the machine comes after you.

1:59I'm terrified for this country and I'm so hurt that America let this happen. I think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America.

2:18Hello, it's Sarah here at the ground zero of American politics in Washington, D.C. And it's Justin in what is still the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast. They've been booted out of the main studio, Sarah, so I don't know whether there's some kind of coup going on. There's lots of talk of coups in Washington, D.C., but the most important one, the AmeriCast one, is a sort of silent one. But anyway, we'll cope. Well, it's very, very visible what's happening here. I have to say it's the opposite of a silent coup because there are National Guard troops already on the streets of Washington. 800 National Guard officers have been sent here.

2:53And you can see them up and down the mile, which I know you know, Justin, is that kind of huge ceremonial strip through the centre of D.C. where lots of the memorials and the sites that tourists most want to come and see are. Well, very, very visibly there are big Humvees and people in uniform patrolling around there, along with all sorts of other drug enforcement agency officers, that kind of thing. It is very obvious what's happening on the streets. Yeah, because when you say Humvees, well, two things occur to me from what you just said. Number one, the National Mall. It's not exactly the crime centre of the United States, isn't it?

3:27I mean, I've done kind of loads of pieces to camera there, as you do now, and you never feel that your stuff's going to be nicked. Nick. So let's just hold that thought for a second is what they're actually doing. But number two, I suppose we should say about a bit about the National Guard, because what you've just brought to our attention is that this is quite a this is quite a military looking outfit, isn't it? This isn't a sort of pretend soldiers. It really does make an impression and they have proper kit. Oh, because they're real soldiers. It's a reserve unit of the army that is kept in reserve to be deployed to big emergencies.

4:04Now, more usually that's been national disasters where they can help with hurricanes or flooding and the damage done by that kind of thing. Occasionally, it's been to rioting and civil disorder. They haven't been sent in by a US president other than Donald Trump since 92, I think, in the riots in LA, which was, you know, very, very serious, violent situation, completely different to what's happening in Washington right now. And it feels quite performative, Justin. I think that's your point, is that the mall might not be where you're likely to get stabbed or carjacked. It is where most visitors to Washington go, of course.

4:40and in part Donald Trump says he wants to reassure them that it's safe to come and visit their nation's capital but yeah mostly these guardsmen are there to be seen one feels. Do we know what their rules of engagement are? I mean it's never been quite clear to me when the National Guard do go somewhere as they did for those riots that you mentioned how much it escalates the situation because they have a greater freedom if you like to put it bluntly to shoot people than the police do or do they not have that freedom? or indeed are they not saying? Well, they can't arrest people, except in very, very special circumstances, and they're not saying that that's what's going to happen in Washington, D.C.

5:18So they are there to back up and support police operations, is what they say. Now, they make this very visible presence, and of course they are heavily armed. So for crowd control, I think that's useful, but nobody's saying that that's what the situation is in the streets of Washington right now. They can detain people until local law enforcement get there to arrest them. But the real rules of who's actually in charge here, whether it is still the D.C. mayor and the police force or whether Donald Trump federalizing the policing of Washington and sending in the guard means that ultimately he makes the decisions.

5:55That's extremely unclear. It's been asked many times at the White House, at press conferences the mayor has given. And it's pretty opaque, really. But no, the guards are not there to take over the role of the police. essentially they are supposed to be there to back them up. So we want to talk a bit about what the mayor's making of it all, because there's obviously a Democrat mayor of Washington, D.C., that is always the case, Miro Bowser, who has behind the scenes been pretty punchy. She's told her community, according to the New York Times, we should protect our city, protect our autonomy, protect our home rule, get to the other side of this guy, make sure we elect a Democratic House of Representatives it is that we have a backstop to what she called an authoritarian push.

6:38But it's really telling, though, isn't it, Sarah, that actually in front of the cameras, she hasn't been that much in a condemnatory mood. And that, I suppose, brings you to the difficulty the Democrats have, that even when every sinew of your body tells you this is a bit silly, it's performative at best, and actually crime, you could argue, is down in most American big cities, even when everything tells you that, kind of arguing against something that seems to be suppressing crime is a delicate thing to do. Yeah, it's a trap that if Donald Trump thought Democrats were going to walk straight into it, they have managed not to yet.

7:18But here's the problem. I mean, it's inarguable, Justin, I mean, the statistics are there, that crime certainly in Washington is at a 30-year low. But that doesn't mean it's non-existent. I mean, there are stabbings and carjackings, And that has happened to staffers working for the White House and people who work in Congress. And you do see these stories in the newspapers. And you can't go around telling people that the streets are safe if that's not their personal experience. And that's not how they feel when they're out on the streets of Washington or any other big city in America. It's almost exactly like what was happening, I guess, this time last year.

7:52We were talking all the time about the economy and about inflation and about how voters were complaining that grocery prices were just going up and up and up. And Joe Biden, the then president, was trying to tell them inflation is coming down. Don't worry about it. I've got the economy under control now. He was the statistics were true that he was citing, but it wasn't how people felt. And it's just really bad politics to go out there and tell people what they are feeling is wrong. Yeah. So Democrats need to be careful that they don't go around saying, hey, crime isn't a problem. and Donald Trump is just using this made-up excuse to send forces onto the streets.

8:27I'm really fascinated by this business of how you oppose it or whether you get sucked into opposing it at all because that point you've just made really underlined by, of all people, Joe Scarborough. So Joe Scarborough, the morning host on MSNBC, the kind of left-wing equivalent of Fox News, who said this about journalists expressing their views in private to him. I actually heard a reporter, heard from a reporter when this happened going, well, you know, if he doesn't overreach, this is actually a good thing for quality of life, etc, etc, etc. Because D.C. right now, I had this happen to my family and I had that and they they go down the list and then saw him tweet something completely different.

9:15so DC there has been a problem in DC it's not as bad as it was two or three years ago but it's not it's not as it's not as safe as Manhattan it's not as safe as the nation's capital should be not as safe as Manhattan that that I thought was quite striking but what he could also have said is that however safe or unsafe it feels in DC Sarah it's it's a lot safer per capita. If you look at serious crime per capita and you look at DC and New York and the various other cities that Donald Trump has talked about, Oakland and California, Chicago, all Democratic controlled cities, there are plenty of Republican controlled cities where per capita the crime is still higher.

10:05And some of it, of course, depends on what kind of crime is and therefore who experiences it because we know the world over you know it's in the worst and the least well-off neighborhoods generally where the the crime is highest and that's true in this very kind of segregated city of washington as well where you're in it's in southeast you know there's a fairly high murder rate and that's not anything like true in northwest um washington where i live where the streets do feel pretty safe but why is the question because it's not the president of the United States job to go around and beefing up law enforcement, even in the capital city where he lives.

10:41And the lines usually where this is up to the mayor of a city or it is up to the state to deal with that. And, you know, instinctively, most Americans don't want to see armed forces put onto the streets to deal with Americans who are not going about in a law abiding fashion. That's just not how the country is policed. And that's why there's a sense that this is part of some kind of authoritarian creep, that Donald Trump's looking for any excuse to send troops onto the streets, first in L.A., which he did back in June when there were riots against immigration raids, now in D.C., that he'll push into other Democratic cities to pick a fight with governors and mayors like J.B.

11:20Pritzker in Illinois, if he picks on Chicago, for instance. And is that authoritarian view of the way the president is acting that's freaking out a lot lot of Democrats and people who are worried about civil liberties and some, you know, just some perfectly ordinary citizens. Yeah, and of course the question why he's doing it is interesting and relevant, isn't it? And actually we've had a question about it from Matt in Derby. Hi, everyone. Lately I've been getting flashbacks to Trump's first term when it seemed like every day brought some unexpected headline-grabbing decision. For example, announcing he's deploying the National Guard to DC.

11:59My question is, are these major moves part of a planned agenda or is Trump improvising as he goes? And along with that, who's actually shaping these announcements behind the scenes? Who's whispering in Trump's ear this time around? Who's whispering in his ear? Well, I mean, he has people close to him, like his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who I think are very much all on the same page with this kind of thing. And I mean, is it planned? I think it's instinctive, but within the shape of a greater plan and idea whereby Trump and his administration can seize on news events and moments and shape them to fit with the larger picture of what they would like to do.

12:44And this is what a lot of people have been worried about, even before he got back into the White House, that he would want to use the army, the National Guard to crack down on protests. He seemed really frustrated that he wasn't able to crack down harder on black lives protests in his first term. And that once it has become more normal for the president to be sending troops onto the streets, where does that end? And if you are particularly worried about Donald Trump and what his ultimate agenda might be, you can find plenty of people who are saying he's softening us up for the moment when he is using the army on the streets basically to suppress the next election, to stop people from voting in areas where he doesn't want them to, to somehow take control of the election of the polling process and bend it in his favour.

13:35Even if that's not what he's doing, it is against norms for the president to be sending troops onto the street like that. And that's why people are worried about it. That really brings up then, doesn't it? If you're a Democrat and you seriously believe what you've just said, that this is a softening up essentially to overturn democracy, then the idea that you don't say anything and you don't get trapped, you know, as we've just been saying, trapped into talking about this when you should be talking about other things. and I heard Paul Begala, the Democratic consultant and strategist from the kind of Clinton era, hugely influential still in the party just because he's such an able guy and such a loquacious guy as well and he pops up on the TV all the time but he was essentially saying well he absolutely condemns this and can't stand Trump.

14:22He was saying it's a trap, don't get involved in talking about this but of course if what you've just said is truly felt by the Democrats then they've got no real choice. I mean, I just wonder whether the whole thing actually is about crime, but the crime that it's all about, Sarah, it's not a matter of strategic thinking. The crime or the set of crimes that it's about is Jeffrey Epstein's. And actually, this is just another way of changing the subject, which he's very good at doing. And that's true. And the Epstein scandal has not gone away. And there's still plenty of questions to be answered about that.

14:53But here we are not talking about it, though, Sarah. That's the point, isn't it? You and I, we've fallen into the trap. It's true. And we often say that Donald Trump is absolutely brilliant at changing the subject, at seizing the agenda, at moulding news coverage to what he wants it to be. And of course, by the end of this week, we're going to be talking about the summit in Alaska. But I think, you know, just to say that he's changing the subject away from something he doesn't want to talk to might be to gloss over a bigger picture that there is here. And even if you don't think that this is part of a plan to overturn democracy and use the U.S.

15:25Army to do it, I think it is part of a narrative he wants to tell, which is that crime is out of control in America and not just in Washington, but that it is in Democrat run states and cities where violent thugs are running amok and terrorizing the law abiding populace and that it is only Donald Trump who can crack down on this and get it done. So ignore the statistics about where it is Republican run cities and states that crime rates are higher. Ignore any of those facts, but be seen to be taking on these Democratic governors. Send your forces onto their streets and then tell your people, I have solved this enormous problem that there was in America through my strong arm tactics.

16:11This is the way to get it done. I'm the only guy who can do it. That phrase, defund the police, has a long shadow, doesn't it? I've heard democratic operatives, as you would have done, call it the kind of worst catchphrase in American political history, the most damaging, the most self-defeating. And it's kind of come back to haunt them. And there is this sense, isn't there, throughout the nation that in democratic cities and sometimes a sense very much based on, you know, there are parts of Chicago you wouldn't want to hang around, particularly at the weekend. There is a lot of crime going on, a lot of shooting going on.

16:48And politics, it's an interesting thing, isn't it, that that has had this shadow that still falls over them and renders them. It's a bit like immigration in a way, particularly illegal immigration. But it's put them in a position where they want to be able to break out and say, we don't want crime any more than anyone else does. But they can't seem to get themselves there. Because, as you say, Justin, the idea of defunding the police when the argument was all about police brutality and the fact that cops were killing black men on the streets of America, that argument seems to have completely disappeared within this wider picture.

17:26Now, you don't hear anything about that, although, you know, not all police forces have completely reformed. But you've got the Justice Department under Donald Trump now pushing for the most lenient sentences you can possibly imagine when cops are up in court accused of excessive violence against usually ethnic minorities who they've been arresting. So, yeah, we've gone from a position where that was what was exercising a lot of the population and certainly a lot of people on the left to this completely different picture where you're looking at, you know, the most authoritarian kind of policing you can imagine.

18:02Does he go to a lot of other cities and do this? You mentioned that this seems to be a template now what's happening in D.C. I mean, could he? And if he were to do it, as we were saying, the mayor of Washington, D.C. has been pretty gentle in public about what seems to be happening to her city and the abrogation of her power, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if he goes to Chicago, if he goes to Californian cities, I mean, are we expecting conflict with the locals? And there was a bit, remember, with California Governor Gavin Newsom when he sent troops into L.A. back in June. And yeah, I'm sure that the Chicago mayor and the Illinois governor would be well up for a fight with Donald Trump if he tried to do this.

18:45And, you know, these are all people who we're talking about as possible 2028 Democratic contenders as well, aren't they? In California, Gavin Newsom, in Illinois, J.B. Pritzker. Donald Trump would love to have a fight with some of the punchier Democrats about this. And just say these are the people, you know, who want to coddle criminals rather than look after the citizens. These are the people who deny that there is crime happening. This is why Democrats can't be trusted to run cities, let alone the country. I'm the only person who can sort that out. He'll be rubbing his hands with glee at the idea of having a fight like that.

19:18Let's hear what he says about what he wants to do. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this. and this will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C. and we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say. Well, Baltimore, of course, is just up the road and would be easy, I suppose, to sort of spill over. You could send them up. It's an hour in the truck up to Baltimore.

19:55I suppose that could just be a spillover thing. Oakland would be a bigger deal, wouldn't it, in California? As you say, the governor would be opposed and Gavin Newsom, you would expect, would have something to say about that. And New York, I mean, again, obviously a Democrat governor and a Democratic mayor. Although I suppose in New York it's slightly complicated, isn't it? Because the Democratic mayor of New York, Eric Adams, is number one accused of considerable poor behavior, to put it mildly, isn't he? Number two is sort of thrown in his lot with Donald Trump. I mean, they're quite pally these days.

20:31So would that be would that be one where the mayor would say, OK, bring him in because he's he's relying on Donald Trump, isn't he, to get him out of quite a lot of trouble? Yes, he's relying on Donald Trump to help him a great deal with various crimes that he's accused of. And in return, he's been helping him with immigration policy and causing up to him a really, really unlikely pairing Democrat Eric Adams and Donald Trump. But but nonetheless, self-interest has brought them together. But of course, there's a fascinating primary battle around who's going to be the next Democratic candidate for mayor going on in New York at the moment.

21:08And goodness me, if we got right down into, you know, who's in charge of law enforcement, how much crime is acceptable? Is it time to go back to Rudy Giuliani's zero tolerance policy of policing? Did that work? Is that what New York needs? That would throw an absolute spanner right into the middle of that Democratic primary race. So that would be absolutely fascinating to see that happen. And we should also say that the law is always there in the background, as it always is in every aspect of American life. And, of course, all of this is subject to challenge, isn't it? I mean, there's already a court case, isn't there, in Los Angeles about the earlier deployment of the National Guard in L.A.

21:50this thing which I like the sound of the posse comitatis act which he may or may not have breached so there's this kind of sense that actually a bit like the tariffs that behind the scenes while we all talk about the impact and whether this is going to happen that's going to happen there is a sort of separate track there's a non-political track there's a legal track where he can be opposed not always it has to be said desperately successfully in the modern era. Quite a lot of efforts to stymie him in the courts haven't much come to anything, a whole range of things. But this is one of those places where certainly in California, the idea that he has the right to do these deployments at all is being challenged.

22:35Yeah, it's all about whether you can declare an emergency genuinely and meet the terms of this act, because the Posse Comitatus Act basically prohibits the use of the military, which includes of the National Guard for civilian law enforcement. I mean, it would be considered very, very controversial if that was to happen in the UK as well, wouldn't it, if you were to send the troops out to basically do the job of the police. But there are exceptions to that, and it can be if you're specifically authorized by Congress or if the president thinks that it's necessary because of insurrection or rebellion.

23:12And that's why it's being challenged in L.A., because although you had some small-scale protests and demonstrating diverging nearly towards rioting, was that really insurrection or rebellion and did it justify sending the National Guard onto the streets? But, of course, you will remember, Justin, the one time that there was what looked very, very close to an insurrection and the National Guard were summoned onto the streets. I know where you're going with this. Yeah, that's right. January the 6th, 2021, Donald Trump supporters marching up to the Capitol, try and stop them certifying the election.

23:46What has been deemed by many, many people to be a genuine attempt at insurrection. The National Guard were called out then. Nobody was challenging the legality of that. But of course, on that day, when troops were needed on the streets, Donald Trump was calling them very, very fine people, not dangerous criminals. Let's end with a question, because there's actually a set of questions in a way, and quite a few people have asked us this question. though I think to an extent we've already answered it but let's just make it plain that we understand why it's being asked and this is one of the questions we've had but it kind of is emblematic of quite a few more so dear America asked with Trump yet again flooding the zone from using the National Guard to police Washington DC visiting the UK to insult the Lord Mayor and play golf at a US taxpayer expense is this purely to distract away from the Epstein files?

24:37I gravely fear, this questioner says, that a man with the greatest sense of self-interest will throw any country under the bus to protect himself. What can news sources do to make sure they remain unflinchingly focused on the Epstein issue and not give Trump a free pass? Well, Sarah, we gave our answer, which is that we are aware of it before. But it is something. It's a perfectly fair question. It's an absolutely fair question. I understand where our AmeriCaster is getting at. But I'm going to argue that I don't want to remain unflinchingly focused on the Epstein issue. And I don't think that's giving Donald Trump a free pass because I don't think it's the most important thing that's happening in America.

25:19If we get any more information about it, if we find out any more about what's in those files, who, for instance, it is that Donald Trump is possibly trying to protect by stopping the files from being published, because if it's not him, then who is it? Yes, we've got to keep an eye on that. But we can't ignore the idea of sending the troops onto the streets, of redrawing the map of Ukraine in a summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, or many of the other dozens of really, really important things that Donald Trump is doing. Whether it's rewriting the exhibits in the Smithsonian museums or redoing the program at the Kennedy Center, both of which he's involved with this week as well.