Why has Trump ordered the army onto the streets of DC?

0:28If you're considering a private student loan, This is a Global Player original podcast. Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people. And we're not going to let it happen anymore. That is Donald Trump not getting the job as chief marketing officer for Washington tourism. The hellscape he paints of Washington to justify bringing in the National Guard, people trained to fight wars, is extraordinary. Is this an authoritarian president going too far? Or is it a trap that he's laying for his Democrat rivals?

1:14Welcome to the News Agents.

1:20The News Agents. It's John. And it's Lewis. still in nevada oh i didn't oh you're still in nevada interesting put it this way john after last night at caesar's palace uh any hope of any further trips the rest of the year for you have long since evaporated we're gonna have to sell that dog bed that emily brings in half the time honestly i tell you what we're going to talk about law and order in washington dc and what donald trump's doing but what i heard about what you got up to last night christ they've got a problem in nevada as well now everything on bread always everything on bread it all works very good look so what donald trump has done is quite extraordinary i mean you kind of hear about martial law and things like that it's not that what donald trump has done but he is bringing in the national guard to take over policing in washington dc fbi officers being redeployed from their duties for nighttime patrols in the capital, which Donald Trump describes as this hellhole, this city of carnage.

2:24And it doesn't really equate with reality that much. And so you have to look at what the political motivations are behind this and what the spark for this has been. And there seem to have been two things. One is that a member of Doge, the Department of Government efficiency. A young guy was beaten up, mugged, left bloodied and bruised. And his picture became everywhere. And that caught Donald Trump's attention. And the other thing is Donald Trump driving to his golf course outside of Washington, D.C. and going past homeless people on the White Hearst Freeway or wherever it happens to be, going up to Rock Creek.

3:01And there are lots of tents there. It's true. And Donald Trump thinking we've got to get rid of all these people out of the city. That seems to have been the spark in this past week, which has resulted in this announcement by Trump that the feds are taking over. Yeah, I think this is fascinating. And I think you don't have to believe that it is the sort of full federalization of American law and order. You don't have to believe that it is necessarily the final descent into authoritarianism, though it is undoubtedly an authoritarian move, to believe that this is a disturbing and chilling development.

3:38And it is part of the piece of the kind of long development of Trump as someone who at the very least indulges in very strong authoritarian tendencies, who has that authoritarian streak to his politics, right? There's a lot going on. One is Trump's politics is a politics which needs enemies, real and imagined. And throughout his entire career, this predates his political years. There has been a gene within Trump which has railed against the politics of the cities, right? In the 1970s and 1980s, what is he doing? He's taking out full-blown ads in the newspapers, basically railing against black crime, railing against crime the whole of the time.

4:16And that is part of the longer pedigree as well and part of this makeup, which is beyond Trump and before Trump and has long been part now of Republican politics, which is using the cities. And we see the glimmers of this in our own politics increasingly. Seeing the right wing using the city as a synonym for all that they find distasteful in politics. And that has a particularly ugly history in the United States because the cities so often, or the breakdown of law and order, this goes back to Richard Nixon talking about law and order in the cities. There's so many voters when they hear about cities and they hear about chaos, what do they really hear?

4:53They basically hear poor black voters. And that is a long kind of seam that has run within politics that Trump once again, and he's done it before, Trump is resurrecting. Despite the fact that, as we know, with regards to crime, it's a phantom fight. As I say, it's real. And in this case, it's not real. It's imagined because we know that crime in Washington, D.C. is actually at a 30-year low. So the actual basis for this intervention of sending the National Guard in just does not exist. Yeah. So let's just go into those figures in a bit more detail. According to the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., MPDC, violent offences fell after peaking in 2023 and in 2024, and they've hit their lowest level in 30 years.

5:38They're continuing to fall. That's according to preliminary data in 2025. Violent crime overall is down 26 percent this year compared to the same point in 2024, and robbery is down 28 percent. So this kind of mythical illusory picture of just what a living hell Washington DC is doesn't equate with the picture. Just for laughs, let us play you Donald Trump speaking in May when for different political reasons he wanted to emphasize how great Washington DC is. Crime is down in Washington DC. street crime, violent crime by 25%. And people have seen, they've noticed a big difference. So you have Donald Trump just in May.

6:30I mean, it's not that long ago, talking about how much safer DC was. I think the other part of it, and Lewis, you're absolutely right to talk about the not so much creeping authoritarianism as authoritarianism from Donald Trump, is trying to lay a political trap for the Democrats. I'm tough on law and order. Are you? Why are you opposing this? And I think the population of D.C. is around half a million, maybe three quarters of a million if you include the sort of metropolitan area around it. 320 million Americans do not live in Washington, D.C. And of course, all the cities that he's talking about are cities that are run by Democrat mayors.

7:15There's no coincidence there. And if you look at what's happening in terms of the sweep against illegal immigration, it's being done in a much more rough and aggressive manner in Democrat run cities than it is in Republican areas. People who live in Washington, D.C., or indeed any city, should be able to expect that the President of the United States, whoever it is, does not, on the basis of a lie, on the basis of phantom figures, on the basis of, as you say, John, just pure political imperative, should not have to expect or deal with a national government, the federal government, choosing to deploy, effectively, soldiers to its streets to try and police a law and order problem.

8:00them, which does not exist. That is chilling. That is worrying. And taken as part of the wider slide that we're seeing towards authoritarian politics in the United States, looks at what's going on with the redistricting, which we talked about on the show down in Texas. And the fact that right now, the governor of Texas is basically bringing in the FBI to try and hunt down democratically elected lawmakers, to drag them back to the state capitol in Texas to vote on completely corrupt, completely bent, completely dodgy redistricting provisions that Trump has just insisted out of nowhere he wants, because he knows that he's almost certainly going to lose the House of Representatives in 2026.

8:41And then his administration, which is corrupt in lots of different ways, is going to be subject to all sorts of investigations from a democratically controlled house, Democrat controlled house. So, you know, you take it as part of the wider piece, it is worrying and it is chilling and also completely useless, right? We've been down this road before, right? So much happens in Trump world, it's easy to forget. He's done this with Los Angeles earlier in the year, where he decided to send in the National Guard, basically for no reason, or slightly more reason there is in DC, but after the riots that we saw in Los Angeles.

9:12And as Governor Gavin Newsom, Democrat was saying yesterday, you know, half the time they send them in, they don't have anything to do. It's not entirely clear what they're actually doing when they're there. They're basically just doing paperwork and bureaucracy and pen pushing. So it is pure politics, pure theatre, but with a deeply sinister bent to it, in my view. Yeah. And I want to say this as someone who's lived in DC for many years. Look, it is a city that has its problems. There are homeless people. There are people with serious mental illness who are living on the streets who will sometimes shout out loud at you and whatever else.

9:45I think any city, anywhere in the world, you are going to encounter things like that. People shout at you all the time down the street. Well, exactly. Normally you. Normally you after you've lost out badly at Caesar's Palace. I know, I know. But, you know, the picture of it as just being this dangerous place where people live in fear to cross the street or walk down the road or go to the shop just does not equate to reality. I'm telling you, I've never felt safer in any city, I think, anywhere in the world than I did in Washington, D.C., you know, for seven and a half years. And that wasn't just confining myself to the northwest quadrant, which is where all the diplomats live and others.

10:25It's the rest of the city as well. It just doesn't feel real. And you just think, well, this is a confection partly for political ends. And it is also about Donald Trump knowing that being macho is a good thing with his base. It goes down well. And of course, maybe just maybe this distracts from another problem that he also faces right now. And that is his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Pete Buttigieg, the former Transportation Secretary under Joe Biden, certainly thinks that's a part of it. As we speak, the federal government is taking over the policing of a major American city, Washington, D.C.

11:07The president is doing this not in order to make the city safer. That's the job of local law enforcement. But to solve his own political problems. He needs to get his base talking and thinking about something besides his refusal to open up the Epstein files because he's mixed up in them. And he wants the rest of the country focused on something, anything, besides the work that he has done and continues to do to kick millions of Americans off of their health insurance, to close down rural hospitals and to undermine basic functions of our government in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest.

11:46So that's Pete Buttigieg. And of course, it is, you know, a classic attack from Democrat opponents to say he's trying to deflect attention. But we do know that is what Donald Trump does. It's flooding the zone. It's giving endless stories and asking people, don't look here, look there. and where he wants people to look now is at the lawlessness of the American city and the only place you can feel safe is in the suburbs or rural areas but I'm going to do something about it. It is part of what Donald Trump has been for years and you talk back in the day Lewis of him taking out adverts. He was very often wrong.

12:25He called for capital punishment to be meted out to the Central Park Five over an alleged assault and rape And the fact of the matter is that Central Park Five were released and wrongfully convicted. So Donald Trump has a history of this, but it doesn't mean he's always on the right side of history. No, he often hasn't been. The thing as well, John, that I find, as I say, chilling or the other thing that I find chilling is I think that we do see glimmers of this in our own politics. that this role that the city has come to have, and as I say, to some extent, it's been part of right-wing politics for a long time, going all the way back to Richard Nixon, running against the city, Republicans and the right-wing setting up cities as being these kind of infernos of chaos and destruction and drugs and crime and race tension and race rights and all of these sorts of things.

13:17And sometimes there is a kernel of truth to any or all of those things, but they become grossly exaggerated. That's been a feature of American politics for a long time. We see it more and more in British politics as well. We talked about it on the show a little bit before, particularly online and in the online right. London increasingly being set up as this kind of hellhole, this kind of dystopian nightmare where crime is completely out of control. You can barely walk out of your house without getting beaten up or your possessions stolen from you or taken from you, where fare evasion is completely rampant on the tube, where the tube is looking like Gotham City or something like that from a 1990s Batman film.

13:53On and on it goes. They're being used, usually often in a completely exaggerated way, by people who know that they're not really like that for their own political ends. I think you can see a direct line between that sort of American politics, a politics that Trump has intensified and augmented and a lever that he pulls on whenever he's in a little bit of trouble, which as you say, John, he is at at the moment and related to the Epstein stuff. And you're seeing that being replicated in British politics as well from very, very mainstream figures. And I think that is just part of politics, which, again, is just another part of the way that the right, the radical right, in particular, across the Atlantic now acts as one and the same and ideologically, ideationally, philosophically is increasingly fused.

14:41Well, it is a Trump import. When Donald Trump was over here most recently, the other week, opening up his golf course in Aberdeen, who was the one British politician that he spoke about? Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. How did he speak about Sadiq Khan in the most disparaging terms about what a terrible job he's done in London? I think he's done a terrible job. The mayor of London, but a nasty person. I think he's done... No, I think he's a friend of mine, right? No, I think he's done a terrible job. I wish someone had asked, what specifically do you think that Sadiq Khan has done wrong? I, you know, just because I bet you Donald Trump has got no idea.

15:25But it is that thing. I hate you, Liz. I only like high emission zones. And he probably would. Yeah, exactly. But you can see that that is exactly what it is. And, you know, I remember being there, you know, having Americans tell me about the no-go zones in British cities. and they're too dangerous to walk around at night. And you just thought, I don't know what you're talking about. I just have no idea what you are talking about. And I'm sure there are many DC residents who are similarly today wandering around the city, going about their ordinary lives and thinking, it just feels to me like it felt yesterday and the day before.

16:04And it's kind of not perfect, but it's pretty damn good. And the worrying thing is, in terms of kind of the stability of American politics, which obviously feels less and less stable with us every passing week and every passing month. Concerned being, Trump was very clear in that press yesterday. He's not just going to confine it to DC. There are other cities that he's got his eye on. Why would he? I mean, on the basis purely of the crime figures alone, if you're going to accept that as actually the criteria for what he's doing, there are Democrat-controlled cities across the United States which are in way worse shape than Washington DC, particularly with regards to drugs and fentanyl and all sorts of other things.

16:37So why would he stop? And he was very, very clear that this is just the beginning. That central tension that has dominated American politics for so long, once again, i.e. the battle between the tension between the federal government and states' rights and cities' rights and the imperative for the federal government not to overuse its power or to overstep the mark. It used to be, of course, the Republican Party was the party which was most concerned about that. Once again, Trump has just inverted absolutely everything. And now you've got Republican senators, Republican congressmen, you name it, cheering to the rafters, an American president who is choosing to federalize not just the police operations of Washington, D.C.

17:18The federal government has always had a bigger hand in what goes on in Washington and other cities, but is basically imploring him to do the same with other cities across the United States. Yet again, just another crazy day in Trump world. I suppose the only thing about this, if he does go down the route of taking over the policing in Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, you name it, wherever else where there are problems, L.A., San Francisco, it becomes his problem. If you don't suddenly see a massive reduction in violent crime and a massive reduction in drugs offences and a massive reduction in homelessness and homicides.

17:57But he'll just claim there has been one. Yeah I mean like He'll just claim that there has been one right He'll sack whoever's in charge of the statistics And appoint someone much more to his liking Exactly Yeah Exactly Exactly We've played it all before Well talking about job statistics John Yesterday Trump announced His new crony That he's going to have to replace The former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US Obviously this doesn't sound like a very sexy story But we've talked about it on the show a bit It's so reflective of how Trump operates didn't like the person who was the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics before, Saeed Sasaka, just because she was actually doing a good job and actually producing the numbers which actually exist and has now replaced her with another crony and a yes-man who will produce completely fake numbers, presumably.

18:41But nonetheless, whatever you do with the numbers, the facts are the facts. And there is generally a worry in the US at the moment about the prospect of a recession, of early indicators and signs of there being a recession. Of course, one place which is always considered a bit of a sort of canary in the coal mine, an early indicator of whether there is going to be a recession, the hospitality industry, tourism is obviously the first thing in any economy to go because as soon as people are feeling the pinch, what's the one thing they decide not to do? Go on holiday and especially gamble. And what better place, John, to investigate and look at that than, of course, where I am right now, Las Vegas.

19:14There's been a lot of stuff online in the last few weeks about Vegas being empty and about being devoid of people. And that is being blamed, put squarely at Trump's door because of what he's done on tariffs and on basically telling foreigners and tourists not to come here. So we thought we would explore whether that is really happening in Vegas or not and what that might tell us about the economy and where the US is going. We'll be looking at that after the break.

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20:17This is the News Agents. welcome to tipsy robot that's not a promise that is a premise here this is a place where you can come you've been able to do this in las vegas for a little while now you can come order a drink it's not soul working here and you order you drink your cocktail it makes it for you you go and collect it you pay for it that's it it's a gimmick in a way as i say it's been around for a couple of years but it is reflective of something it's reflective of the fact that this is a city which in many ways is at the center of the automation revolution, which isn't going to transform our lives in years.

20:53Hence, it's transforming our lives right now. It's transforming this city's hospitality sector right now because the big companies here, big, big casinos, massive, massive industries make a huge amount of profit. They are investing huge amounts of money in using automation and AI, not just to encourage you or whoever is here to gamble more, but to replace the people that made up their workforce for years and for decades. This is the epicenter, Las Vegas, of this change, this revolution, which is going to be so transformative to our economy. Could we just start by introducing yourself? So my name is Stephen Campbell, and I call myself a Vegas analyst on YouTube.

21:33I have a YouTube channel called Not Leaving Las Vegas, where we break down the complicated ways that the city of Las Vegas runs and how the strip runs and how it all plays into the bottom line for tourists. What's happening to the hospitality industry in terms of employment here? Are they laying people off? What's going on? Yeah, so the layoff started with MGM and with a couple of other properties. They are laying people off. MGM used the excuse of saying that people don't want to do in-person concierge. So we're going to lay off all of our concierge except for the ones servicing the whales or the people that gamble huge on their vacation.

22:10and a lot of those concierge people are gone and being replaced by AI. Then we have Excalibur. They got rid of all of their baggage porter services. Resorts World laid off a number of dealers. So did Fontainebleau. Those are the two newest properties on the north end of the strip. And more and more, we're going to, if you're in the casinos, look around you. You'll see that there's huge amounts of stations where people are playing digital versions of craps and roulette and other different games where you have one dealer that can entertain 50 different players. whereas in the past only a few players per table so those people are also being laid off as well so in terms of the hospitality industry in vegas what you're saying is is that as much as what's going on might be about some short-term things with the macro economy maybe recession who knows maybe attitudes post-covid towards gambling quite a lot of it is being driven by automation and ai of course yeah that's the future of this town especially think about this these These casinos are not so much hospitality and entertainment companies as much as they are data companies.

23:11And that's all they do. They collect data, they know all about the players, and it's a lot of numbers. And a lot of people that are right now being paid to crunch numbers are going to be some of the very first people in this town to notice that their job is just non-existent anymore because AI can do what they used to do in a week in just a few seconds. And then from there, we already have automated cars in some cities like Austin, Texas. They haven't made it to Vegas yet. I'm sure you've seen RoboTaxi and Waymo and things like this. Vegas is very different. But once they can figure out how to navigate the strip, you're going to have Lyft drivers, Uber drivers who are gig workers that can do their own thing right now not having a job.

23:52You're going to find taxi drivers who are being laid off. And then limousine drivers, they might have some more longevity because they have personality. People expect that service, that hand-on-hand service. They want to not have to open their own doors. But everything from bartenders, if you go over to the Planet Hollywood right here, there's a place called Tipsy Robots, been around for years. There's a place in Bellagio that's making desserts for chocolate, high-end chocolatier from Europe somewhere using a robot. Yeah, it's coming, and people don't see it because they think it's going to stay the same forever.

24:26But it's going to hit this town hard, I think. What do you think Vegas will look like in terms of that particular question in, say, five years' time? Well, I mean, every innovation has come about and they said it would destroy the economy, but it never has. I don't know that AI is the same as any other innovation. And I don't really have a good answer for that because the problem is for every good paying job that the casino has, it allows a person that lives here full time to participate in the economy off the strip. And if we lose those good paying jobs to things like AI and automation, It puts all of the businesses off the strip at immediate risk of not having people that can come in and patronize those businesses.

25:04So it's not just about five miles of Las Vegas Boulevard and one mile of Fremont Street. It's about everything that happens off here and the three million people that live in this town that have businesses that rely on so many people getting paid well by these properties. And these massive companies, because they are huge profit making organizations, huge profit extracting organization. They're looking at this right now? They're investing in it right now? They've already been investing in it. There's a hotel downtown that I won't name that your viewers can look into that during COVID installed a security system that uses algorithms to predict when a person had COVID-19 so they could approach them on property and take their temperature.

25:43These properties have been using AI for a really long time. People think if they put on a mask, even a Hollywood level one, that the casino wouldn't know if they were banned. but the casino knows your gait because it's using an algorithm to see how you walk, for example. So these casinos have been looking into this, and these casinos are investing in it. They have data centers, and they have deals with data centers, and this is something that the industry has been toying with, the robotics for cleaning rooms, for example, to turn rooms over faster. It takes two people, I believe, to turn over a room in a certain amount of time, and they're expected to do it over and over and over again.

26:16And if you could replace that with one or two, and I know it sounds sci-fi to a lot of people out there, autonomous, human-looking robots that could do it at a rapid clip and just work forever, then you would only have to invest in one thing once plus the maintenance and not have to have all of that human labor involved in it over and over again. And you think we're close to that? I don't know how close we are to that. But it's something that they are thinking about. Oh, it's definitely something they're thinking about. But if you look at what Elon Musk wants to do, he wants to install his version of that future as early as next year.