The Situation: I Support It All

The Situation on Friday reported on the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at the house of former National Security Advisor John Bolton. 

Today, I want to express my support for the president’s crackdown on crime in my hometown of Washington, D.C.

I was skeptical at first. But then I stepped out of the Dupont Circle Metro station this morning, and everything changed. I realized I had been wrong. Oh so very wrong.

The Dupont Circle Krispy Kreme has always been a hotbed of crime. When I emerged from the Metro station and saw the National Guard on the scene, I suddenly saw the wisdom of the federal takeover of D.C. law enforcement.

Finally. The president is doing something about Dupont Circle donut crimes.

For far too long, daytime donut crime has plagued my city. It takes place so flagrantly and so out in the open that many people hardly even notice it anymore. They think it harmless, and it is, in its own way. But that’s the thing: A society that ignores harmless donut crime today will tomorrow turn a blind eye to churros. And then the next day it’s candy. These things are a slippery slope, and you have to draw a line somewhere. I believe in drawing lines. It’s kind of like broken windows policing—only with donuts.

The president has drawn a line. 

Calling out the National Guard to protect the donuts may seem like an overreaction. But any line you draw is going to be arbitrary. The line of what deviance a society tolerates always is arbitrary. I support the deployment of guardsmen to deal with the scourge of donut crime in Washington.

And once I realized that, the rest of the president’s policy all fell into place for me. 

A man burned an American flag near the White House yesterday evening, after President Trump issued an executive order instructing the attorney general to go after flag burners aggressively. According to the Washington Post, “The man was arrested in Lafayette Square, but not on grounds of violating the order—or of burning the flag. Instead he was charged with violating a law against setting fires at federal parks.”

I support this new executive order.

It apparently responds to the epidemic sweeping the nation of people not burning American flags. A Google search of news stories about flag burning from before the executive order reveals vanishingly few recent incidents. This is unacceptable. The nation’s capital needs flag burnings to justify responses to flag burning. But how to coax the flames?

The answer is that if the president announces aggressive enforcement of flag burning, the flag burning comes roaring back—like moths to a flame, so to speak. Indeed, it comes right to the White House’s gates. Sometimes you have to create a problem in order to call out the National Guard to deal with it.

I support this—as I’m sure do you. 

The president also wants to expand the use of the death penalty in Washington, D.C. That is unlikely to go over well with D.C. voters, who have shown repeatedly that they don’t want capital punishment here. Then again, they also don’t want the National Guard on the streets or ICE patrols hunting their neighbors. Sometimes you have to give voters what the need, not what they want.

I also support getting rid of getting rid of cash bail in Washington. Washington got rid of cash bail a long time ago. But President Trump has now issued an executive order to keep more suspects in custody longer and to get rid of the getting rid of the cash bail. “If the Attorney General determines that the District of Columbia continues to maintain a policy or practice of prohibiting cash bail,” the order reads, federal agencies should cut off federal funds to the District “to press the District of Columbia to change its policies with respect to cashless bail.” In other words, if there will be cash bail, there will be no cash.

That seems reasonable, and I certainly support it—especially for donut crimes.

Speaking of executive orders, it’s been nearly two weeks since Trump—by executive order, again—declared a “crime emergency in the District of Columbia.” And district residents are pretty uniformly grateful for this move. Until the president issued this order, most of us were unaware of the crime emergency that engulfed us. We had no idea that crime was “out of control in the District of Columbia,” nor did we know that the “increase in violent crime in the heart of our Republic . . . poses intolerable risks to vital Federal functions that take place in” the city.

That’s why fully 17 percent of Washington residents express support for the president’s takeover of DC police and putting National Guard in the streets, while only 79 percent oppose it.

And it’s why I was so excited yesterday when an executive order burst out of the White House, entitled “Additional Measures to Address the Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia.” The initial measures, gratifying though they were, had left me a little empty. Some additional measures were just what the doctor ordered.

I was particularly pleased to see the section of this new executive order instructing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “immediately create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard, subject to activation under Title 32 of the United States Code, that is dedicated to ensuring public safety and order in the Nation’s capital.” Because that is what we need: more National Guard troops on the streets outside of more donut shops.

And since what happens in Washington doesn’t always stay in Washington, I was pleased as well to see this passage, which responds to the supposed crime emergency in the district by making sure that National Guard elsewhere is ready to respond to civil disturbances not in the District of Columbia: “The Secretary of Defense shall immediately begin ensuring that each State’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law.” 

I support all of this, as I am sure do you.

Because at the end of the day, we are either the kind of society that has National Guardsmen outside of the Krispy Kreme protecting us from we’re-not-quite-sure-what in a neighborhood that is notoriously unthreatening or we’re not. We’re either the kind of society that forces the death penalty and cash bail down the throats of citizens who don’t want it or we’re not. And we’re either the kind of society that incentivizes flag burning by announcing a crackdown on it or we’re not.

And we all want to be safe, right?

The Situation continues tomorrow.