by Wayne Besen • August 15, 2025 • Opinion, Politics, Weekly Column • Comments (0) • 334

DC Invasion is a Rehearsal for Trump Stealing the Midterms

Manic GOP Effort Underway to Rig the Upcoming Election

President Donald Trump’s imperial takeover of Washington, DC this week has nothing to do with stopping crime, as he facetiously claims. DC’s biggest crime spree was the Trump-inspired mob that brutalized police and ransacked the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

The New York Times reported that on Jan. 6, pro-Trump insurrectionists “committed a month’s worth of crime in the span of about three hours”. Trump’s unforgivable response was to praise these hooligans: “We love you. You’re very special.”

One of his first acts upon reelection was pardoning approximately 1600 of these goons. This included freeing “more than 600 people charged with assaulting, resisting or interfering with the police”. Among the forgiven were 14 members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia who had their sentences commuted, despite being convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Donald Trump is now rewriting history and presenting himself as a great crimefighter.

“This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump belched during a news conference at the White House, where he was surrounded by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The irony wasn’t lost on anyone that Trump had been convicted of 34 criminal felony counts, Hegseth paid a $50,000 settlement to a woman who accused him of sexual assault, and Bondi is under fire for burying the sleazy Jeffrey Epstein files that repeatedly name Donald Trump. Putting this corrupt gang in charge of stopping crime in Washington, is the equivalent of having Chicago, in the 1920’s, hiring Al Capone to eliminate mob violence.

To rationalize his Mussolini-like move, Trump painted a fictional portrait of DC. He maligned our capital as overrun by “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals”. He misrepresented the District as “unsafe”, “dirty” and “disgusting”.

Justice Department data contradicted Trump. It found that violent crime in Washington was down 35% last year from 2023, the lowest in more than 30 years. The data showed a decline in homicides, robberies, armed carjackings and assaults with a dangerous weapon. This is hardly a city under siege in need of a military intervention from the National Guard, FBI and ATF.

Obviously, Trump is completely full of shit on his DC crime narrative. What’s really going on here is far more disturbing. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump is plotting to steal the 2026 midterm elections by any means necessary.