Trump takes another dictatorial step toward turning America into a police state | Editorial

The president's takeover of Washington police is all part of the authoritarian playbook that also distracts from the real problems and profiteering taking place.

by The Editorial Board

Published Aug. 16, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

There was a day when Washington, D.C., was overrun by — to use President Donald Trump’s words — “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.”

It was Jan. 6, 2021.

On that day, Trump watched for hours as armed rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, smashed windows, ransacked offices, assaulted police officers, and hunted for Vice President Mike Pence so they could hang him.

It was perhaps the most lawless day in the city’s history. More than 1,250 thugs — to use another of Trump’s favorite words — were convicted or pleaded guilty. But on his first day back in office, Trump pardoned them all.

So much for law and order.

Months later, Trump suddenly wants to fight crime in Washington. In an unprecedented move, Trump took control of the police department and sent hundreds of National Guard troops to the city.

Despite the dramatic step, don’t expect any real results. This is all part of the authoritarian playbook that also distracts from the real problems and profiteering taking place.

Never mind that crime in Washington is at a 30-year low. Or that democracy’s Public Enemy No. 1 is the convicted criminal in the Oval Office, who escaped three other indictments, and is shamelessly getting rich off the presidency.

Trump recycled racist narratives about “roving mobs,” “drugged out maniacs,” and “homeless” people as a rationale for his crackdown. But the takeover came after a Department of Government Efficiency staffer, known as “Big Balls,” was assaulted while trying to stop a carjacking.

Regardless of the impetus, Trump’s exertion of federal power is another egregious attempt to turn America into a police state.

In addition to sending in the National Guard, hundreds of federal agents and officers from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have also been deployed across Washington.

It is Trump’s latest abuse of power and waste of taxpayer money to feed his strongman fantasies. Other examples include the military parade he held on his birthday, and the nearly 5,000 federal troops sent to Los Angeles to quell protests over immigration raids there. (A trial just started over whether the move was legal.)

Now, Trump is mulling a plan to use the National Guard to create a quick strike force that would respond to protests across the country. Will that include shutting down future “No Kings” protests?

Trump’s use of force bolsters his authoritarian ambitions that were detailed in Project 2025.

The TV footage of military in the streets also provides a handy distraction from other calamities, including Trump’s tangled history with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the tariff fallout, and the unpopularity of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Justice told Trump his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files.

Trump has worked feverishly to bury those headlines and quell the ferocious backlash from his MAGA base that wants more details about the political and business leaders tied to Epstein’s sex trafficking of young girls.

What if the MAGA faithful finally realize the emperor has no clothes?

That’s also why Trump is working to rewrite negative news in real time.

When the latest jobs report showed a steep drop in hiring spurred by concerns over Trump’s tariffs, the president called the numbers rigged and fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics official who oversees the report.

He nominated an “utterly unqualified” replacement who floated the idea of doing away with the monthly jobs report.

Trump’s latest target is a Goldman Sachs economist who predicted tariffs would spur inflation — just as the jobs report showed prices starting to increase. Trump’s response was to pressure Goldman Sachs to replace the economist.

Apparently, Trump’s plan to combat bad news will be to shoot the messenger. That’s how dictators solve problems.

Meanwhile, Trump’s own muddled messaging reignited concern about his cognitive state.

In advance of an ill-advised summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin, Trump twice said he was going to Russia. The meeting was slated for a U.S. military base in Anchorage.

When asked if he planned to send troops to other cities, Trump rambled on for nearly 1,200 words.

A portion of his nonsensical response is a reminder that the country is not being led by the self-described “very stable genius”: “When I look at Chicago and I look at LA, if we didn’t go to LA three months ago, LA would be burning, like the part that didn’t burn. If he would’ve allowed the water to come down, which I told him about in my first term, I said, ‘You’re going to have problems, let it come down.’ We actually sent in our military to have the water come down into LA. They still didn’t want it to come down after the fires. But that was it, we have it coming down. But hopefully LA is watching. That mayor also, the city’s burning, they lost like 25,000 homes. I went there the day after the fire, you were there, and I saw people standing in front of a burned-down home. Their homes were incinerated. Even the steel was literally, it was all warped and literally disintegrated because of the winds and the flame, like a blowtorch.”

The news conference was filled with non sequiturs and misleading claims. Trump was flanked by a circus of sycophants who thanked and praised him.

No one in the reality-based world came away thinking crime in Washington was about to disappear. That’s because Trump offered no solutions to the root causes, such as entrenched poverty, systemic racism, underfunded schools, lack of decent jobs, and easy access to guns.

That would require hard work and leadership. Instead, the United States is mired in the muddled musings of a 79-year-old wannabe autocrat.