President Trump’s initiative to restore law and order to the streets of the nation’s capital is a smart political move. All Americans consider Washington “our city,” and we want it safe. We can see on the nightly news that it is not, and we’re not happy about it. If Trump can turn that around, he will get well-deserved credit, not from the legacy media but from the public.
Trump and his party will reap a second major benefit, as well. If he can lessen the muggings, car jackings and armed robberies, if he can move the homeless off downtown streets, he will highlight the difference between his approach and the painful failures in Chicago, New York, Los Angles and other major cities, all of them governed by Democrats. That’s a huge political benefit, if he can secure it.
The president can take action in Washington because he has unique authority there, despite some laws granting the city “home rule” powers. Trump is taking full advantage of that unique authority, declaring a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital.
What happens on the streets of Washington resonates across the country for several reasons. Americans focus on the nation’s capital, as we have been taught since elementary school. We travel there by the millions as tourists and consider it an important visit for our school-age children. And, of course, we see it on the news every night.
This prominence means crime in areas close to the White House and Capitol Building get lots of coverage, as we saw again recently when a DOGE staffer was pummeled by a gang of young thugs. Because the national media is pervasive in DC, street crime gets more coverage there than in any city besides New York. That means Americans know the streets of Washington are none too safe, and they are none too happy about it.
Of course, restoring public safety, if Trump can manage it, won’t get the same coverage as the rampant crime for two reasons. The first and most obvious is media bias. The legacy media never awards its glittering prizes to a president they loathe. The second is that violent crime is far more newsworthy than the dull regularity of safe streets. “Dog bites man” is a lot more newsworthy than “Man quietly walks dog.”
Still, restoring public safety in DC has a huge potential payoff for Trump and the Republicans. Every major American city is plagued with violent crime, and every one is governed by Democrats. Most are very “progressive,” as are their local judges and city councils. The result is that violent, repeat offenders get bail immediately, and those who are convicted typically receive only a slap on the wrist. Punishment is even softer if offenders are under 18, as many are. Gangs are well aware of that loophole and rely on younger members to commit crimes.
This passive treatment of violent crime has predictable effects, which have been especially visible in recent years. Since the George Floyd riots in 2020, urban crime has spread like a dark, bloody stain. Young, well-armed gangs are a special problem. The mystery is why progressives use the term “social justice” for lenient treatment of this crime, which imperils law-abiding victims. It’s not social justice for them.
It’s no mystery why Trump has seized this issue. Nor is it the first time. He did it in Los Angeles, which pitted him against Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom. Smart move. Restoring order in DC is even smarter since the goal is to contrast the restoration of public safety there with its absence in Democratic-run cities across America.
Expect DC judges and local officials to try to stop him. Expect federal courts to question Trump’s authority and enjoin him if they can. Trump will relish the fight since it illustrates the Democrats’ reflexive opposition to his policies and their “soft on crime” stance.
They will also respond that “things are getting better,” that violent crime is down in some cities, including Washington. That’s true, but the numbers are still higher than in 2019 and the response seems to justify crime levels that are still terrifyingly high. That’s not a winning formula.
Still, Trump faces two political risks in pursuing this policy. The first is practical. Will his policies succeed? That poses a risk only if the courts don’t obstruct him. If they do, he will lay the blame at their door, and rightly so. The other risk is public alarm at the use of federal agencies and even National Guard troops on American streets. The public is understandably wary of the militarization and federalization of law enforcement, which has always been a local responsibility.
Despite the risks, Trump’s emphasis on restoring order to Washington is a winning political strategy. It worked with border security, and it is likely to work in the nation’s capital. If it does, the president and his party can draw a sharp contrast between Republican law enforcement and Democratic failures across America.
Tag: Democrats
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Trump’s shrewd move in DC will resonate across the US
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Trump is winning. That’s the GOP’s biggest problem
Nothing is more dangerous than success. In America, anyone can survive failure – you get up, dust yourself off and try again. But few politicians, or political parties, survive success because success kills urgency. And without urgency, voters don’t vote.
President Donald Trump has been dangerously successful.
With a seeming snap of his fingers, he has restored our nation’s borders. He has dismantled elite wokeness – rescuing our God-given pronouns and kicking men out of women’s sports. He has neutered Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons, ended taxpayer-funded pro-Hamas campus activism and quashed Bidenflation. To the astonishment of our foreign policy establishment, he has strengthened Europe’s support of NATO to match our 5-percent-of-GDP goal.
Trump has blown up the USAID’s corrupt funding of a global anti-American bureaucracy. His tariffs breathe life into the people’s economy, while unemployed bureaucrats flee Washington’s economy, leaving their homes behind like empty shells.
That’s all great news – and the Republican Party’s big problem, too.
Why would anyone still need to vote for Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections? When we’ve driven in all the nails, what is left for a hammer to do? Even Winston Churchill, two months after winning World War II, was tossed from power. Why? Because no one needed a wartime leader after the war.
Nothing is more dangerous than success. Without urgency, voters don’t vote
If they had any strategic sensibility, Democrats would embrace a few of Trump’s accomplishments and argue for post-war peace and quiet. They’d say, “We should preserve some of the good Trump has done, but this election, we need to calm things down.” That’s the campaign that would produce a Democratic House. That’s the campaign we should expect smart Democrats to run.
Fortunately for Republicans, the radicals who dominate the Democratic Party find it unbearably difficult to concede Trump any measure of accomplishment. Even so, we should expect Democrats with a keener sense of self-preservation to adjust course.
So, what must Republicans do? Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned in five decades of campaigning is this: Politics is the business of competitive purpose. Who would choose to give their vote to a lesser cause? Republicans must offer midterm voters a purpose worthy of a Presidential year election. I’d suggest this: We must make sure President Trump’s successes endure.
Step One: Take every single Trump executive order and turn it into a one-page bill. Every few days, starting this fall, bring one to the House floor and force Democrats to vote “No.” Force them to vote against closed borders, against women’s sports, against energy independence. Force them to vote against English as our official language. With a uniparty-controlled Senate and a slim, one-vote majority in the House, these bills are unlikely to pass. That’s why Trump issued them as Executive Orders. But that’s good because…
Step Two: We turn those failed votes into the 2026 GOP campaign for Congress. We put them in their urgent and truthful context: Trump’s success is fragile. It’s not something we can count on beyond his tenure. His accomplishments leave with him: They are not American law.
If President Trump doesn’t expand his majority in Congress in 2026 while he remains in office, it’s game over. His wins vanish the day he leaves the White House for Mar-a-Lago.
The border may be closed now – but without law, it reopens. Wokeness is on the ropes now – but without Congress, it comes back with a roar. America is strong again – but that strength will dissolve in coming elections with a different President and a different set of Executive Orders unless we carve it in legal stone.
That is the Republican case for 2026: make the Trump agenda permanent or watch it all disappear. Give Democrats the House, and they will spend two years impeaching Trump again, trying to jail him, setting the nation on fire and organizing to reverse his triumphs. And the Democrats who are still laughing at mainstream America will laugh harder than before.
The 2026 midterms must be a Presidential election in disguise. Which side are voters on? The one that believes in women, borders, safety and sanity? Or the one that believes men are women, criminals are victims and you are the problem?
Donald Trump is one of a kind. He is irreplaceable. And if we want his accomplishments to outlast him, we must give him the tools to finish the job.
The war is not over. There is still work to do. This time, don’t just vote for Trump. Vote to make the good he’s done last longer than the next election – or the chaotic cultural fires that preceded him will return and burn hotter. That’s dangerous for all of us.
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South Park has lost the plot
Since 1997, South Park has satirized just about every group in modern life while hilariously positioning itself as the voice of moderation. Yet with the premier of Season 27 last week, the show seems to have lost sight of reality, instead circling the drain of MSNBC-style political delirium. Far from rejecting the extremes of American politics, the shows repositions leftist extremism as the new moderation.
The new season’s first episode shows the Principal, who was once politically correct, embrace devout Christianity in an America where wokeness is effectively illegal and Christian Nationalism reigns supreme. The town’s adults are annoyed to see public schools foist religion on the kids, so they organize their usual rabble-rousing resistance. But they’re stymied by President Donald Trump, a “tin-pot dictator” who’s quite literally in bed with Satan.
The Right reacted predictably, arguing that South Park has been historically hypocritical in skewering conservatives while generally giving the Left a pass. That’s not quite true; creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have certainly dinged the Left over the years, mocking everything from atheism to the racial-grievance industry, and even the new season pokes fun at wokeness. Recently, however, a double standard has subtly emerged. While the Left is satirized as overzealous but well-meaning, the Right is portrayed as a Leftist caricature.
Over the last several seasons, conservatives cheered as Randy got sucked into a hypocritical PC frat, the school got taken over by a crusading PC Principal, and Disney got labeled “lame and gay” for making everything about diversity. Yet the moral warning against wokeness didn’t speak to its purposeful destruction and latent totalitarianism, but rather viewed it as empathy run amok – silly and often disingenuous, but not much more.
The new episode abandons all subtlety, with the woke crowd cynically embracing Christianity. Wokeness is rightly seen as transactional, but the comparison is far more unflattering to Christians than it is to the Left. PC Principal remains an absurd character who simply seeks an outlet for his performative “compassion” – apparently just like the adherents of the world’s largest religion.
But it’s Trump who mostly gets blamed for the world going to hell, as the episode embraced every trite Leftist talking point imaginable. “Woke is dead,” we’re told, because “you can just say ‘retarded’ now, nobody cares” after Trump shredded the Constitution. Trump’s staunchest supporters turn against him for his supposedly obvious extremism and corruption, as he personally profits from the presidency, censors the media, and has CBS journalists groveling in fear. He aims to install a Christian dictatorship, all while cavorting with Jeffrey Epstein and having sex with Satan. And just to rub it all in, we’re dealt multiple shots of his microphallus.
After decades of thoughtful insight, Parker and Stone have reached their final form of establishment shitlibbery. Whatever even-handed grasp of social reality the show once had is gone, lost to the creators’ apparently terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Far from satirizing the TDS of the townsfolk, the satirical subtext of the show is that the deranged are all bravely correct – the rest of the country is just too scared or corrupt to admit it. Trump really is a unique threat, and the comparatively sane liberal establishment is cowering under his boot.
Since the ’90s, South Park generally stuck to the same shtick: the adults get swept away in a moral panic before the kids emerge as the voice of reason. All politicians, religions, and identities were fair game – no one was spared, but neither was anyone truly demonized. Instead, the lesson was always the same: extremes are morally equivalent, moderation is key, and we should all view our ideological drives with a healthy dose of skepticism. There’s a reason the term “South-Park Republican” came to describe an old-guard classical liberal attuned to the modern age.
With Parker and Stone unable to recognize where extremism lies, this shtick no longer holds. The truly moderate – as well as the truly subversive – insight is that Trump himself is simply a South-Park Republican: a 90’s-style pragmatist clinging to the same moral vision of a free, prosperous and meritocratic America that most people generally shared when South Park first aired. In an age when the other side has gone fully insane and normalized its own extremism, he’s fighting for sanity in the best way he can under the circumstances.
A good satire must always grasp the underlying truth it’s meant to elevate. Unfortunately, it seems that South Park has lost the plot.