What's Life Like in Washington, D.C., During Trump's Takeover?

Eleven days into the Trump Administration's takeover of the District's local law enforcement, Donald Trump visited a U.S. Park Police facility and addressed several hundred federal agents, National Guardsmen, and local police. Earlier claims promised a larger, militarized "patrol" with police and military presence, prompting excitement from conservative figures. Trump delivered a rambling speech in which he praised agents as "healthy" and "attractive," declared "everybody's safe now," and proposed "re-grassing" the city to resemble the "Trump National Golf Club." He left pizza and burgers for assembled officers and departed. National Guard troops patrolled a calm National Mall filled with tourists, co-workers, and locals.

On Thursday evening in Washington, D.C., the weird juxtapositions of life in this city, eleven days into the Trump Administration's unprecedented takeover of the District's local law enforcement, were on full display. Around dinnertime, Donald Trump made a rare foray outside the White House into the streets-though only as far as a U.S. Park Police facility. Earlier in the day, his visit had sounded as if it might be a bigger production, something with some Presidential gravitas, or the flashy authoritarian menace he favors.

Trump had told the conservative radio host Todd Starnes that he was "going out tonight, I think, with the police, and with the military, of course." The right-wing activist Charlie Kirk could barely contain his excitement, posting on X that "President Trump is going out on patrol tonight in DC. Shock and awe. Force. We're taking our country back from these cockroaches. Just the start."

In the end, Trump's "patrol" consisted of a rambling speech to several hundred federal agents, National Guardsmen, and local police, in which he praised them for looking "healthy" and "attractive," announced that "everybody's safe now," and talked about "re-grassing" the city, so that it would more closely resemble the "Trump National Golf Club." He left pizza from a place called Wiseguy and burgers from the White House kitchen for the assembled law-enforcement agents, and split.

Read at The New Yorker