Crime is down. But Trump's authoritarian power grabs are escalating.
Random street crimes are being used as pretexts for repression.
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The White House has seized on two unrelated incidents of street crime as a pretext for a federal government power grab at a time when violent crime has in fact dropped across the country.
The attempted carjacking of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine in Washington DC and a street brawl in Cincinnati are the latest cause célebrè on the American right, which has long supported Donald Trump’s plans for military and law enforcement crackdowns in largely Democratic cities. Both incidents are being used as anecdotal evidence of out-of-control crime across the country — a narrative that is necessary for Trump and Republicans to maintain their grip of fear on their MAGA base.
And it’s worked: a Gallup poll in October found that 64 percent of Americans believed crime had gone up in 2024, but new data from the FBI shows that is not the case. In fact, 2024 saw the lowest levels of violent crime since 1969, with violent crime down 4.5 percent across the country, including a 14.9 percent drop in murders.
The events being seized upon by the White House and Republicans as evidence of surging crime have little to do with one another save for the fact that the victims are white. In the case of the brawl in Cincinnati, those “victims” may not be entirely innocent: two white men faced off against a largely Black crowd on July 26, with one of the men spewing a racial slur. The other white man involved may have been a willing combatant in the melee, slapping a Black man in the face and squaring off to fight, as seen in videos circulating online. (Police have disputed that the slap was the impetus of the brawl.)
While the exact cause of the brawl isn’t entirely clear, videos of the incident have gone viral, framed by right-wing media as a “Black mob” beating innocent whites. On her show last Thursday night, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked a victim in the attack whether it was “racially motivated in any direction.” Neither Ingraham or the guest noted the use of the racial slur.
Vice President JD Vance and other prominent Republicans have politicized the incident, using it as an opportunity to call for everything from replacing judges to increasing funding for police.
At the same time, Trump, Elon Musk, and others have used the alleged carjacking of Coristine as justification for a federal takeover of Washington DC. Last week, Trump threatened to “FEDERALIZE” Washington, sharing a photo of a bloodied Coristine on Truth Social. Later, Trump reiterated the threat and called for juveniles to be charged as adults. He’s holding a news conference this morning to announce some sort of takeover of DC amid reports that hundreds of National Guard troops will be deployed to the city this week.
"Somebody from DOGE was very badly hurt last night. A young man who was beat up by a bunch of thugs in DC,” Trump said last Tuesday. “And either they're gonna straighten their act out in terms of government and in terms of protection or we're gonna have to federalize."
Within minutes of Trump’s Truth Social post, Elon Musk repeated the president’s call to “federalize” Washington DC, adding details about the Coristine carjacking that, like a conservative social media version of a game of telephone, don’t quite add up.
“A few days ago, a gang of about a dozen young men tried to assault a woman in her car at night in DC,” Musk wrote on X, adding that Coristine “saw what was happening, ran to defend her and was severely beaten to the point of concussion, but he saved her.”
“It is time to federalize DC,” Musk added.
Police have said that the woman was Coristine’s girlfriend, and that Coristine got her into his vehicle as a crowd of about 10 juveniles were discussing stealing the car. The juveniles then allegedly beat Coristine. Two juveniles have been arrested, the Washington Post reports.
The two events — a chaotic, drunken brawl in Cincinnati that escalated thanks to a white man’s use of the n-word, and an attempted carjacking that appears to have randomly been carried out on a DOGE staffer — are just the latest incidents to be weaponized by the Trump administration. But despite the constant claims of rising crime and racist fear mongering about attacks on white Americans from people like Trump and Musk, FBI data released last week shows that all forms of crime dropped in 2024.
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None of that has stopped Trump, Musk, and MAGA influencers from using the incidents to call for the heads of Democrats, Black Americans, and liberals. Even the more mainstream Wall Street Journal has joined the online racial melee, with the newspaper’s editorial board blaming other media outlets for ignoring the Cincinnati brawl because it “didn’t fit the mainstream media’s narrative about racial violence in America.”
What the Journal and many others on the American right conveniently leave out is that one of the “victims” in the Cincinnati incident was hurling the n-word at the crowd, and that another white man looks to have been engaged in mutual combat. Further, none of the breathless right-wing outrage over Cincinnati makes use of the facts about racially-motivated crime in the United States, which, of course, disproportionately affects Black Americans. That’s according to Trump’s own FBI, which released data on crime across the country last week, showing drops in everything from property crimes to murders.
In the case of the attempted carjacking of Coristine, the crime can barely even be considered an anecdotal piece of evidence of rising violence in Washington DC — because crime hasn’t significantly risen there.
We know this because — at least for now — the FBI still collects and reports detailed and voluminous crime data from across the country as part of its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. None of that data shows a rise in crime so significant to even remotely justify Trump’s threats to federalize Washington, let alone the right-wing narrative that America is so lawless as to necessitate a national police state.
Feelings don’t care about your facts
Both the Cincinnati brawl and the Coristine carjacking are the exact type of red meat — white victims of violent crime in largely Black, Democratic cities — that feed Trump’s base and fuel his attempts at further authoritarian power grabs, either through an increase in heavy-handed local law enforcement or federal intervention like deployment of the military. Both also come at a time when violent crime is down across the nation, returning to levels not seen since before 2020, during the chaos and isolation of the coronavirus pandemic.
The fact that crime is down — borne out by the FBI’s UCR, until, perhaps, Trump finds out and cancels the program — conflicts with the ever-present right-wing narrative of a nationwide crime epidemic. Still, the White House and Republicans have pressed on.
“We’ve had way too much lawlessness on the streets of great American cities,” Vance said on July 28 during an appearance at a Canton, Ohio, steel plant, adding that “big cities have allowed lawlessness to run wild,” naming Akron and Columbus as examples.
“If you wanna take your wife or your children out for a meal, you shouldn't be worried about street violence, and the only way to destroy that street violence is to take the thugs who engage in that violence and throw their asses in prison,” Vance said.
The remarks caused some residents of Canton, Columbus and Akron to push back on Vance’s portrayal of the cities. The Columbus Dispatch noted that crime there is down, despite Vance’s claims. Nonetheless, during a subsequent appearance on the Ruthless Podcast, Vance called the brawl in Cincinnati a “disgusting act of violence” and called for more support and funding for law enforcement.
The trend continued with Vance’s half-brother, Cory Bowman, who is running as a Republican for mayor of Cincinnati. On August 5, Bowman used a Fox News appearance to echo Vance’s comments with familiar right-wing talking points about “rhetoric” that “cops are bad,” and complained about judges and prosecutors in the city who “have a revolving door mentality that as criminals come in they’re released right back out on the street.”
At a town hall the same day, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy claimed the brawl was indicative of an “epidemic of violent crime spreading across” Cincinnati, and stressed the need for “a culture that celebrates the enforcement of the rule of law rather than to villainize it.”
The next day, Sen. Bernie Moreno held a press conference with a white woman who was unjustly beaten during the July 26 brawl, saying he would introduce legislation to raise minimum bail amounts after it was revealed that two of the men arrested in the fight were out on bail during the incident. Moreno also threatened to cut off federal funding to the city if leaders didn’t “put together a plan to protect the civil rights of all their citizens, regardless of their race.”
Vance, Bowman, and Ramaswamy are correct in pointing out that violent crime in Cincinnati has risen — albeit only slightly. According to UCR data, murders, rapes, and robberies rose slightly from 2023 to 2024 while the number of assaults remained relatively steady.
But the situation in Cincinnati is not indicative of national trends. The FBI’s UCR — which collects data from more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction over more than 340 million Americans — shows a significant drop in violent crime from 2023 to 2024, including a nearly 15 percent drop in murders.
The data also shows that the right-wing noise over the “Black mob” in Cincinnati is in no way reflective of the reality of hate crimes in America last year.
In 2024, American police reported 1,031 white victims of hate crimes compared to 3,775 Black victims. Non-white victims of all races — including Black Americans, Latinos, Asians, Arabs, Native Americans, and others — numbered 6,494. White Americans still make up 60 percent of the total US population but only comprised 15 percent of all hate crime victims in 2024.
So despite what right-wing media would have you believe, white Americans are not being targeted in disproportionately greater numbers. In fact, Black Americans face a higher risk of being attacked for their race than any other ethnicity. At 12 percent of the population, Black Americans made up just over half — 50.1 percent — of all hate crime victims in 2024.
With no actual rise in racially-motivated crimes against white Americans, the Trump administration could point to a general rise in crime nationally — but the FBI’s UCR data doesn’t bear that out, either: even property crimes dropped last year, by eight percent, which includes a 19 percent drop in carjackings.
What about crime in Washington DC? There, only one of the four categories of violent crime tracked by the UCR program — murders, rapes, assaults and robberies — has risen. Homicides, rapes, and robberies were down in 2024 compared to 2023, while assaults rose slightly.
The FBI’s data shows no rise in black-on-white crime, no general rise in violent crime across the nation, and not even a rise in the random, nightmare-scenario crimes that animate Trump’s base, like the alleged attempted carjacking of Coristine.
While the reality of crime in America doesn’t comport with the narratives being pushed by the White House, it’s no surprise that the American right has glommed onto two random incidents in order to further their authoritarian goals.
The scenes out of Cincinnati of Black Americans beating up their white counterparts are just too tantalizing to pass up. Those videos show a white woman named “Holly” being knocked unconscious — the focus of much of the right-wing outrage — but also show one of the white men involved in the brawl repeatedly using the n-word, at one point demanding that someone “get that little n***er.”
That man and the other white man involved in the fight have not been arrested, but five Black men and one Black woman have been taken into custody by police. An attorney for one of the men arrested, Jermaine Matthews, said he expects subsequent evidence to reveal a much more complex story than the simplified tale of black-on-white crime that right-wing media has amplified.
"I will tell you, that there's a lot more to the story than what's been reported thus far," the lawyer, Brandon Fox, told Fox News last week, adding that forthcoming “information will likely dispel a lot of the narrative that's already been placed out by politicians."
Speaking alongside Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval at an August 4 press conference, a local pastor, Damon Lynch, wondered why none of the white men involved in the fight have been arrested.
"It was not a Black, racist mob attacking people," Lynch said. "These were separate fights that were triggered by racial slurs that ultimately poured gasoline on the fire."
Crime as pretext
The response to the Cincinnati brawl and Coristine carjacking are fuel for a different fire: Trump, his MAGA base, and many Republicans have long desired to see authoritarian-style police and military repression of cities with large Black and Democratic populations.
During Trump’s first term, he benefitted from members of the military and law enforcement cracking down on Americans on his behalf. As protests over the killing of George Floyd swept the nation in June 2020, the US Park Police, Secret Service, DC Metro, and officers from the Bureau of Prisons cleared protesters near the White House at Lafayette Park before Trump posed with a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. That same week, military helicopters also flew low over protesters in Washington as a “show of force.”
Now, Trump’s MAGA base and Republicans are seeing their dreams of an America under right-wing authoritarianism come further to fruition, thanks to an unbridled Trump back in the White House for just six months.
Trump’s authoritarian push began with the jarring deployment of masked immigration agents in cities throughout the country to expedite a mass deportation operation that continues to this day. These raids — and the growing network of immigration prisons they are facilitating — are wildly popular on the American right. Put simply: Trump’s biggest fans love to see immigrants in pain.
But the rest of the nation has been shocked by the scenes of masked agents terrorizing American communities. In late May, citizen-led pushback against ICE raids in Los Angeles led Trump to send in the National Guard — and then the Marines. It was an escalation of Trump’s long-held plans to “send in the troops.” The situation culminated predictably, with confrontations between members of the military and protesters, and the Los Angeles Police Department helpfully stepping in to violently break up a protest that was mostly peaceful.
This type of domestic military deployment hadn’t occurred since 1992, when former President George H.W. Bush federalized the California National Guard to quell riots in Los Angeles over the police beating of Rodney King. But the deployment of active-duty troops to LA is just part of Trump’s unprecedented authoritarian advances.
Under various executive orders declaring an immigration “emergency,” 7,600 troops now have legal authority to detain immigrants across a region that makes up one-third of the entire US southern border with Mexico. This is thanks to an executive order that designates certain stretches of the border as “national defense areas” (NDAs). The Trump administration began by creating two NDAs in April and May, then added a third in July, with a fourth in planning stages, according to the Associated Press.
While these specially-designated military zones and the powers they give to active duty troops to detain immigrants are being challenged in court, the Trump administration has so far succeeded in expanding its immigration enforcement network to include nearly 8,000 soldiers.
Now, ICE is expanding even further thanks to Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which increased funding for the agency so it can hire as many as 20,000 new agents. Noem says 50,000 Americans have applied for positions, then last week announced that ICE was eliminating age limits so that even elderly Americans can serve in Trump’s masked deportation army.
Trump last week continued his threats to deploy the military on American streets.
"We'll do anything necessary to keep the Olympics safe, including using our National Guard or military," Trump said.
The next Trump, Trump announced was “considering” a takeover of Washington DC.
To call all of this a distraction from the disastrous handling of the Epstein files and Trump’s well-documented and deep ties to the deceased sex offender is giving Trump and the White House too much credit. It’s increasingly clear that Trump himself has little knowledge of what’s going on in his own administration — including who is standing directly behind him.
Instead, the ongoing militarization of immigration enforcement, the false narratives about rising crime, and the threats for further crackdowns on Americans are all part of Trump’s need to punish anyone and everyone who doesn’t support him absolutely.
Thinking it will continue to benefit them, Republicans and Trump’s MAGA base are all too happy to aid in and support his authoritarian power designs. But the thing with authoritarian power grabs is that they eventually come for everyone who questions that authority — whether anyone on the American right ever will is one of the only questions that remains.
CORRECTION: The wording of the sentence in this piece about Lafayette Park has been changed to reflect the findings of a 2021 Interior Department IG report.
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This law and order charade is all to take the attention off of the criminal in thief trump and his pal Epstein. Don't lose sight that the crazier republicans get and the more they lean on their law and order lies, the more they are simply trying to shift focus from trumpstein to anything else. A person with trump's criminal history would be serving a long stint in jail if he wasn't named trump.
Anyone else suspicious of Cortisine’s story?