00:03:23.800I've worked a hundred different jobs here.
00:03:25.320I fell in love here, had my heart broken here.
00:03:27.620D.C. is where I have lived the longest and is where I will always return to because it's my home.
00:03:32.680My situation is a little bit unusual because D.C. has a reputation as a transient city,
00:03:38.340the kind of place where people move for a few years for a job or an internship or school and then leave.
00:03:43.880People move to D.C. and might not have a ton of investment in the city long term,
00:03:48.120Or they might move here and have no idea about D.C.'s very complex history, which you really need to understand to truly understand what is happening right now with Trump's threats to D.C.
00:03:59.360One weird quirk about D.C. is that people who aren't from here or don't live here tend to really only think about it as a seat of national power.
00:04:07.280They sometimes forget that there's about 700,000 or so people who live here who endure all of these national political issues really playing out in our backyard, yet who have less electoral power and less agency because we're not a state.
00:04:24.720So where you live, if you're listening from the United States, assuming you don't live in D.C. like I do, decisions about how your state is run or how your local tax dollars are spent probably lie with your local and state leaders.
00:04:35.980But that is not really the case for me and other residents of D.C.
00:04:40.020We have this weird hybrid situation where there is some local control, but ultimately Congress has authority over everything.
00:04:46.900That same Congress that could not even be bothered to pass the city's budget before going on a recess, causing chaos in every agency that has to plan for picking up garbage or fixing potholes or keeping the libraries and swimming pools open.
00:04:59.760And all of this is made worse by the fact that D.C. residents are essentially disenfranchised.
00:05:04.780We don't have representatives who can vote in either the House or the Senate.
00:05:08.920Even though we pay taxes just like every other American,
00:05:12.660we have less electoral power and less agency because we're not a state.
00:05:16.660Our license plates here in D.C. say taxation without representation,
00:05:20.880kind of a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Revolutionary War era rallying cry
00:05:26.540A not-so-fun fact about D.C. is that D.C. residents
00:05:29.680only got the right to vote in presidential elections in 1961.
00:05:35.420So when people say things like, call your representative or call your elected official to oppose XYZ, here in D.C., we have no one to call.
00:05:43.500Our congressional representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, cannot vote on bills being considered by the full House.
00:05:49.020So we don't really have a say or a voice the same way that folks in other parts of the country do.
00:05:54.340So all of this background matters for how Trump has been able to threaten D.C. even before this week.0.79
00:05:59.920He spent a lot of his campaign and first administration really just talking crap about my city.
00:06:06.880And finally, earlier this week, he announced big plans to take over D.C.0.94
00:06:11.880He really likes to say that he has taken over D.C., but we know who's a serial liar, so no one should be surprised to find out that that isn't actually true.
00:06:20.500The background of this is a little bit complicated, but the quick and dirty version is that D.C. has had what's called Home Rule, or the ability for D.C. to govern itself, since the 1970s thanks to the Home Rule Act.
00:06:31.780So even though D.C. is not a state, our local government and leaders can still make decisions about what happens here in the district.
00:06:38.040When the Home Rule Act passed, it was a win for local control and democracy.
00:06:42.400But it was also an acknowledgment by Congress that the minutiae of running a city is best left to the folks who live there.
00:06:48.900So to be clear, as of today, home rule for D.C. still stands.
00:07:02.880Trump has taken over D.C.'s police, our local police force, Metropolitan Police Department, or MPD, but not the city itself.
00:07:11.400But even still, Trump just taking over MPD, our police force, is still very, very bad.
00:07:19.400So let's talk about exactly what's going on here in D.C.
00:07:22.440So here's the basics of what's going on.
00:07:25.280On Monday, the Trump administration announced that they were federalizing D.C.'s police force, the Metropolitan Police Department, or MPD.
00:07:32.340They also announced that the National Guard would be deployed in D.C.
00:07:36.200Now, D.C. isn't a state, but it does have a National Guard that Trump and only Trump has authority over.
00:07:42.700Trump is also sending in National Guard from other states into D.C.
00:07:46.700To do this, Trump evoked Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, which allows for the president to take over MPD for 48 hours, with possible extensions to 30 days during times of emergencies.
00:07:57.820To do it for any longer than 30 days requires congressional approval, which, let's be real, I honestly don't think would be difficult for Trump to achieve.
00:08:05.640I cannot overstate how unprecedented this is.
00:08:09.560No president has done this before, ever.
00:08:12.260So all of this means that about 850 officers and agents took part in what they called a
00:08:16.940massive law enforcement surge across D.C., with about 100 to 200 soldiers expected to
00:08:22.460be out on the streets at any given time.
00:09:26.060A recent Department of Justice report shows that violent crime is down 35 percent since 2023, returning to the previous trend of decreasing crime that puts the district's violent crime rate at its lowest in 30 years.
00:09:37.840That report shows that when compared to the 2023 numbers, homicides are down 32 percent, armed carjackings are down 53 percent, and assaults with a dangerous weapon are down 27 percent.
00:09:47.840He also said that the murders in 2023 in D.C. reached the highest rate, this is me quoting him, probably ever going back 25 years, but that they didn't know what that means because the data just goes back 25 years.
00:10:03.260And so when I watched this presser in real time, I was thinking, oh, I guess he's trying to say that, you know, we've only been collecting this data for the last 25 years.
00:10:11.020before then we don't really have records. But then when I actually sat down to think about it,
00:10:15.84025 years ago was the year 2000. Does Trump think that crime data was not being collected in the
00:10:22.720year 2000? It absolutely was. So that was just another lie. And if people know one thing about
00:10:29.400D.C. is that D.C. in the 80s and 90s, crime was genuinely quite bad. This was during the crack
00:10:35.840epidemic that hit D.C. very hard. The city's own crime statistics, which we have from the 1970s,
00:10:42.70080s and 90s, show that back then when the population of D.C. was smaller, there were much
00:10:48.040higher numbers of homicides. So not only is that all a lie, it's also a weird, obvious lie where
00:10:54.800when you hear it, you think, OK, sure. But then when you think about it for just a couple of
00:10:59.840seconds, you realize how strange and obvious and glaring of a lie that is. I almost wonder if Trump
00:11:06.960really does think that crime statistics were not being collected in the year 2000.
00:11:12.980And just anecdotally, I've lived here more or less my entire adult life. Crime ebbs and flows.
00:11:19.500It is part of city life. I understand that. However, crime in D.C. right now is not out
00:11:26.300of control. It just isn't. I go for walks by myself. I go out at night and I feel safe because
00:11:32.160this is where I live. It feels safe to me. Let's take a quick break.
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00:12:30.140When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:12:36.020I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:12:42.420I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:12:45.880I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:12:54.480Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:12:58.740I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:13:03.300I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:13:10.720They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:13:14.540But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:13:18.200They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:13:21.780Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:13:30.240If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:13:36.120This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:13:42.340pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the
00:13:46.920same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,
00:13:52.340the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:13:55.760I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.
00:13:59.340From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,
00:14:04.200nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:14:10.340characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart
00:14:15.600pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much
00:14:20.360you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app
00:14:24.980apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts see you between the pages
00:14:40.340Now, I've heard a lot of people say that this entire thing is a response to the attack on Edward Corustein, also known as the former staffer in Elon Musk's doge department, Big Balls.
00:14:55.520Big Balls was allegedly attacked on the street in D.C.
00:14:59.500Thanks to Elon Musk, a one-man misinformation super spreader, there has been a lot of inaccurate information about the facts of what exactly happened in that situation.
00:15:11.080So I'm not going to really get into that.
00:15:13.460However, this image of big balls bloodied on the streets of D.C. created a very visceral image of crime in D.C.
00:15:21.480And I think this is the thing about crime, which is that it doesn't really matter if all of the stats, all of the data and all the evidence suggest, oh, crime is going down.0.80
00:15:31.260If you have one visceral image of a bloody 19 year old or one video, one viral video of like a looted out CVS, this has actually caused a bit of a, I don't know, a personal crisis of confidence.
00:15:46.640Because as someone who has spent my entire career advocating for the importance of truth and facts and media, the whole thing just makes me wonder if we truly are like beyond facts.
00:15:58.140If facts simply do not matter anymore, the crime rate can be going down by every measure, but people still have an emotionally charged photo or a video and whatever reality that piece of media affirms is the only reality that matters.
00:16:15.140And I realized that I've really been trying to combat the truciness, I know that's not a word, but allow me that, of the emotions with actual facts.
00:16:26.480And it's not working because those facts just don't work anymore.
00:16:30.240It's been a whole thing I've been wrestling with.
00:16:34.540So I totally get why people think that the attack on him is what sparked all of this.0.95
00:16:40.600I've seen this framing online a lot, that big balls got beat up by some girls and Elon Musk had to ask Daddy Trump to take over D.C. because of it.
00:16:49.260But I will say that Trump has been talking about taking over MPD for a very long time before Elon Musk was ever even in the White House.
00:16:58.500He referenced it some during his first administration.
00:17:02.000But for the most part back then, he more or less ignored D.C.'s local issues.
00:17:07.220And then he really kicked it up a notch during his second campaign.
00:17:11.260He actually started out his second administration right when he was in office in January with threatening to take over D.C.
00:17:17.460And MPD, our mayor, Muriel Bowser, did not make certain concessions, which we'll get into in a moment.
00:17:23.300He also threatened to take over D.C. when another former Trump administration staffer, Mike Gill, was shot and killed during a carjacking back in February.
00:17:31.140Trump made those same threats of taking over MPD.
00:17:33.540So big balls might have been a convenient timing or a good excuse to actually move forward at a time when Trump was eager to talk about anything other than his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:17:45.220But I guess I would say I would push back a bit on narratives that suggest that big balls got attacked and that's why Trump is taking over MPD, because I don't really think it paints the full story of the fact that this has been a long time coming to anybody paying attention to the conversation that Trump is having about D.C.
00:18:03.220So if it's not really about crime, then what is it really about?
00:18:08.740First, I think with Trump, the overarching theme is always punishment.
00:18:14.400Listen, nobody not votes for Republicans like D.C. does not vote for Republicans.
00:18:19.360Like, if you've ever seen that map of who all voted for Ronald Reagan back in 1984,
00:18:25.520the entire map is just one big blotch of full, solid red, which is so unusual.
00:18:30.880And there's just two splotches of blue where they voted for Mondale and not Reagan, Minnesota and D.C., right?
00:18:38.880And so rejecting Republicans has always been our thing in D.C., and especially so for Trump.
00:18:45.560D.C. overwhelmingly did not vote for Trump.
00:18:48.480Trump did not even win D.C.'s Republican primary, Nikki Haley, did.
00:18:52.960We could not be making it any more clear that we do not like him here.
00:18:56.620And so I think that that's one big reason why you have Trump taking such a hostile stance against this city from day one, because we didn't vote for him.
00:19:06.120We don't like him. I think that that's also why you saw him start out his administration with these horrible attacks on federal workers.
00:19:13.700I think a class of people that he senses as being overwhelmingly educated and also overwhelmingly not for him.
00:19:21.980So I think the first and foremost thing with Trump is always going to be retribution.
00:19:25.600But I also think it is clearly about mounting federal takeovers, starting with Democrat-run cities, and also, let's be real, cities with Black and brown political leadership and populations.
00:19:38.820The cities that he called out by name during his rambling press conference on Monday as places that he was looking to take over next were cities like Baltimore, Chicago, you know, cities that have big, booming Black and brown populations and Black mayors.
00:19:54.860It's just incredibly clear what is going on here, and it's not crime.
00:21:08.160Those are not going to be the people who are most useful
00:21:10.960as officers trying to stop the kind of crime that D.C. has,
00:21:15.340like walking the streets as beat cops.
00:21:18.520One of the points that our mayor, Muriel Bowser, has made is that Trump bringing in federal officers and military personnel who don't know D.C. law, because why would they?
00:21:27.340They don't work here and are not trained in D.C.'s community policing protocols.
00:21:32.420He is also bringing in military personnel.
00:21:35.680They are not meant to be dealing with civilians and walking a beat on the streets of D.C., but that is exactly what they are doing right outside my apartment right now.
00:22:12.260If you want to know my thoughts on Muriel Bowser, I'll be happy to tell you.
00:22:15.240However, the point that I have been making for the last few months is that Mayor Bowser is in a position that no other elected official in the country is in.
00:22:26.300She is navigating something that no other elected official in the United States has to navigate because she is mayor of a city that is not a state.0.88
00:22:33.640She essentially has to navigate this public relationship with an unstable, lying, racist, fascist in such a way that it will hopefully end with what is best for our city taking place.0.65
00:22:45.700Which, in my defenses of her, I guess I basically just feel that we should own that that is a reality, right?0.79
00:22:53.320And that's a complicated thing to have to navigate.
00:22:55.580During Trump's first administration, Bowser was really taking a defiant stance.0.99
00:23:00.800She did things like painting Black Lives Matter outside of the White House, for instance.
00:23:06.300But this time around, we saw a very different public positioning from the mayor.0.57
00:23:12.200She took this stance of appeasement and contrition with Trump very early, I suspect in the hope
00:23:19.260that they could play nice and Trump would just sort of ignore D.C.'s local issues.
00:23:24.160When Trump returned to office in January, two of the early things that he demanded our mayor
00:23:29.000do was tear up Black Lives Matter Plaza Boulevard outside of the White House and remove encampments0.80
00:23:34.380of unhoused people at Trump's direction, which she did very quickly. But none of that, none of that
00:23:41.500whole song and dance that she did of appeasing Trump and doing what he wanted her to do avoided
00:23:46.400the outcome that we are seeing this week of Trump federalizing the police force. She had this0.97
00:23:51.620strategy of appeasement and making concessions in an attempt to avoid this outcome, although to be0.99
00:23:56.820clear, D.C. still has home rule for now. So that horrible, horrible outcome has not yet come to
00:24:01.600fruition. But I think it's a good example of why appeasing a fascist doesn't work. And it's
00:24:07.620disappointing that we have to keep learning that lesson over and over and over again. And I have
00:24:13.700to say, I've been a little disappointed with the way that the mayor is responding to the takeover
00:24:18.300of MPD. She basically has been on record as saying this might be a good thing for the city to have
00:24:23.400more police and have military personnel walking around. This could be a good thing. Something to
00:24:27.920really note is that the first messages out of our mayor's office when this went down was that
00:24:32.900they were saying they were not going to be mounting any kind of legal challenge to what
00:24:37.200the Trump administration is doing in D.C. because they did not think they would be able to legally
00:24:41.720challenge anything because the Trump administration did everything by the book. That is pretty
00:24:48.560different from what we saw from Trump's actions earlier in the administration when it seemed like
00:24:53.340they were just throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick and what would be challenged in
00:24:57.640court. He did this takeover of D.C.'s police force legally to the elector, to the point where it was
00:25:03.660not able to be challenged at all legally, which is pretty telling. It wasn't until I think yesterday
00:25:08.900on some kind of a webinar about these changes that the mayor said anything really critical
00:25:13.600about what was happening. She called it a, quote, authoritarian push, but really barely mentioned
00:25:20.080Trump by name in any of her public comments. Now, it's possible that she might just be trying to
00:25:25.800further appease Trump to stave off further threats on D.C.'s home rule, which, I don't know, maybe is
00:25:31.860a strategy, but in my heart, the way that this is coming off to me, it just feels like we don't have
00:25:39.640a voice championing us. And in a moment of crisis, that's really what you want. Whether that person
00:25:46.580can actually do anything. You do want someone who seems to be like they have your back and
00:25:51.920they're advocating for you. And personally, I have not felt like that at all right now. The
00:25:56.520only thing I feel like we have is ourselves, is each other, is organizers. I feel like our
00:26:01.880elected officials have kind of abandoned us. Both the mayor and the city council have been pretty
00:26:07.640quiet on any criticism of this takeover. Our congressional representative Eleanor Holmes
00:26:12.660Norton has also kind of stayed out of it. She has a long history of being a civil rights activist
00:26:18.560going back decades who has really fought hard and championed D.C.'s autonomy. However, she is also
00:26:25.980the second oldest member of Congress. And so there's lots of questions about whether or not
00:26:30.800we actually have the leadership that can support D.C. at a time when we clearly need the support
00:26:36.300and the backbone. And again, I get that some of this might be good strategy. I'm sure somebody
00:26:41.960out there listening is like, oh, maybe this is all part of their strategy. But if I'm being honest,
00:26:48.060it just feels really shitty. Part of this might be my own emotionality because this week has been
00:26:54.860a doozy. It is a doozy to walk around your city and see military personnel harassing people. It's
00:27:01.500a doozy to feel like you don't have a say in what's happening on your own streets, in your own
00:27:07.500block on your own city. And so I want to own that like this could be just my own emotionality of
00:27:15.440the situation. I do think that even if it's meaningless posturing, I would have liked to
00:27:21.580have seen elected officials in D.C. who at least made me feel like they were standing up to Trump
00:27:28.280if even if in reality there wasn't much they could do, if it was just words. It really made me
00:27:33.580realize, even if words are just words, sometimes you want to hear the words. I don't know. Maybe
00:27:38.340it sounds silly, but I was a little bit disappointed. Like, you are looking for a
00:27:42.600message of strength and leadership, like somebody's got this, and then just hearing crickets doesn't
00:27:47.680feel great. And I do also want to own that, unfortunately, the reality is that the mayor of
00:27:53.440D.C. has a lot less power and protection than someone like Gavin Newsom, who has two senators
00:28:00.800behind him when he took a defiant stance against Trump when Trump deployed the National Guard in
00:28:05.880LA earlier this summer. Even folks like J.B. Pritzker or Wes Moore, they're all governors
00:28:10.740of states, and that statehood gives them a lot more protection and autonomy. And here in D.C.,
00:28:17.160we simply do not have that. And I think when we talk about the importance of stuff like statehood,
00:28:22.120it is so easy to just get caught up in talking about it as a civil rights issue or a racial
00:28:27.020justice issue or democracy issue, which it absolutely is, but statehood also really matters
00:28:32.460for how we are able to combat this kind of chaos and hostility. Otherwise, D.C. residents like me
00:28:38.360end up feeling like we are being held hostage by a madman.
00:29:36.440If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:29:42.360This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:29:48.780pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:29:54.760I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:30:01.940I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:30:05.520From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:30:11.460It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:30:18.940Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:30:28.540Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:31:44.100all of this just goes to show that dc needed full statehood yesterday we needed full statehood
00:31:51.520before this ever before trump was ever even in the white house we've needed it since forever
00:31:55.880and we don't have that and until we have that this kind of chaos that trump has been able to
00:32:01.480unleash on our city is not going to end and i want to talk a bit about what i'm seeing as a dc
00:32:07.960resident here on the ground because things in D.C. are chaotic and grim. We've seen Border Patrol,
00:32:15.600ICE, DEA, FBI, and the National Guard walking the streets of D.C. Anecdotally, I can say I have seen
00:32:22.480them in places that, to me, really don't make a ton of sense, like patrolling the super safe
00:32:28.580Georgetown neighborhood at 10 o'clock at night when it's essentially a ghost town, or patrolling
00:32:33.760the National Mall at 2 p.m. on a weekday. There was also an ICE raid at the Home Depot out in
00:32:39.440Northeast this week, too. The D.C. police put out an executive order saying that the D.C. police
00:32:44.400were now going to be coordinating with ICE so that even if they stop somebody and that stop
00:32:49.400does not end with an arrest or anybody in custody, they would still be allowed to alert ICE about
00:32:55.460that person and their whereabouts, which I think gives you a sense of the kind of coordination
00:32:59.080they are building into all of this. Last night, there was a huge display of force and arrests
00:33:04.360right on my block, which is essentially residential. I counted over a dozen police
00:33:08.780vehicles, including unmarked SUVs and Border Patrol pickup trucks. They arrested people who
00:33:13.960were just coming out of a grocery store. And a lot of these big shows of force have been around
00:33:19.360arrests for very low-level offenses. Things like people smoking weed in public, which here in D.C.,
00:33:26.040possession of marijuana is decriminalized or open containers like drinking in parks or fair evasions
00:33:32.780on buses. The kinds of offenses that it makes absolutely no sense to have FBI agents arresting
00:33:39.980people for. It seems like we now have a bit more information about the category of arrests that
00:33:45.020were made, and they can kind of make sense of some of the facts and figures and stats coming
00:33:49.300out of the White House about what they've been doing in D.C. this week. You know, they've been
00:33:52.640putting out these big statistics about all of these arrests that they come into the city and
00:33:56.980been able to make this week. So far, according to my sources, in total, since this went down on
00:34:02.100Monday, they have made about 100 arrests. However, that is about average for the amount of arrests
00:34:07.900that D.C. would have made without the Trump administration being in charge. So that means
00:34:11.840after all of this, they are not even really getting more lawbreakers off the streets. So again,
00:34:17.640if this whole thing is meant to be about crime, which Trump says it is, what exactly is the point?
00:34:22.640As I'm recording this tonight, I've been reading up on updates about a checkpoint they set up on 14th and U Street, which is kind of a busy corridor with lots of bars and restaurants and shops, where they've apparently been stopping every car just trying to drive by.
00:34:37.520I don't know what they're looking for, and honestly, they probably don't even either.
00:34:40.980I did an interview with a local reporter from The Washington Post who told me that the majority of the stops were for things like folks not wearing seatbelts or broken taillights or having expired tags.
00:35:33.980And I always wonder, like, how much money are we paying to pay these people to stand around in an empty neighborhood at 10 o'clock at night?
00:35:42.360I think the point of all of this is really to inflame tensions and have there be chaos on the streets.
00:35:47.940Not for nothing, but we're also in the middle of a pretty bad heat wave here in D.C., so tempers are already hot.
00:35:54.240Now you've got law enforcement, law enforcement that are not necessarily trained on D.C.'s protocols, some of whom are military and thus not even really trained on dealing with civilians.0.76
00:36:04.540And my biggest worry is that all of this is going to result in somebody doing something stupid and the whole thing will turn into a powder keg.0.93
00:36:11.860And I have to imagine that that is the outcome that Trump wants as well.0.99
00:36:15.080I think that is the point of all of this.
00:36:17.220This is also a direct attack on the unhoused community here in D.C.
00:36:21.520We have already seen horrible footage of unhoused people being taken away by police.
00:42:35.320Trump has said time and time again that he wants to revoke D.C.'s home rule and have
00:42:40.300the federal government dictate how D.C. is run as a city.
00:42:43.660This would mean that D.C. would have no mayor, no city council, and the only people who would decide how D.C. is run are Trump and a small handful of commissioners that Trump personally appoints.
00:42:55.300I think the last time that D.C. did not have home rule, it was three people.
00:43:01.040In fact, the only person who lived in D.C. who could even potentially see the impact of their leadership was the president who lived in the White House.
00:43:11.500So this would mean that all of D.C.'s services, public schools, social services, trash pickup, road services, D.C. public health, all of it would be run by Trump personally.
00:43:23.160To even get a road repaved in D.C. would require congressional oversight.
00:43:28.560And we have been through this once before.
00:43:31.100the last time that D.C. did not have home rule and it was run by the president and Congress,
00:43:36.580it turned out that nobody actually wanted to be in control of the minutiae and everyday issues
00:43:41.840of running a city. So guess what? They basically didn't. And D.C. was deeply neglected. It was not
00:43:48.880a good time for the city. And that is what Trump has been saying he wants to do. And the thing is,
00:43:54.700Trump hates cities, yet here he is clamoring to run one. And I think that is my big issue with
00:44:02.620all of this. I hate how people on the left, myself very much included, are kind of playing
00:44:07.920into Trump's narratives about cities and crime. I find myself being so reactive combating all of
00:44:15.140the different lies that Trump tells about our city being this bombed out crime infested hell hole
00:44:21.220that it's like he pulls me into playing his game
00:44:25.760where the only thing I can do is combat all of these lies
00:44:28.580and I'm not actually telling the truth of the reality
00:44:31.820that I know to be true about my own city.
00:44:35.040Our cities are not crime-infested hellholes.
00:45:33.280If you are an old racist fuck like Trump or a scared little boy like these pundits on Fox News1.00
00:45:38.560who make a living talking about how terrified they are when they step onto the asphalt in a city,1.00
00:45:43.980I can understand why being in a city might be unfamiliar and scary.
00:45:48.100But those of us who live in cities and those of us who like cities and those of us who respect cities, see and understand how silly that is.
00:45:56.580Right wing lawmakers and right wing influencers from red states get on TV or get on the Internet and talk about how terrified they are to walk down the streets of D.C., a city where me and the kinds of people that they would probably denigrate as my blue haired, queer, soy boy art school friends navigate every single day.
00:46:15.380Like, I thought y'all were supposed to be tough.
00:46:17.020Guys, so tough that you completely fall apart with fear when you step outside in the city
00:46:22.640that I navigate every single day of my life.
00:46:25.420We live in cities because we love culture.
00:47:00.600Cities are part of how we understand America and how we have always understood America.
00:47:05.200How many movies, books, and songs are about people heading out to the city
00:47:09.460in search of something good and something better?
00:47:11.760In that Velvet Underground song, Rock and Roll, it is a New York station that saves Jenny's life with the power of rock and roll from her town where nothing is happening at all.
00:47:22.460Like, I'm not going to sit here and let Trump rewrite the narrative that cities are bad when we know that cities are good and have always been good, no matter how many times Republicans want to howl that they don't.
00:47:33.800If you need any evidence of that, just look at real estate prices.
00:47:37.320So that is my rant about this whole thing.0.97
00:47:41.220Honestly, it has been a fucking week here in D.C.0.97
00:48:02.060And I just think that even at a time where it feels like our political leaders and elected officials maybe don't have our backs in the way that we would like them to have, the one thing I do know is that I believe in us.