New York Times columnist and regular Donald Trump basher Maureen Dowd begrudgingly implied over the weekend that Trump is right on the politics and policy when it comes to crime in the nation’s capital.
Couched in some of her boilerplate attacks on the 47th president, Dowd, a longtime, influential favorite with liberal readers and pundits, wrote:
The diva of distraction is putting on a show. (They’re eating the cats and the dogs!) But progressives should not fall into Trump’s trap and play down crime, once more getting on the wrong side of an inflammatory issue. As with inflation, they should remember that personal experiences can count more than sanguine statistics.
Even if Trump is being diabolical, Democrats should not pretend everything is fine here (in DC). Because it’s not.
The columnist built her conclusion with a series of anecdotes about her sister, “Peggy,” who was having a “bad day” by ending up at D.C. police headquarters after her Buick was stolen in front of Dowd’s house while they dined in trendy Georgetown.
“Two polite officers who responded to our call said they could do little, amid a rash of brazen car thefts by teenagers,” she wrote. “One officer said that, even if they saw the perp driving in her car, they could not chase him, because of laws passed by the D.C. Council.”
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The car turned up in a Maryland suburb the next morning, where sister Peggy paid a $215 towing charge and found it littered with junk food, “a used condom,” and some stolen debit cards.
Her sister had the car detailed and then “celebrated its return” by going shopping at Bloomingdales, only to return to her car and find it had been T-boned in the lot.
Dowd continued:
Then, icing on the cake, she got over $1,800 worth of speed-camera tickets that the car thieves had racked up going 70 in 25-mile-per-hour zones, and some for running red lights. One ticket revealed that the car was stolen just after she got out of it, at 7 p.m., still light outside. For all we know, the thieves watched her get out. She had to go down to headquarters on Friday to get the police report so she could appeal the tickets.
Dowd added, “It’s hardly the most heinous crime, but you hear a lot about Washingtonians and their personal experiences being preyed on.”
The columnist did bemoan FBI agents “leaving their desk” to become “beat cops” and the National Guard troops raising the “specter” of martial law. She also called Trump the city’s number one “scofflaw” for “inciting” the January 6 mob and then pardoning the protestors.
However, “It is also true that many D.C. residents are secretly glad to see more uniforms,” she wrote. “No matter what statistics say, they don’t feel safe.”
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She admitted she finds herself “packing pepper spray,” feeling “more wary” walking around the city, and being disturbed by asking someone to “unlock the Claritin at CVS because the police don’t lock up the smash-and-grabbers.”
Dowd is not the only liberal commentator citing secret liberal support of the crime cleanup.
As Breitbart News reported, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough last week told his audience that D.C. “isn’t safe, it’s a mess” and said he’s been getting calls from liberals who are quietly supporting the Trump effort.
Dowd quoted Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst and the author of the forthcoming book When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ’s Pursuit of the President, From Nixon to Trump, in summing up “the dilemma.”
“Yes, Trump is hypocritical and scattershot on public safety,” he told the columnist. “And yes, he’s likely doing this as a flex. But he happens to be within the law here and he happens to be right.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
