Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, clashed with President Donald Trump during his first term over his use of the National Guard and federal law enforcement to quell a spate of Black Lives Matter protests in the city.
Five years later and facing another surge of federal officers in the streets, Bowser has largely refrained from criticizing the president, even as he continues to claim that the city — where crime is at near-historic lows — is “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the World.”
When asked about the situation during a Sunday interview on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” Bowser pushed back on Trump’s portrayal of crime in the nation’s capital, but added that the president was within his rights to ramp up the number of federal officers or even deploy the D.C. National Guard, which is the only unit under the direct control of the president and not a state or territory.
“It is always the president’s prerogative to use federal law enforcement or the National Guard,” Bowser said, claiming that despite the White House’s heated rhetoric she had not spoken to the president in “several weeks.”
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“Federal law enforcement is always on the street in D.C., and we always work cooperatively with them,” she added.
When faced with a similar situation in 2020, however, Bowser struck a different tone. She pushed back when Trump deployed the National Guard to deal with protests that erupted across the city, calling for him to withdraw “all extraordinary federal law enforcement and military presence” from the city.
“The deployment of federal law enforcement personnel and equipment are inflaming demonstrators,” she said at the time, arguing that the “multiplicity of forces can breed dangerous confusion.”
Since then, she has taken a much more hands-off approach to dealing with the White House’s incursion into local policing. The mayor’s office declined to comment when approached by NOTUS on Sunday.
In March, Trump signed an executive order to create a task force to address what he said was a slipping “quality of life” in the district — the first of many broadsides aimed at local leadership in D.C.
In a series of public statements this week, the president inaccurately suggested that Washington is dealing with a large spike in crime, particularly violent crime. He latched onto a headline-grabbing incident in which a former official with the Department of Government Efficiency, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, was the victim of a brutal beating during what police say was an attempted carjacking. Two teens have since been arrested in connection with the incident.
But data from the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. analyzed by WUSA9 show that violent crime is down 26% from the same time a year ago.
Over the weekend, Trump made a cryptic announcement that he would hold a news conference Monday morning that would, “essentially, stop violent crime” in Washington. It remains unclear what the subject of the conference will be, but he has repeatedly floated a federal takeover of D.C.
“The Mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser, is a good person who has tried, but she has been given many chances, and the Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday. “The American Public is not going to put up with it any longer.”
In response to the apparent threat, Bowser told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart that she planned to keep working with the White House on what she said were her “shared priorities” with Trump.
She also praised the president’s D.C. task force for its work on municipal projects. “Cutting the grass, fixing the fountains, fixing the street lights, all of that is helpful to us,” Bowser said.
“We’re going to keep talking to the president, working with his people on the issues that are high priority for him,” she added. “Now, if the priority is to show force in an American city, we know he can do that here. But it won’t be because there’s a spike in crime.”
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