President Donald Trump on Friday suggested ‘beautiful, young girls” are approaching him to gush about the effect his federal takeover of law enforcement has had on Washington, DC as he addressed a crowd of police officers in support of a GOP candidate for governor of his former home state.
Trump was speaking at a de facto political rally in Nassau County in New York when he began boasting about the crime rate in Washington, which was falling for years before he took office and has continued to fall even as he has attempted to take credit for the years-long trend.
He claimed his administration’s extended use of the National Guard to have soldiers wandering about the capital with guns but without any police powers has made Washington “one of the safest cities in the country” with “very little crime” before pivoting to a bizarre anecdote about random women demanding to thank him for it.
“Every day I come to the White House, people are thanking me: ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you, thank you, sir,’” he said.
“ You know these young, beautiful girls. These young, beautiful girls. These young, beautiful girls in the White House. You know they come in. Now I’m not supposed to say beautiful, but what the hell? These young, these gorgeous, beautiful girls-they-they want to be safe, and they come,” he continued before feigning an alleged conversation with one of them.
‘”Mr. President, may I speak to you? Thank you, sir. Thank you’ — I said, “Why are you thanking me?” he said.
He then returned to the alleged girl’s part and replied: “’Because a year and a half ago, I was afraid to leave. I was afraid to open the door of my apartment, and now I walk to the White House every morning, and I have absolutely no fear.’”
The president’s bizarre comments came following a lengthy bill of speakers who included nominally non-political law enforcement personnel such as Attorney General Todd Blanche and Nassau County native turned FBI Director Kash Patel, who praised the audience of police officers as “the bravest warriors on God’s green earth” and credited Trump for the crime trends that date back to the last two years of the Biden administration.
“Thanks to President Trump’s brilliant leadership, the American dream is not a dream anymore. It is a reality. I’m living it. We’re living it together,” said Patel.
Also in attendance but not on the speaking program was actor Kelsey Grammar, the Cheers and Frasier star who has long had a residence in the New York region. The actor is a longtime supporter of and donor to Republican candidates.
The U.S. has seen a major drop in homicides over the last year, with the Council on Criminal Justice putting the change at 18 percent — or 254 fewer killings — in a report released last month.
Experts suggest these broadly positive shifts are surpassing expectations, pushing crime rates below baseline levels observed before 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, which had triggered historic surges in violence.
While both Democrats and Republicans nationwide have sought to claim credit for these improvements in a competitive midterm election year, the report indicates that these trends are consistent across cities with diverse political leadership.
Yet that hasn’t kept Trump from repeatedly claiming credit and blaming the prior Biden administration for crimes committed during the previous four years while simultaneously insisting that his anti-immigrant policies are responsible for the drop in crime despite no evidence to support his claims.