Donald Trump’s ongoing fixation with renovation projects in and around Washington is ongoing, as evidenced by the president taking a tour on Sunday morning of his assorted construction projects around the nation’s capital. When he returned to the White House, the Republican was apparently inspired to send an unsubtle message to the city’s likely next mayor.
In a midday message published to his social media platform, Trump tried to smear Janeese Lewis George, the democratic socialist who recently won Washington’s Democratic mayoral primary, as a “Communist” who, among other things, “wants to empty the prisons.” That wasn’t even close to being an accurate reflection of George’s beliefs, but the president didn’t stop there.
The mayoral candidate’s agenda, Trump wrote, “will never work out, nor will I let it even have a chance.”
The president made all of this rather personal, insisting that he’s “worked too hard” to improve the city, so he won’t “let it be destroyed by a Communist adherent.”
Nearly all of the harangue was absurd — Lewis George, for example, is not a communist, no matter how many times Trump uses the word — but of particular interest was Trump’s use of the word “let,” as in, what the president is and is not willing to allow to happen in a major American city.
Earlier this month, before Washington voters backed Lewis George in a Democratic primary, a reporter asked Trump how he would feel if she were poised to become the city’s next mayor.
“Maybe we’ll take back Washington, run it on a federal basis,” he replied. “We won’t put up with it.”
In other words, the president is prepared to possibly seize control of the nation’s capital if local voters dare to elect someone he deems offensive.
“We are not going to get ICE off our streets or protect Home Rule by fearing this President. Threatening DC because you do not like how our residents vote is an attack on democracy itself,” Lewis George responded online. “The people of DC elect the Mayor of DC. And they want someone who will stand up to Trump.”
As for recent history, the president likely feels emboldened because he has already gotten away with so much. As my colleague Ja’han Jones recently explained, “Arguably nowhere in the United States have Americans been more vulnerable to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian whims than in Washington, D.C., where a submissive, Republican-led Congress has given the president broad latitude to impose his will.”
Will his ambitions take an even more radical turn after voters have their say in November? Watch this space.
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