Whoops: Trump's propaganda princess just put her foot in her mouth

As the Trump administration tells conflicting lies about the severity of crime in Washington, emerging stories show that federal law enforcement in the city is wasting its time on minor violations to justify the administration’s falsehoods.

In an appearance Thursday morning on the pro-Trump “Fox & Friends” program, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked by co-host Ainsley Earhardt to address reports that crime is down in D.C.

“These numbers are absolutely correct, and we will continue to provide the American public and the press with the numbers because we’re proud of these efforts,” Leavitt replied.

But her rhetoric contradicts the narrative the Trump administration has been pushing. President Donald Trump and top officials, like Stephen Miller, have repeatedly argued that FBI data released in January showing a drop in crime is inaccurate.

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Leavitt’s statement also deceptively argues that the Trump administration deserves credit for the drop in crime. The statistics showing crime in D.C. at a 30-year low reflect data collected in 2024, when former President Joe Biden was in office. Unsurprisingly, Trump spent much of that year falsely accusing Biden of neglecting crime, which he claimed had been increasing.

And what crime is the current federal deployment of law enforcement agents to Washington dealing with?

According to a report from The Washington Post, federal agents are addressing serious crime issues like seatbelt violations and broken taillights. A checkpoint set up by agents of the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday night was greeted by locals chanting, “Go home, fascists.”

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More than 20 officers were deployed to the checkpoint in Northwest Washington instead of dealing with serious crimes.

When the federal deployment has dealt with actual criminal activity, even that has undermined the dark language from Team Trump. The man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent in a recent viral video was charged with felony assault on Wednesday.

“He thought it was funny. Well, he doesn’t think it’s funny today, because we charged him with a felony: assault on a police officer,” Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C. and a former Fox News conspiracy theorist, said in a video announcing the charges.

Former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa noted that if convicted, the sandwich thrower could face more time in prison than the Jan. 6 attackers whom Trump pardoned after taking office this year.

The federal deployment to Washington, despite the hype from Trump and his team and their allies in right-wing media, has continued to descend into farce. But the episode is serving to divert attention from Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein scandal and America’s budding economic weakness due to his tariff policies.

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