Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping second coming continues, with Friday bringing confirmation that no presidential candidate has made so many gains in so many places since Bill Clinton’s fabled Democratic sweep in 1992. His campaign improved his standing not just in 49 states but in the city that has frequently drawn his ire: Washington DC.
Everything is relative. As expected, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris won an overwhelming majority of the vote in the District of Columbia, at 92 per cent, but on Friday there was considerable surprise that of the 6.7 per cent who voted for the republican candidate, Trump’s power base in Washington was in Hill East and not the conservative citadel of Navy Yard. The speculation as to why this happened has begun. One theory is that the alarming crime figures and stories of carjackings and early hours gunfire in the gentrifying downtown neighbourhoods prompted a few residents to vote for a return of Trump.
Over his long campaign, Trump occasionally cast a baleful eye in the direction of his former – and future – home city. In January, at a campaign rally, he lamented its decline like this.
“We have a capital that we all love. Right now, it is a rat-infested, graffiti-infested s***hole where people are being killed. We are going to take it away from the mayor. That does not make me popular there, but I have to say it. We have to run our capital incredibly. We have to take the graffiti off those magnificent marble columns all over the city where they have swastikas printed on them, where they have the names of people who have hearts. People who are in love and they write a heart.”
Whatever about the love notes on the many city’s many statues, even the most avowedly Democratic residents would probably silently agree that Washington has more rodents than it technically needs. There’s a brazenness about DC rats, in keeping with the attitude of the city. Crime rates also went skywards at an alarming rate over the past couple of years: the murder rate climbed from 203 to 274 between 2022 and 2023 and reported robberies from 2,076 to 3,470.
But in keeping with the broader trend of this election year, city officials can rightly claim that they have turned the corner on these problems, just as the Harris campaign tried to illustrate to voters that the country has turned a corner on the influx of migrants across the border, on inflation, on the cost of living. Recent statistics show that violent crime in Washington DC has fallen to its lowest rate in 20 years. Armed car jackings are down a full 55 per cent on last year.
So the city’s rodents probably rank as the blithest of all Washingtonian communities when it comes to the second presidency of Donald J Trump.
On a Thursday morning of heavy silence, the wooden shutters that many businesses had placed over city centre doors and windows were removed. Violence had been anticipated in the event of a contentious election. But as the Harris campaign hopes simply died a quiet death in the balmy early hours of Wednesday morning, the thousands of supporters at her election night party in Howard ghosted home in what was a terrible, crushed silence.
By Thursday, the only sign of the coming administration was in the widened enclosure around the White House, where the inauguration will take place. Thursday’s phone call of congratulations from president Biden to Trump and his invitation to come to the White House restored some decorum to the presidential election process.
But in 2024 Trump is coming to Washington as an experienced White House operative who has a popular vote mandate, control of the Senate and possibly the House and a sympathetic, heavily conservative supreme court. His famous threat and intention to “drain the swamp” is more alive than ever.
Already, there is anxiety over the turbulence his return will mean for military and federal employees. A blueprint has been prepared for profound change planned for the Pentagon, with reduced spending and a pared-back field of top-rank officers, as well as a reversal of recent efforts to make the military more inclusive to women and transgender soldiers. The president elect has also vowed to uproot up to 100,000 federal employees from the city’s administrative infrastructure. A day after his successful election, the American Federation of Government Employees issued a campaign, through its president, that reads ominously for its members. Representing 800,000 national and DC federal employees, the statement emphasised its members will continue “to deliver for the American people”.
“But make no mistake: our union will not stand by and let any political leader – regardless of their political affiliation – run roughshod over the Constitution and our laws. During president Trump’s first term, his administration attempted to gut many of our negotiated union contracts, downsize and relocate federal agencies at great disruption and cost to taxpayers, and replace tens of thousands of non-partisan civil servants with political appointees who would blindly do his bidding.
“Federal and DC government employees should be able to do their jobs without political interference, without violating their Constitutional oath, and without breaking the law – and as their elected representative, we will do everything in our power to make sure that’s possible.”
On Saturday, a march by the Women’s Group will take place in the city, a prelude to what is planned as a huge-scale protest to take place on January 18th, just two days before Trump is sworn in. Right now, the city is enjoying a prolonged burst of sensational autumnal weather. But worry clouds scan the horizon. Whatever about the people, the much-maligned rodents of Washington DC may soon be upping and leaving for a better life, grumbling that the city has gone to hell.