On Aug. 11, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a "crime emergency" in Washington, D.C., and deployed the National Guard. Calling the situation in the capital city one of "complete and total lawlessness," according to some video clips, Trump reportedly said the police would be "allowed to do whatever the hell they want" in response to apparent crime.
Trump allegedly
Trump did indeed make the above quote during his news conference announcing the "crime emergency" in D.C. As such, we rate this as a correct attribution.
When making the announcement, Trump invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which grants the federal government authority over the D.C. police department. However, the president can take over those powers only for 48 hours, unless he gives Congress a reason for an extension within that time frame. Such powers are limited to 30 days.
Trump said the police could never retaliate when people spat on them. However, he said, he was now allowing the police to do whatever they wanted in response. We reproduced the full quote below (emphasis ours):
Entire neighborhoods are now under emergency curfews. Just this past weekend, gunfire went through and you saw that — the Navy Yard, I saw it this morning. They saw that they fought back against us. They fight back until you knock the hell out of them because it's the only language they understand. But they fought back against law enforcement last night and they're not going to be fighting back long because I've instructed them, and told them, whatever happens, you know, they love to spit in the face of the police, as the police are standing up there in uniform.
They're standing and they're screaming at them an inch away from their face. And then they start spitting in their face, and I said, "You tell them: You spit and we hit." And they get hit real hard. It's a disgusting thing. I've watched that for years, for 3 or 4 years, I've watched them. Police — and they're told don't do anything under any [circumstance]. And you can see they want to get at it and they're standing there, and people are spitting in their face and they're not allowed to do anything. But now they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want. This dire public-safety crisis stems directly from the abject failures of the city's local leadership.
Trump made the above statement at the 8-minute mark, per a Fox livestream:
On Aug. 12, the National Guard began arriving in D.C.
Even though Trump claimed D.C.'s crime rate was out of control, calculating the actual data is more complicated. Using FBI data, Snopes found a decline in violent crime rates in the capital city. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser rejected Trump's claims, acknowledging there was a spike in crime in 2023 but stressing there is no current crime wave in the city.
We have also previously fact-checked former President Joe Biden's 2024 claim that the national violent crime rate was at a 50-year low. We found it to be likely true that the volume of violent crime reported to law enforcement was at or near a 50-year low in 2023-24.