Trump had been previewing such a ramp-up since last Tuesday, after sharing a photo on Truth Social of a bloody and bruised young man whom Trump claimed had been “beaten mercilessly by local thugs.” The MPD soon revealed that the picture was of Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old Department of Government Efficiency recruit infamously known as “Big Balls.” Per a local police report viewed by Politico, Coristine had been “assaulted by approximately 10 juveniles” last weekend while he, his girlfriend, and Marko Elez (a fellow DOGE staffer and eugenicist) were standing around Coristine’s car in the Dupont Circle neighborhood; two still-unidentified 15-year-olds were taken into custody. Within the very city he was bashing, the president implied that the reporters in attendance might get “mugged and raped and shot and killed,” alluded to out-of-date murder stats recorded in 2023, compared D.C. to Bogotá and Mexico City, and claimed that the capital had “been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.” Anyone who lives in D.C. understands that such bloody dystopia is more descriptive of a John Carpenter flick than of everyday life in Washington; contra Trump’s insistence that “it’s getting worse, not getting better,” murders and carjackings and other serious crimes in D.C. are at some of their lowest levels in decades. In addition to Coristine’s story, which Trump mentioned without naming the former DOGE employee, the president’s examples included the 21-year-old congressional staffer killed in the crossfire of a July gun battle, a toddler who was killed by a stray bullet while sitting in a car during July Fourth fireworks, a former Trump administration member who was shot and killed last year during a carjacking blitz, a Democratic congressman who was held up at gunpoint and had his car stolen in late 2023, and a senatorial aide who was stabbed in the chest and head earlier that year, but survived.
Author: Nitish Pahwa
Published at: 2025-08-11 22:19:56
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