In his first term, President Donald Trump spun alternative realities. In his second, he’s making everyone live in them.

Trump conjured his most dystopian vision yet of a crime-ridden American inner city to justify his emergency federal takeover of Washington, DC’s police department and to order National Guard troops onto the streets.

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” Trump said in a macho news conference in the White House Briefing Room on Monday.

Everyone inside the Beltway would like to feel safer, and the capital has law-and-order challenges like many other major cities. But Trump’s hellish depiction contradicted data showing carjackings, gun crimes and homicides

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