USA Today published an article detailing how expensive it is for National Guard troops to act as D.C. garbage men. It’s intended to anger readers, and probably did anger many who didn’t notice the most important information that USA Today left out of the article.

So, ask yourself what’s missing in this headline and article?

DC National Guard deployment to cost $200 million, as soldiers pick up trash, blow leaves

President Donald Trump‘s deployment of the Washington, DC, National Guard to patrol national monuments, pick up trash and shovel mulch in its home city is projected to cost taxpayers $201 million – more than $1.8 million a day, according to internal budget information seen by USA TODAY.

So far, the DC National Guard has spent more than $45 million on the deployment, with $18.8 million going toward operations and $26.6 million toward pay and allowances for soldiers, according to the internal tally. That price tag does not include the cost to deploy the more than 1,300 National Guardsmen from eight states that are also stationed in Washington.

The Pentagon said it will not know the cost of the mission until it concludes. It is currently set to wrap up on Nov. 30, but Trump could extend it.

There’s much more in this vein. In the fourth paragraph, USA Today notes that Trump sent the Guard to D.C., “saying its presence was needed to deter crime...” The rest of the essay, though, just talks about the costs, while adding that the Guards’ presence “has touched off protests from Washington residents and a lawsuit filed Sept. 4 by the city's attorney general, Brian Schwalb...”

Aside from that one tiny line about what Trump claimed was the reason for sending in the National Guard (implying that Trump is lying), the article ignored entirely the crime reduction that is the main reason the guard was sent. Nevertheless, the essay engaged in huge amounts of diligent research to detail exactly how much garbage the Guard cleaned up:

Those troops have “cleared 1,015 bags of trash, spread 744 cubic yards of mulch, removed five truckloads of plant waste, cleared 6.7 miles of roadway, and painted 270 feet of fencing,” according to the update.

Isn’t it pathetic that DC had that much stuff for the Guard to do? Why wasn’t it clean before the deployment? Maybe USA Today could ask that question.

It is hard to find articles saying how much crime has dropped since the deployment, because today’s journalists would rather write about protests. However, on August 25, just two weeks into the deployment, the Hill reported “Massive crime drop in DC — city sees zero-murder week.”

I’ve tried unsuccessfully to find more information about crime numbers myself, using Google AI. I can’t find these numbers in the local paper, The Washington Post, nor did I find them in USA Today, nor NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News.

However, if you do the research, you can find the facts about crime in D.C. since the federal takeover. On August 20, a D.C. Fox outlet reported that

For the first time in a long time, D.C. has gone seven days without a homicide. Carjackings have decreased by 83%, robberies by 46%, car thefts by 21%, and overall violent crime is down 22%.

I would say that is significant, but I guess trash collection and protests are more important.

Over 2,300 criminals have been arrested.

Over 200 guns have been taken off the streets. You would think that number would be important to gun control advocates, but I guess not.

It is also good that the trash and graffiti are being cleaned up.

As for the costs of the guard, which the USA Today is so concerned about, $45 million so far equals 13 cents per person for the 340 million American population. I bet most of the people in DC and in the U.S would think 13 cents is a worthy donation to clean up the nation’s capital and to make the city much safer. I would bet the people in the most dangerous neighborhoods would certainly agree. Think how much car insurance rates might go down if we could decrease carjackings that much? Maybe we should work to keep criminals off the streets everywhere.

Even at the $200 million projection, the cost is 59 cents per person. Maybe the democrats who oppose this could stop getting whipped cream on their coffee for one day a year.

Wouldn’t most of this $200 million be spent even if the guard wasn’t in DC?

It is truly pathetic that the media works so hard to hide the truth from the American people and supports their soft-on-crime policies, including cashless bail, that keep career criminals on the streets, and fights so hard to keep all the illegals here, the ones whom Biden allowed to invade our country.

South Carolina National Guard troops patrolling in D.C. Public Domain (Department of War).