The reason Washington, D.C. is in the news this week isn’t because of anything Donald Trump did. It’s because D.C., more than any other city in the country, is a monument to the sustained, managed decline of the United States. As our capital, the District is an unmistakable symbol of a pervasive mediocrity, at every level. Every aspect of the city, from top to bottom, operates in exactly the same way.

Take the police department, for example. By now you may have seen the viral clip of the Police Chief, a woman named Pamela Smith, at a press conference with the mayor the other day. In this footage, she appears perplexed by the term “chain of command,” as if she’s never heard those words before in her entire life. A lot of people mocked that clip, and rightfully so. A police chief who doesn’t understand the concept of “chain of command” is a bit like a cook who’s never heard of the word “kitchen.” It’s the kind of jaw-dropping moment that doesn’t seem like it could possibly be real.

As bad as that clip was, the entire answer that Smith gave is even worse. The more context you provide for the clip, the more excruciating it becomes. It is important play the full context. Watch as a reporter tries, for more than a minute, to ask Smith about the extent of the federal government’s control of the D.C. police department. For all practical purposes, as we know, the White House has assumed command of the D.C. police for the next 30 days, pursuant to their legal authority over the District. But Smith seems to struggle with this concept. She implies, repeatedly, that the D.C. police are going to be working alongside the federal government as partners, without giving any indication of who’s actually in charge. And then, when the reporter finally asks the question as directly as he can, the police chief gives her now-infamous answer. Watch:

The way Muriel Bowser swoops in, at precisely that moment, is probably the most revealing part of that clip. She knows how incompetent her police chief is. So she takes over, before things get any worse. Presumably, Bowser didn’t want the police chief to expound on all of the other words and phrases she doesn’t understand. After all, when your crime lab isn’t even accredited and your murder rate is higher than Baghdad’s, there’s only so many more hits to morale the city can take.

After this footage aired, a lot of people pointed out that Smith was not hired based on merit. Instead, a couple of years ago, she was hired as the chief “equity officer” in the D.C. police department. She was a “DEI hire” in every sense. And then, very quickly, she rose to become chief of police. It would be like elevating a DEI consultant to be the CEO of, say Microsoft. It’s a decision that makes no sense whatsoever.

At the time, when Smith got the job, local media in D.C. wasn’t interested in asking her about anything substantive. Instead, of course, they highlighted her skin color and gender, as well as her life story. Watch:

Washington D.C. is a District that, if it became a state, would have the highest murder rate in the entire country. It’s so dangerous that members of Congress are being carjacked and beaten in their apartments. The security detail for a Supreme Court justice was nearly carjacked, before they shot the attackers. The only relevant question, when you’re picking a police chief for a place like this, is what exactly the police chief is going to do about the carnage that’s unfolding every day. Instead, we’re told she’s a nice lady. She’s black. And she had a tough upbringing. Those were her qualifications.

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the local media did precisely zero vetting of this woman, nor did anyone in the D.C. government. At most, she was asked superficial questions, with no follow-ups. In a separate interview, for example, the local ABC affiliate asked Smith what she was going to do about all of the murdering that was going on in Washington D.C.

Here’s how she responded:

They’re going to “come up with a plan,” according to Smith. The plan will address the murders. And it will address the lack of police officers, too. But you don’t get to know what the “plan” is. That would just be ridiculous. Any questions?

That was good enough for the local ABC affiliate. They asked no follow-ups. But in retrospect, it seems like we all know what the “plan” was. As we discussed yesterday, it looks a lot like the plan in D.C. was to fabricate crime statistics. Instead of taking a report for a carjacking or a stabbing or a shooting, officers would classify the incident as “taking an injured person to the hospital” or a “theft” or a “felony assault.” Apparently, according to the police union, when an incident is classified as a “felony assault,” it doesn’t get counted in the D.C. police department’s daily crime stats, or the FBI’s uniform crime reporting system. This is a loophole that, we can only assume, is being used by many, many other police departments.

Also, in many cases, D.C. police would simply refuse to respond to crimes, including robberies and assaults. That’s another way to cook the books, as we all know. And for the DEI lady running the police department, apparently, that’s good enough.

Again, though, this isn’t about this one person. Pamela Smith is obviously inept. She has no business holding the job that she does, and people are dying as a result. But really, she’s a part of a larger problem. And pretty much everyone can see that. In the past year, due to various incidents — prison escapes, terrorist attacks, and wildfires — several prominent government officials in major cities all across the country have been thrust into the national spotlight.

Kaitlyn Morris/Getty Images

After a jihadi mowed down more than a dozen people in New Orleans, the elderly female police chief informed the world that she had no idea — no idea whatsoever — that the city had purchased pedestrian barriers that could have prevented the attack. Whoops. That would’ve been nice to know, she said.

Screenshot / YouTube: WBNS 10TV

Then, after the mob of “festival-goers” in Cincinnati brutally attacked white people at a music festival, which has long been a state-sanctioned hotbed of anti-white racism, the female police chief scolded the people who recorded the violence. 

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Earlier in the year, in Los Angeles, as wildfires destroyed entire neighborhoods while firefighters ran out of water, it emerged that the fire chief was a strong independent lesbian who was committed to advancing the LGBTQIIA+ agenda.

@EndWokeness/X. LAFD Deputy Chief Kristine Larson.

Meanwhile the deputy fire chief, another fiercely independent girlboss, shot a video in which she downplayed the idea that female firefighters might not be able to rescue a man trapped in a fire by saying, and I, “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.” In other words, it’s the victim’s fault, as he’s burning alive, that women can’t meet the physical standards necessary to be firefighters.

Just from a statistical perspective, there’s an obvious problem here. We all know that, in the private sector, women aren’t typically leading major companies. That’s true in spite of the fact that every Fortune 500 corporation goes out of its way to advance women as part of their DEI agenda. That’s because women often choose to raise families instead of climbing the corporate ladder. In many cases, they find that they’re either unwilling or unable to work 80 hours a week, wasting away their entire life in an office building in exchange for a promotion. Also, men and women are different, and men are often just more suited for those kinds of jobs. Women certainly don’t choose to become police officers or firefighters in large numbers, for obvious reasons. And yet, whenever there’s a big news story in the past year, we discover that women are somehow running the local police or fire department.

The only way to explain what’s going on is that these departments are hiring women who are unqualified for the job, solely because they’re women. That’s not a partisan point. It’s basic math. That’s why these women immediately face-plant on the national stage, the moment they have to respond to any kind of crisis. See, the thing about incompetence is that, very often, it’s not particularly well-hidden. We’re not talking about criminal masterminds here. These people only get away with it because, in pretty much every case, no one checks on what they’re doing. But increasingly, it’s becoming impossible to ignore what’s happening. The degree of incompetence is simply too great.

By taking control of Washington D.C. — if only for 30 days or so — the Trump administration has the opportunity to highlight this incompetence even further. The administration can provide a clear contrast between Pamela Smith and Muriel Bowser on the one hand, and competent leadership on the other. They can make sure that every relevant piece of evidence is shipped to a functioning crime lab. They can unseal the D.C. police department’s fraudulent investigation into January 6, including the shooting of Ashli Babbitt. They can use basic terms like “chain of command” without freezing like a deer in the headlights. And in the end, they can expose the extent to which American decline is a choice. We can shut it down, just as quickly as the crime lab was shut down. And before any more people are forced to suffer in the nation’s capital, or any other major city, that’s exactly what needs to happen.