With President Donald Trump's decision to take over the D.C. police department and deploy federal forces to crack down on crime in the nation's capital, a wave of hand-wringing from the press has followed. Who could have guessed that having DEA and FBI agents arrest violent criminals would be such a triggering moment for our stalwart journalistic class? 

That's rhetorical, of course. We all knew the consternation would be immense the moment Trump announced he was exercising his power under the Home Rule Act, which governs D.C. as a constitutionally mandated federal district. How that consternation would manifest was the open question, though. The answer? With complete and total absurdity. 

For example, The Washington Post had its reporters ride around the city on routes supposedly traveled by Trump. The claim? The fact that none of them were stabbed or murdered proves how safe D.C. is. 

“Violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” President Donald Trump said during a news conference on Monday. There’s “graffiti all over the walls” and “potholes in the roads,” not to mention the medians — “they’re always broken, bad, but here they’re really bad.”

The basis of those assertions appears to be secondhand. The president primarily sees Washington from the back of his armored limousine, nicknamed “The Beast,” and what he’s seen through its tinted windows has inspired his federal takeover of D.C. law enforcement, according to a White House official.

The first fallacy is immediately apparent. The article bases all its conclusions about the city only on what Trump "sees...from the back of his armored limousine" by tracing some of his normal drives to and from the White House. The president has never denied that many of his accounts of D.C. are secondhand, though. Why wouldn't they be? Is Trump supposed to go walk around the Navy Yard at midnight? And if he doesn't, does that mean the crime in those areas ceases to exist?

Then consider the conditions in which the Post did this supposed "research." They had their reporters do these routes during the day. When does most crime, especially violent crime, happen? That would be at night. It also doesn't happen in areas typically frequented by the presidential motorcade. Further, the reporters were riding around after Trump had already deployed federal authorities to patrol the streets. Everything about the Post's conclusions ranges from deeply flawed to laughably dishonest. 

They didn't stop there, though. The Post also tried to map out where most of the federal authorities are, leading Peter Baker, a long-time hack at The New York Times, to claim this. 

Wait, does Baker think there's no crime in Navy Yard, on H Street, in Dupont Circle, Downtown, or in Anacostia? Because there are dots in all those areas on the map, and there are elevated levels of crime there. A look at a heat map illustrating where crime is most concentrated also shows that there is plenty of crime happening around the National Mall, White House, and other more tourist-centric areas as well. 

Regardless, making a map of where federal authorities were at a single moment in time based on Facebook posts and the like is hardly scientific. It's a largely meaningless conglomeration of anecdotes. The lack of dots on that map in certain areas does not mean federal authorities weren't actually there. Still, the Post tried to pass it off as meaningful because they'd rather preemptively simp for crime to spite the orange man.

Politico was no better. Instead of highlighting the dozens of arrests of violent criminals over the preceding several days, it focused on the arrest of a moped driver to imply that Trump's crackdown was being illegally harsh. As it turns out, the moped driver was an illegal immigrant gang member with a final removal order. 

So yeah, maybe the press should calm down just a bit and let this thing play out. D.C. is unique in that its powers as a city were granted by the federal government in the 1970s. That means it is not a "power grab" or "fascism" for a president to exert influence over the district's law enforcement mechanisms. On the contrary, that was how the system was intended. 

If the residents of D.C. would like to change that, they are welcome to support partial annexation by Maryland, leaving just the main government districts under national control. They won't do that, though, and we all know the reason why. 

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