Trump insults D.C. to get his trial moved. The city rolls its eyes.

[IronLionZion]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/10/trump-dc-trial-change-of-venue/

The former president cites D.C.’s “filth and decay” as evidence he needs a change of venue. Legal precedent isn’t on his side, and city leaders say his insults are untruths.



The dark imagery invoked by Donald Trump during his brief visit to the nation’s capital last week — “the filth and the decay … broken buildings” — renewed the stereotype of collapsing American cities as a means of calling for his federal indictment to be moved out of the District. It also reignited his hostile relationship with a city he said needed to be taken over by the federal government when he occupied the White House.

Trump rarely ventured out into the District during his four years as president, other than to travel to the downtown hotel that bore his name at the time, and he did not attempt to win the hearts and minds of D.C.’s overwhelmingly Democratic voters through political rallies or meetings with city leaders. He received less than 5.5 percent of D.C.’s popular vote in 2020, and 4 percent in 2016. He and his lawyers cite such numbers in floating the idea of a change of venue for his trial on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election, as well as his idea for a federal takeover of the District, which he again raised on Truth Social in recent days.

“No way I can get a fair trial, or even close to a fair trial, in Washington, D.C.,” the 77-year-old Florida man who summers in New Jersey said last week. “There are many reasons for this, but just one is that I am calling for a federal takeover of this filthy and crime ridden embarrassment to our nation.”

The former president also falsely claimed that homicides in D.C. “just shattered the all-time record” and “other violent crimes have never been worse.”

Nice try