By Chuck Warren

The Washington Post reporter Peter Baker tweeted an Axios article on Friday attacking Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., as partisan. Here’s what he wrote:

This was a quote from the Axios article, but an incomplete one. Here’s more context from the original report:

13 of the 20 U.S. cities with the highest murder rates were in Republican-run states. Many of those cities were run by Democrats who often are at odds with state officials, an Axios analysis of FBI data finds.

It gets even better. Since Baker mentioned the top 10 homicide rates, here is the list of those 10 cities: St. Louis, MO; Baltimore, MD; New Orleans, LA; Detroit, MI; Memphis, TN; Cleveland, OH; Las Vegas, NV; Kansas City, MO; Newark, NJ; and Chicago, IL.

These cities are very different. Geographically, they are all over. They are in red states, blue states, and purple states. There is only one thing they have in common, and you have already guessed it: They all have Democratic mayors.

Selective fact-mentioning is a form of lying. That is why when you take an oath as a witness, you must say that you will tell “the whole truth.”

There is a second part of the truth Baker is withholding: Washington, D.C., is a special case. Washington had neither a mayor nor a city council because it was never meant to be a proper city but a small residence for the federal government. Instead, the federal government ran the city. In 1975, the decade when nothing good happened, Congress created a city council and mayor’s office for Washington and delegated the government of Washington to them. But it still withheld special rights for the federal government, especially the president, to intervene. Trump is using his special legal power in Washington, which he can only use in Washington and not St. Louis—and you bet that he’d fight crime in St. Louis the same way if he could!

The problem with the media left is that their argument lacks a logical sequence:

  1. Trump is a dictator;

  2. His military takeover of a city is proof that he is a dictator;

  3. Refusing to use the military to take over other cities, which you need to do to become a dictator, is proof that Trump is bad.

There is also a third point to make. Peter Baker and his wife Susan Glasser have been prominent foreign correspondents. They, as well as their ilk, have frequently complained that Trump is embarrassing America before the world.

Washington is a place where the global elite frequently visits and even lives. International businessmen travel to Washington. Foreign politicians travel to Washington. Most importantly, foreign diplomats live in Washington. Is it not a national embarrassment when the world’s elite see the nation’s capital as a hub for petty crime and homelessness?

There is a joke Middle Easterners like to tell. An Emirati and an Egyptian were friends in college in the U.S., and they always argued about whose city was the capital of Arab civilization. The Egyptian kept insisting that it has always been Cairo, but the Emirati kept saying that, while it used to be true, the capital had moved to Dubai. So they decided to visit each other’s countries. First, they went to Cairo. The Emirati guy kept pointing to the problems. “How long has that sewer blockage been there for?” “Look at that woman being mugged.” “Oh geez, is that guy really peeing in the fountain?” The Egyptian was embarrassed. Then they went to Dubai. The Emirati guy kept bragging. “That is Burj al-Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.” “That is Burj al-Arab, the most luxurious hotel in the world.” “That is Dubai Mall, one of the world’s largest malls.” The Egyptian guy was feeling even more embarrassed, but suddenly pointed to someone and yelled triumphantly, “Look! How embarrassing! There’s a guy peeing in the fountain!” The Emirati turned to see what was going on and then responded, “Oh, yeah, that’s the Egyptian ambassador!”

We’re becoming Egyptians. The entire world is at our nation’s capital to see people taking dumps at the train station in public or at the Dupont Circle in downtown Washington. But this is not even the worst part.

The worst part will be if a foreign diplomat, let’s say the deputy head of mission at the Swedish embassy, is mugged or murdered. Do foreign diplomats even bring their families to live in Washington? If someone is attacked like that, will they?

The left media elite, like Baker, really care about American prestige when it comes to Trump, but they ignore national honor when it comes to the homeless guy’s “right” to take a dump in front of the French ambassador.

One must wonder, why the double standard?

Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.