Trump’s D.C. police takeover was planned and the Putin meeting stakes
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
President Donald Trump began his second term with a playbook in hand for how he might take control of aspects of D.C.’s government, according to Post reporting. Trump’s takeover of the city’s police department this week was just one possible outcome.
Host Colby Itkowitz speaks with White House reporter Cleve Wootson and The Post’s White House bureau chief, Matt Viser, about how Trump set the stage for deploying the National Guard in D.C. and taking control of the city’s police force. They also unpack exclusive Post reporting on a plan to create a federal “reaction force” to deploy in cities across the country, and the stakes for Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday.
Today’s show was produced by Arjun Singh. It was edited by Laura Benshoff and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Has anybody else gone down like a Sean Dunn? Are we recording? Yeah, but on purpose. Okay. |
| 0:07.8 | Like, has anybody else gone down like a Sean Dunn rabbit hole or is it just me? He's the guy, |
| 0:15.0 | allegedly, that's with a hoagie. Oh, yeah. You think it was planned? I don't, I don't know. |
| 0:20.3 | So here's my problem. It's my problem. |
| 0:21.6 | It's like a personal problem. |
| 0:23.6 | We hear about all these like seminal moments in American history, like the shot hurt around the world and don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. |
| 0:32.6 | Like our moment is like, you know, hoagy throw on 14th in you. |
| 0:37.9 | And I just, I kind of want to do it over. |
| 0:44.9 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Report's weekly politics |
| 0:48.6 | roundtable. |
| 0:49.6 | I'm Colby Eichowitz. |
| 0:50.9 | It's Friday, August 15th. |
| 0:53.2 | I'm joined this week by White House reporter Cleve Woodson. Cleave. Hey. |
| 0:56.8 | Hi there. |
| 0:57.8 | And we're also here with the post White House Bureau Chief, Matt Beiser. Hey, Matt. |
| 1:02.0 | Hey, Colby. |
| 1:03.0 | So happy to have you both. |
| 1:08.0 | So today we're going to go deeper inside President Donald Trump's federal takeover of the |
| 1:13.0 | D.C. police. We have some new reporting showing that Trump was thinking about doing this before he |
| 1:18.5 | took office for a second term. And we'll get into what the takeover has actually looked like here |
| 1:23.2 | in D.C. And finally, we'll touch briefly on Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin |
| 1:28.6 | that's scheduled for later today. So as we covered in an episode earlier this week, Trump took |
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