CBS’s Scott MacFarlane is on an extended whine session regarding the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard personnel to the nation’s capital in order to solve a persistently high crime problem. In so doing, MacFarlane defends D.C.’s questionable crime data with the ferocity of Lt. Hiroo Onoda defending the Philippine jungles for decades after the end of World War II.
Watch the full report, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday, August 26th, 2025 (click “expand” to view transcript):
MAURICE DuBOIS: Also in Washington, this is back-to-school week, but it is very different this year, with thousands of National Guard troops taking on a law-enforcement role in the city.
JOHN DICKERSON: Federal agents are joining the D.C. Police, as well, and Justice Correspondent Scott Macfarlane reports that is creating some unease among residents.
SCOTT MacFARLANE: More Washington, D.C., teenagers returned to school today. But the walk home this semester is going to look a lot different.
STUDENT: I just feel like instead of,like, they might be coming to protect, it makes it more intimidating.
MacFARLANE: More than 2,000 National Guard troops are now deployed here. Some at the subway stations used by middle and high schoolers, in a city of 700,000 people, but only a handful of school buses.
JAWANNA HARDY: We don't want to live in fear. You know, we want to live in community where, you know, children are playing football, where kids are playing hopscotch, not where, you know, military police standing with an M-16 next to us while we are playing in the street.
MacFARLANE: Jawanna hardy is a mom and runs a safety group for kids in southeast Washington, D.C.
HARDY: These kids woke up one day and there's military, there's FBI, there's ATF guarding their doors.
MacFARLANE: Do think that may be intimidating to kids?
HARDY: I think that is very intimidating to children.
MacFARLANE: The president again today touted his federal takeover of the D.C. police.
DONALD TRUMP: This is 12 days. We haven't even started. This is going to be so safe. It’ll be the safest place on Earth.
MacFARLANE: A review of Metropolitan Police Department data by the CBS News data journalism team shows crime has dropped. Over the past three weeks, there were 63% fewer robberies, 23% fewer car thefts, and 41% fewer assaults than the same two week period back over the last five years.
The crime numbers do show a decline. Isn't that a sign some of this is working?
BRIANNE NADEAU: No, I don't think it’s a sign of anything, really, because our numbers have been on the decline for the past several years, right?
MacFARLANE: Brianne Nadeau is a D.C. Councilmember who says the takeover is scaring people away.
NADEAU: People are afraid to go out. People aren’t going out to restaurants. They aren't leaving their homes.
DuBOIS: And Scott, you mentioned the CBS News data journalism team has been digging into this. What have they found when it comes to the Guard’s presence and where it’s been most effective?
MacFARLANE: That a lot of the federal agents are near areas with high volumes of crime, but the Guard is elsewhere. The Guard is on 21 different subway station posts right now. The troops are on the National Mall. The subways are used frequently by kids to get to and from school, Maurice. Some parents say they are happy that the Guard may protect those kids from fights or theft, but the mayor and some city leaders have said it is just un-American to have U.S. troops on U.S. soil doing police work. It sends a bad message to children.
DuBOIS: OK. Scott MacFarlane in D.C. tonight for us. Thanks.
It is unclear to us what, precisely, the purpose of this particular item may have been beyond further complaining by MacFarlane about the federal takeover. What is clear is MacFarlane’s reporting has been fairly one-sided since the takeover, with a heavy “anti” tone.
In order to bolster his case, MacFarlane weaves his way around D.C., finding residents opposed to the feds’ police bolstering. As a sort of final boss, MacFarlane rolls out the councilwoman for one of the wealthier areas in affluent Northwest D.C., who of course says that the move is unnecessary. Never once for this report does MacFarlane find a resident that supports the plan, despite his having done so previously.
This reporting is undergirded by a childlike belief in the veracity of D.C.’s cooked crime data, which MacFarlane cites assiduously. One is left wondering whether MacFarlane and/or CBS’s crack data team even care that there are serious allegations in place regarding data manipulation.
The funniest part of MacFarlane’s reporting? His admission at the end that federal law enforcement are doing the heavy lift regarding actual policing, and that the Guard are on site to protect monuments and other infrastructure such as the Metro. The whining about the Guard was thus blown up. In the end, viewers got a lot of whining and very little else.
