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JD Vance (AI illustration)
The Internet defines a "snake oil salesman" as a fraud who sells ineffective products using deceptive marketing tactics.
Vice President J.D. Vance came to Michigan Wednesday to sell some snake oil, offering up the National Guard as an end-all potion to cure one of the nation's nagging and deadly ailments — crime.
Before a receptive, nearly all-White audience in Howell, about 55 miles north of Detroit, Vance delivered a speech offering Gov. Gretchen Whitmer the National Guard to help fight crime in the predominantly Black city.
“My message to Gretchen Whitmer is, look, the city of Detroit, we know, has got some serious crime problems, and we know that it's the people in Detroit who suffer the most when crime is allowed to run rampant all over city streets," Vance said.
“Gretchen, we are happy to send the National Guard to Detroit, Michigan — all you’ve got to do is ask. We’ve got to remember, these streets are safer when law enforcement is allowed to put the bad guys away.”
First off, National Guard troops are not law enforcement. They're not trained cops, and they shouldn’t be out on city streets like D.C. except in very extreme circumstances. D.C. is short hundreds of cops. Give the city more cops, not more snake oil.
Give D.C., give Detroit, give Chicago more FBI, DEA, and ATF agents to work task forces to weed out the small number of serial killers, shooters, and robbers who account for the lion's share of crimes in those communities. Stop cutting funds for youth, anti-violence, and breakfast programs for the disadvantaged. Don't cut Medicaid to make the poor poorer.
Offering up the National Guard is nothing but a publicity stunt. In D.C., some troops stand around the monuments and other tourist spots. Some have been spotted gardening. They aren't patrolling high-crime areas.
Guardsmans on Crime
The Military Times spoke to more than a dozen troops who said they simply haven’t seen “emergency” levels of crime since being assigned to the D.C. mission.
“Have I seen [an emergency]? I’d better not answer that,” one Guard member said, shaking his head. “Besides people falling off the steps, not really.”
I lived in D.C. for 14 years and covered crime, both federal and local, for The Washington Post. I had been to almost every nook and cranny of that city, in high-crime areas and low-crime ones. I watched a man gasp for his final breaths on the sidewalk in Southeast D.C. after being shot. I saw families crying in anguish as their loved one lay in the street dead, yellow police tape cordoning off the crime scene.
I've seen effective and ineffective ways to fight crime. And I can tell you the National Guard is not an effective means, nor is it sustainable. It's part of the reality show.
Over the decades, I've covered crime, and I've always been bothered by the tolerance of it in urban cities. President Donald Trump is right to make a loud stink about it, to not want to put up with it anymore. But his snake-oil solution — deploying the National Guard — is a sham. To boot, he politicizes it, saying the crime is happening only in Democratic-run cities.
Democratic and Republican Cities
There are plenty of high-crime cities run by Republicans, including Miami, Jacksonville, Fla., and Tulsa — the latter of which has a higher murder rate than New York and Los Angeles.
Detroit could always use help fighting crime. No matter the numbers, no matter the improvement from years past, the stats are still too high.
John Roach, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's press secretary, says the city doesn't need the National Guard.
"In 2024, Detroit’s law enforcement strategy produced record declines and resulted in the fewest homicides, shootings, and carjackings since 1965," he told me in a text. "In 2025, Detroit is right now experiencing a further 15% drop in homicides, 25% drop in shootings, and 30% drop in carjackings — all record lows.
"The current partnership between federal, state, county, and private violence-prevention groups is achieving record reductions, and it would be a serious mistake to abandon this successful strategy."
So, J.D. Vance, whatever you're selling up in Howell and other parts of the country, Detroiters aren’t buying.
