WASHINGTON AP - The questions came fast to the mayor of the nation's capital, many of them designed to get her to say something harsh about Donald Trump - in particular, the president's freshly announced plan to take over the Metropolitan Police Department and call in the National Guard.
But on Monday afternoon, for the most part, third-term Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser didn't take the bait. She calmly laid out the city's case that crime has been dropping steadily and said Trump's perceived state of emergency simply doesn't match the numbers.
She also flatly stated that the capital city's hands are tied and that her administration has little choice but to comply. "We could contest that," she said of Trump's definition of a crime emergency, "but his authority is pretty broad."
Her comments came hours after Trump, flanked by the people who oversee the military and the Justice Department, said he would be taking over Washington's police department and activating 800 members of the National Guard in the hopes of reducing crime - the same crime that city officials stress is already falling noticeably.
Toward the end, the mayoral composure slipped a bit when Bowser made a reference to Trump's 'so-called emergency" and concluded, "I'm going to work every day to make sure it's not a complete disaster."