Of course President Donald Trump wants to extend his declaration that D.C. has a crime emergency. Ever since he sent in the National Guard, hardly anyone has been talking about the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Few understand better than Trump how to convert a problem into an opportunity. If you can’t sue someone, distract, distract, distract.

Since the start of Trump’s second term almost seven months ago, his modus operandi has been to throw as much as possible at the American people in hopes of overwhelming them beyond their capacity to process or protest.

When 100 bombs are dropping at once, how and where do you direct your attention?

This has worked rather well, given Trump’s “successes” — from deporting and/or caging undocumented immigrants to taking over the Kennedy Center. (You can hold your breath waiting for it to become the Trump Center; it shouldn’t be long.) Already, he has assumed the role of host for the annual Kennedy Center Honors, the recipients of which he was “very involved” in selecting.

He has defunded public media, gelded traditional media, dismantled government and educational institutions — or tried — and put fear and loathing in the hearts of D.C.’s 700,000-plus population, more than 40% of which is Black. (We might want to keep an eye on the demographics of Trump’s crackdown targets.)

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said, Trump has signaled to CEOs that he’s “open for business.” But he isn’t interested only in money. Like his other nemesis, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump wants to remake the United States in his own image. He’s a real estate guy, he says, and he can’t help himself: He wants to make things big and beautiful. To do this, he needs greater control and, therefore, more crises. Nothing works better than fear to organize the masses.

Within days of declaring a crime emergency that data contradicts, Trump is deploying up to 800 National Guard troops.

He has commandeered the D.C. police department and sent 500 federal law-enforcement agents into the District to combat crime, he says.

As of Wednesday, when Trump asserted that the Republican-controlled Congress would grant his request to assume responsibility for D.C. public safety, 111 arrests had been made — 66 on the first two nights and 45 on Wednesday. Alleged offenses were related to guns, drugs and being in the country illegally. It took a military occupation to pull this off?

Well, yes, it did. In fact, 1,450 officers participated in Tuesday night’s operation to arrest 43 people. This comes to 34 officers per alleged offender.

On Wednesday night, 1,650 officers participated, which breaks down to about 37 officers per alleged criminal. And on Thursday, 20 officers arrested a plainly overwrought man who allegedly threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent.

Your tax dollars at work.

Complacency is not a proper reaction to what is happening to D.C. right now, or to what Trump wants to happen in other liberal-leaning cities: New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Oakland and Chicago — all places where the mayors happen to be Black.

Regardless of whether National Guard troops carry weapons, their presence is a warning that the city is under Trump’s control. I don’t want to suggest that Trump is acting like a military dictator.

But I have seen — and felt — this type of intimidation before, when I was a student in Spain and witnessed tactics employed by Gen. Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1939, at the end of the Spanish Civil War, until his death in 1975. Franco and Trump share not only an obsession with loyalty but also a willingness to use military force to maintain civilian order.

Franco’s heavily armed “Guardia Civil,” in their spiffy tricorn hats, were visible reminders of the dictator’s power. Even in private settings, no one dared speak critically of “El Caudillo,” as he was called, lest they be hustled off to prison.

This came as a shock to a 19-year-old recently of American college campuses where protesters stuck flowers in National Guard troops’ gun barrels. In 1970, when the Ohio National Guard shot 13 unarmed students at Kent State University, killing four, the world witnessed what could happen in a tense environment with government troops at the ready.

In the absence of a real crisis — riots, bedlam, natural disasters, alien invasion — this sort of federal intimidation has no place on America’s streets. Citizens should have the right to move about as they like, to gather peacefully, to think, speak and breathe freely, without fear.

What’s happening now in D.C. is not of the people, by the people or for the people. It is for Donald Trump alone.

Speaking of whom, anything new on those Epstein files?

Kathleen Parker’s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.