Union Station is the perfect backdrop for Biden’s speech

Less than a week out from the 2022 midterm elections, the White House announced that President Joe Biden would be delivering a speech warning of alleged “threats” to democracy. The backdrop for the address tonight that will almost assuredly accuse his fellow countrymen of being extremists and traitors? Washington, DC’s Union Station.

In many ways, Union Station is the ideal backdrop for a speech by the leader of the Democrat Party. It is the perfect embodiment of what the left’s foolish and deranged policies have done to our nation: reduced a once thriving and majestic place into a crime-infested trash heap.

Just seven years ago, I interned down the street from Union Station. At lunchtime, the travel hub was packed to the brim with local employees looking for a quick bite or a coffee. Shoppers trolled the mid- to high-end retail stores. The Metro, bus and train platforms bustled with commuters.

Now, Union is essentially a ghost town. Thanks to a combination of neglectful law enforcement and a refusal to relocate the homeless encampments, the station has been overrun with drug-addicted and mentally-ill vagrants. It’s nearly impossible to enter Union Station without being accosted by a crazy person or, at the very least, walking through a cloud with the rank odor of feces and urine. It’s not uncommon to see one of the “individuals experiencing homelessness” outside on the subway grates suffering a drug overdose, or to bristle past another shouting out a schizophrenic rant.

Most of the stores inside have closed, including Starbucks, which cited safety concerns and a lack of customers as the reason for its shutdown. When you’re unlucky enough to have to catch a train to New York, you keep your head down, hold your bag tightly, and speed walk straight to your platform. No sane person dares stop in the bathroom.

It was major news when a shooting occurred in the food court area at Union Station in 2015. Comparatively, a person was shot near the Shake Shack in late September of this year; another was shot in 2020 near the bus depot. Hardly anyone covered either shooting besides a few local news outlets. Why? Because it was no longer surprising.

For years, the neoclassical building’s exterior has been marred by the ever-growing tent city situated in Columbus Circle. In an astounding twist of fate, the encampment was finally cleared out this week before Biden’s speech. It’s very likely it will return with force after the election, unless the nation’s capital starts taking the safety of its citizens — and the beauty of its public spaces — seriously.

Sadly, Union Station is merely a representation of the decline of our cities under the Democratic regime: Washington, DC, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles and more have fallen into depravity. A big thank you to Joe Biden for using your pre-midterm address to remind the nation’s citizens of the economic and social destruction you have caused our beautiful country.