CNN ’s Abby Phillip has provided Donald Trump a new nickname – albeit accidentally and one his supporters quickly embraced. The CNN NewsNight host had been introducing a segment centered around Trump’s deployment of federal troops to Washington, DC, Monday, when she compared the conservative to ‘Batman’ and the municipality to ‘Gotham City.’

The fictional metropolis is famously overrun by crime. Phillip, in turn, told Scott Jennings, Tara SetMayer, Ben Ferguson and Dan Koh: ‘The President of the United States has declared himself crime-fighter-in-chief.

‘He’s taking over Washington’s police force,’ she further complained. ‘It is a move that the DC mayor is calling unsettling and unprecedented.’ Phillip argued Trump was ‘painting [the situation] as an emergency’ without much proof.

Onlookers on X appeared more interested in her earlier remarks. Conservative pundit Steve Guest thought the comparison to DC’s caped crusader made Trump look ‘cool’ – even if it was not ‘Abby’s intention at all.’ The conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center’s investigation team, Newsbusters, added: ‘Does she know that makes him sound awesome?’

Others embraced the epithet with memes, including some showing Trump in costume as the comic book character. ‘I already voted for him! You don’t have to keep convincing me!’ Libs Of TikTok’s X account joked.

‘Yall really trying to make @realDonaldTrump look even more [expletive] aren’t you @abbydphillip?’ asked someone else. Others shared a clip of a 2015 interaction between a then campaigning Trump and a young boy on his helicopter.

‘Are you Batman?’ the boy asked. ‘I am Batman,’ the soon-to-be president said in response.

The rest of the CNN NewsNight discussion revolved around crime in Washington, which Phillip said was ‘at a 30-year low.’ Still, DC’s murder rate is high – seventh in the nation when looking at cities with 250,000 or more citizens .

The municipality has also been plagued by an uptick in violent crimes seen since 2020 – a year where there was a 30 percent increase in murders nationwide. Shoplifting crimes and attacks on government employees have persisted in the Capital ever since. They reached a post-pandemic peak in 2023.

Crime has fallen in DC each year since. Trump has continued to highlight the 2023 spike as proof DC’s police force needs to be under government control. Members of the National Guard were given orders to report to their stations on Tuesday morning. Trump signed an order summoning them the day before.