A Republican senator went on a rant about the dangers of living in Washington, D.C ., under the current Mayor Muriel Bowser while continuously mistaking her for a man. Crime in the nation’s capital has become a hot-button issue on the national scale after President Donald Trump nationalized the Washington police and deployed the National Guard to the city.

While speaking on Fox News on Wednesday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., stressed how dangerous the district is. The senator claimed that he doesn’t wear his seatbelt while driving his Jeep around town, which is illegal, because he’s afraid of being carjacked and not being able to get out of the car fast enough.

‘The reason why I don’t buckle up, and people can say whatever they want to, they can raise their eyebrows at me again, is because of carjacking,’ Mullin said. ‘I don’t want to be stuck in my vehicle when I need to exit in a hurry, because I got a seatbelt around me.’ ‘The left media and the leaders in Washington D.C., especially the, and I will say this, the very racist mayor, and people may get eyebrows when I raise that, but he’s the one that brings in race into the conversation,’ Mullin said, referencing D.C. Mayor Bowser.

‘So he’s the one that’s pointing the fingers at it, and when you point one finger, you got three pointing back at you.’ The Republican lawmaker was immediately ripped for misgendering the mayor.

‘If you’re going to smear the mayor of D.C. with falsehoods, at least give the audience the impression that you know who she is,’ NY law professor Ryan Goodman wrote on X. ‘Multiple times Mullin refers to the mayor as ‘he.” Journalist Mehdi Hasan also noted how Mullin ‘repeatedly refers to the mayor of D.C. as a ‘he.”

Many online speculated that Mullin had mistaken Bowser with Baltimore’s Mayor Brandon Scott, who is a man. Bowser, the female D.C. mayor, has held office since 2015 and has had a friction-filled relationship with the second-term president due to his repeated criticisms over D.C.’s safety and crime problems.

She has called Trump’s deployment this week ‘unsettling and unprecedented,’ though she added ‘I can’t say that, given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised.’ The 79-year-old president has repeatedly called for law and order and ridiculed D.C. as being one of the most dangerous cities in the US.

‘Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs, bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, [expletive] out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore,’ Trump said Monday at an event announcing the federalization of D.C.’s authorities. ‘We’re not going to take it.’

Trump’s deployment is expected to surge a total of 800 National Guard troops to the capital city. Already, D.C. has been buzzing with additional police and federal forces, like the FBI and DEA. Videos on social media show authorities setting up traffic checkpoints and combing through neighborhoods throughout the city.