President Donald Trump suggested he might send U.S. troops to Chicago next after he had the National Guard deployed to the nation’s capital.
There are currently nearly 2,000 troops in Washington, DC as part of the president’s crime crackdown.
Trump argued he has saved the city, but his portrayal that Washington, D.C. was a hellscape where people feared for their lives and could not go out to restaurants for years was a far cry from reality.
ADVERTISEMENT
The president claimed the National Guard, which has been spotted largely at Union Station and the National Mall, has been doing a great job working with police and they have not had to bring in what he called the “regular military.”
Now the president is considering other military options across the country.
“After we do this, we’ll go to another location, and we’ll make it safe also,” Trump declared.
“Chicago’s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent,” Trump rambled. “We’ll straighten out that one probably next.”
The president also suggested that he would then “help with New York,” while someone else in the room could be heard mentioning Los Angeles.
Trump again repeated that he would likely be deploying troops to Chicago next, moments later.
“When we’re ready, we’ll go in and straighten out Chicago just like we did DC,” Trump told reporters while taking questions.
The president said he had not spoken to Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson, but he claimed that Democrats we calling for help from cities. He refused to say who was making those calls.
Not only did Trump greatly exaggerate what was happening in Washington, he also contradicted crime statistics on Friday when he argued the violence in DC was “more than any other city in the country actually by far.”
“It may have been more than any other city in the world,” he insisted. “We looked to some of the worst cities in the world, it was worse.”
The president needs Congress to act if he wants to extend the federalization of the D.C. police past 30 days, but Trump argued if he thinks it’s a national emergency, he can keep troops “as long as I want.”
The president on Friday repeatedly touted that there had not been any homicides in Washington for a week as he argued his crackdown was working, but there were multiple weeks this year already where there had not been homicides, even before Trump federalized the police and called in the national guard.
The nation’s capital had a sharp increase in violent crime in 2023, including the highest number of homicides since the 1990s. However, the trend had since sharply reversed.
While carjackings surged in 2023, they have fallen since then as well to be more consistent with pre-pandemic levels.
