Speaking to troops aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in Japan, President Donald Trump boasted that he can send any branch of America’s armed forces into U.S. cities as part of his anti-crime initiative — and that local residents won’t care.
President Trump has faced a series of legal challenges over his efforts to deploy the National Guard to major U.S. cities, as Democratic governors and attorneys general have filed lawsuits to block the troops from entering their jurisdictions.
“You know, people don’t care if we send in our military, if we send in our National Guard, if we send in Space Command, they don’t care who the hell it is,” Trump told troops aboard the USS George Washington in Yokosuka.
“They just wanna be safe. And we have safe cities,” Trump insisted.
“Now we’re starting in Memphis, and Memphis was a disaster,” he said. “It’s been there, they’ve been there for two weeks, and it’s a whole different story.”
“Crime is less than half, and within a month it’ll be gone,” the president claimed without offering any proof.
“Getting rid of all the bad ones, and we’re gonna go into Chicago, we’re gonna go into our cities, we’re gonna clean them out, we’re gonna straighten them out, and we’re gonna have safe cities, because you wanna protect safe cities,” he said.
“We’re gonna have beautiful, safe, cities, and it’s happening very quickly and very easily, actually. It’s easy for us. It’s hard for them,” the president said.
“And we have to have a little more help. It doesn’t matter.”
“Really, we could do as we want to do, but it would be nice to have more help from some of the Democrat governors that don’t mind.”
Trump has deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles, California, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, Chicago, Illinois, and Memphis, Tennessee. Courts have blocked the deployments in Portland and Chicago, according to The New York Times.
Most recently, Trump threatened to send the National Guard to San Francisco, but backed down after big tech leaders requested he hold off, NBC News had reported.