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President Donald Trump said in an interview that he intends to join law enforcement on the streets of Washington, DC Thursday evening — a move that seemed designed to draw more attention to his broad federal crackdown.
“I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police, and with the military, of course,” the president told radio host Todd Starnes Thursday.
A senior White House official said that the details of the evening were still being worked out. A source familiar with the matter told CNN that some members of the Secret Service’s Washington Field Office, who would handle a presidential movement like this one, were caught off guard by the president’s announcement.
Earlier this month, Trump ordered the federal government to take control of the city’s police department and deployed National Guard troops. His planned appearance follows another staged event centered on the DC takeover on Wednesday, when Vice President JD Vance visited a Shake Shack at Union Station at lunchtime to thank National Guard members who have been deployed to the city.
During that event, Vance was frequently drowned out by protesters as he appeared alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Blocked from the second-floor area where the guardsmen lunch was taking place, the protesters loudly chanted “shame,” “this is our city,” and “we want the military out of our streets.”
Trump has repeatedly decried crime in DC, though overall reported crime numbers are lower this year than in 2024, and cast his moves in the city as an effort to make the nation’s capital safer and more beautiful. Republican governors of six states — West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee — have announced they will send guard members to Washington to support the effort.
Among those who live in the city, though, Trump’s police takeover is unpopular. A 79% majority of D.C. residents oppose the president ordering the federal government to take control of the city’s police department and ordering the National Guard and FBI to patrol the city, a new Washington Post-Schar School poll finds.
This story has been updated.