President Trump on Monday continued to flirt with the idea of mobilizing National Guard troops to combat crime in Chicago, just a day after he had to clarify that he has no intent to \u201cgo to war\u201d with the American city.<\/p>\n
The push to militarize local law enforcement operations has been an ongoing fixation for the president, who on Saturday used war imagery <\/a>and a reference to the movie \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d to suggest that the newly rebranded Department of War <\/a>could descend upon the Democrat-run city.<\/p>\n Trump clarified Sunday that his post was meant to convey he wants to \u201cclean up\u201d the city<\/a>, and on Monday once again floated the possibility of deploying federal agents to the city \u2014 a move that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has staunchly opposed.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know why Chicago isn\u2019t calling us saying, please give us help,\u201d Trump said during a speech at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. \u201cWhen you have over just a short period of time, 50 murders and hundreds of people shot, and then you have a governor that stands up and says how crime is just fine. It\u2019s really really crazy, but we\u2019re bringing back law and order to our country.\u201d<\/p>\n A few hours earlier, Trump posted on social media that he wanted \u201cto help the people of Chicago, not hurt them\u201d \u2014 a statement that Pritzker mocked as insincere<\/a>, saying that Trump had \u201cjust threatened an American city with the Department of War.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOnce again, this isn\u2019t about fighting crime. That requires support and coordination \u2014 yet we\u2019ve experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks,\u201d Pritzker said in a post on X<\/a>. \u201cInstead of taking steps to work with us on public safety, the Trump administration\u2019s focused on scaring Illinoisians.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House did not respond when asked whether Trump would send National Guard troops to Chicago without the request from the governor. But the Department of Homeland Security announced in a news release Monday that it was launching an immigration enforcement operation to \u201ctarget the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n For weeks, Trump has talked about sending the military to Chicago and other cities led by Democrats \u2014 an action that governors have repeatedly opposed. Most Americans also oppose the idea, according to a recent CBS\/YouGov poll<\/a>, but the Republican base largely sees Trump\u2019s push as a means to reduce crime.<\/p>\n If Trump were to deploy U.S. forces to the cities, it would follow similar operations in Washington, D.C., <\/a>and Los Angeles <\/a>\u2014 moves that a federal judge last week said was illegal<\/a> and that amounted to Trump \u201ccreating a national police force with the President as its chief\u201d but that Trump sees as victories.<\/p>\n In his Monday remarks, Trump claimed that he \u201csaved Los Angeles\u201d and that crime is down to \u201cvirtually nothing\u201d in Washington because he decided to send military forces to patrol the cities. Trump downplayed instances of domestic violence, saying those are \u201cmuch lesser things\u201d that should not be taken into account when trying to discern whether his crime-fighting efforts have worked in the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n \u201cThings that take place in the home, they call crime. They\u2019ll do anything they can to find something,\u201d Trump lamented. \u201cIf a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. Now, I can\u2019t claim 100%, but we are a safe city.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump said \u201cwe can do the same thing\u201d in other cities, like Chicago and New York City.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are waiting for a call from Chicago,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe\u2019ll fix Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n As of Monday afternoon, Pritzker\u2019s office had yet to receive any \u201cformal communication or information from the Trump administration\u201d about potential plans to have troops deployed into the city, said Matt Hill, a spokesperson for the Illinois governor.<\/p>\n \u201cLike the public and press, we are learning of their operations through social media as they attempt to produce a reality television show,\u201d Hill said in an email. \u201cIf he cared about delivering real solutions for Illinois, then we would have heard from him.\u201d<\/p>\n Pritzker, in remarks posted on social media Sunday, said the Trump administration was trampling on citizens\u2019 constitutional rights \u201cin the fake guise of fighting crime.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOnce Donald Trump gets the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law \u2014 what comes next?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump on Monday continued to flirt with the idea of mobilizing National Guard troops to combat crime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,89183,157,3071,47470,10071,24800,4281,23600,8159,39150,3,968,3393,3479,21,19,22,20,25,24,1139,2002],"class_list":["post-143422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-american-city","tag-chicago","tag-crime","tag-d-c","tag-department","tag-governor","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-monday","tag-move","tag-national-guard-troop","tag-news","tag-president-trump","tag-push","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-war","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}