WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Sunday (Aug 24) threatened to expand his military deployments to more Democratic-led cities, responding to an offer by Maryland’s governor to join him in a tour of Baltimore by saying he might instead “send in the troops”.
Last week, Trump said he was considering Chicago and New York for troop deployments similar to what he has unleashed on Washington DC, where thousands of National Guard and federal law enforcement officers are patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital.
Trump made the threat to Baltimore in a spat with Maryland governor Wes Moore, a Democrat who has criticised Trump’s unprecedented flex of federal power aimed at combatting crime and homelessness in Washington.
Moore last week invited Trump to visit his state to discuss public safety and walk the streets.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said Moore asked “in a rather nasty and provocative tone”, and then raised the spectre of repeating the National Guard deployment he made in Los Angeles over the objections of California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom.
“Wes Moore’s record on crime is a very bad one, unless he fudges his figures on crime like many of the other ‘Blue States’ are doing,” Trump wrote, as he cited a pejorative nickname he uses frequently for the California governor.
“But if Wes Moore needs help, like Gavin Newscum did in LA, I will send in the ‘troops’, which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the crime.”
Moore said he invited Trump to Maryland “because he seems to enjoy living in this blissful ignorance” about improving crime rates in Baltimore.
“The president is spending all of his time talking about me,” Moore said on CBS’s Face the Nation programme on Sunday. “I’m spending my time talking about the people I serve.”
In July, the Baltimore police department said there had been a double-digit reduction in gun violence compared to the previous year. The city has had 84 homicides so far this year, the fewest in over 50 years, according to its mayor.
Democratic House of Representatives Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries also said on Sunday that Trump does not have the authority to deploy troops to Chicago, as the Pentagon carried out initial planning for a possible deployment.
Trump, a Republican, previously said he would probably expand his crime crackdown to Chicago, intervening in another city governed by Democrats.
US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there had been initial planning at the Pentagon about what a deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago would look like.
One official said the plans were part of the military’s efforts to anticipate any requests by Trump and noted senior Pentagon officials have not yet been briefed on them. It is not uncommon for the Pentagon to plan for potential deployments before formal orders are given.
Jeffries said any move to deploy troops to Chicago was an attempt by Trump to manufacture a crisis. Crime, including murders, has declined in Chicago in the last year.
“There’s no basis, no authority for Donald Trump to potentially try to drop federal troops into the city of Chicago,” Jeffries told CNN’s State of the Union programme on Sunday.
