President Donald Trump said Friday that Chicago could receive similar treatment from the federal government as Washington, D.C., where nearly 2,000 National Guard troops have been deployed to quell what the president’s administration has characterized as an influx in dangerous crime.
Despite calling Chicago the nation’s “greatest city,” he criticized Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson’s leadership. “When we’re ready, we’ll go in and straighten out Chicago, just like we did D.C.,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
“I think Chicago will be our next,” he said. “And then we’ll help with New York.”
Trump claimed people in Chicago are “screaming for us to come.”
Mayor Muriel Bowser generally avoids directly criticizing President Donald Trump. Even when she is being harshly critical of Trump’s decisions — publicly stating that his declaration of a federal crime emergency in Washington “makes no sense” — Bowser sometimes seems to structure her statements so as to avoid actually saying Trump’s name.
Trump, meanwhile, seems to be escalating his attacks on Bowser.
In a 2 a.m. Friday social media post, Trump wrote, “Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen, including a complete and total Federal takeover of the City!”
Hours later in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters, “Mayor Bowser better get her act straight or she won’t be mayor for long.”
By accusing D.C. police of falsifying crime data and threatening the mayor with a “total federal takeover,” he’s sought to muscle the city’s leadership into submission, providing a potential roadmap for how the president might engage with other American cities deemed too dangerous.
