As he continues to portray Democrat-run cities as overrun by crime, US President Donald Trump has reiterated his commitment to sending the National Guard to Chicago, Illinois.
Trump’s most directly speaking on the subject so far on Tuesday included those that were made on the subject.
Trump was questioned about the possibility of sending troops to Chicago, the third-largest city by population, during an Oval Office announcement about the relocation of the US Space Command headquarters.
He quickly confirmed his intentions, despite initially launching a screed criticizing city crime.
“We’re going in,” We’re going in, Trump said, but I didn’t say when.
If the Illinois governor would call me up. I’d really like to do it. We’ll continue doing it anyway. Because I have an obligation to protect this nation, we have the right to do it.
The threat of using force, however, did not stop Tuesday’s news conference from making headlines.
The Oval Office appearance of Donald Trump has four important lessons to learn.
Trump makes fun of the military deployment in Chicago
Trump made a public statement on Tuesday afternoon that he had violated the law after a federal court in San Francisco upheld his troop deployment to Los Angeles earlier this year.
Instead, he argued that using soldiers for his crime crackdown was necessary because some suspects were present.
They were born criminals, Trump said, “Frankly, they were born.” They will cut your throat, and they won’t even consider it the following day because they are tough and mean. They are incapable of even remembering how they did it. And those people won’t exist in our society.
He also cited the troops’ deployments in Washington, DC as a case study for his anti-crime initiatives nationwide.
He declared, “I’m very proud of Washington.” It acts as a model, she said. And it will be done elsewhere.
However, experts point out that Washington, the nation’s capital, has more authority than other locations to send troops.
However, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, unless in exceptional circumstances with state support.
If Trump deploys troops to Chicago, as he has repeatedly threatened, he will likely face yet another legal challenge under that law.
Since August, tensions between city officials and the Trump administration have been rising.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, stated on Sunday that the Trump administration would increase the number of federal agents in the city to help with immigration enforcement.
Additionally, over the weekend, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declared that his city’s police would not cooperate with federal agents or National Guard personnel.
Meanwhile, JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, claimed on Tuesday that the military’s “staging that has already begun started yesterday, and continues into today” in and around the Chicago area. Democrats Pritzker and Pritzker have warned the city to prepare for a similar situation as Los Angeles did in June.
Trump did point out that a troop deployment to Chicago would only mark the start of a comprehensive crackdown.
“Today, Chicago is a hellhole. Right now, Baltimore is a hellhole. If we didn’t start the fires in parts of Los Angeles, including the other fires and the bullet fires, Trump said.
US Space Command is being moved.
However, the Oval Office event’s main theme was Trump’s decision to relocate US Space Command’s headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama.
The Department of Defense is in charge of overseeing military operations that go beyond Earth’s atmosphere, according to Space Command.
Critics claimed that the move appeared to be in order to appeal to Trump’s Republican base because Alabama is more a right-wing stronghold than Colorado, which is more left-leaning.
Trump, however, claimed that the US was interested in the US’s strategic interests. Despite concerns over logistical issues, he added that it would “billions and billions” of dollars in investment and 30 000 jobs in the state would be created.
Huntsville is known as “Rocket City” because it is already home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and a major hub for defense contractors.
Former President Joe Biden’s decision to keep Space Command in Colorado, where it had been since its founding in 1985, was overturned by Tuesday’s announcement, which reverses that decision.
With about 1,700 employees currently employed at Colorado Springs’ headquarters during his first term, Trump reestablished the command in 2019.
Trump, however, made a blatant state-of-reputation statement from the Oval Office. He lost both the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.
The decision to move the command was fueled by Colorado’s policy of providing mail-in ballots to all voters , he repeatedly told reporters.
Trump remarked, “A state that allows mail-in voting means they want dishonest elections.” That was a significant factor, they said.
Trump has fabricated a false claim that mail-in ballots cause election fraud. He made fun of how having won Alabama by a large margin in the 2024 election might have affected Space Command’s relocation in his remarks.
He chuckled, “I only won it by about 47 points.” However, I don’t believe that influenced my choice, do you think that?
Colorado Governor Jared Polis stated in a statement that the move “destroys millions of taxpayer dollars, disrupts the lives of military families, and undermines national security.”
Health speculating
Trump’s first public appearance in a few days was a subject for speculation as to the 79-year-old president’s health, which led to Tuesday’s news conference.
Trump, 79, disproved the rumors when asked about them.
Trump said, “There must be something wrong with him,” they said after I didn’t attend any [news conferences] for two days.
Nobody ever claimed that there was ever anything wrong with him, and we knew he wasn’t in the best of shape, and Biden wouldn’t do them for months.
Trump reacted to questions about his health by playing at his Virginia-based Trump National Golf Course for a portion of the weekend over Labor Day.
He continued, “Over the weekend, I was very active.”
According to reports in the media, this was Donald Trump’s 66th golf course appearance since he began his second term in January.
By the time Trump leaves office, he will be 82, which would beat the current record-holder, Biden, by several months.
However, Biden’s apparent frailty in his final months in office has drawn scrutiny over possible health issues for Trump as he approaches a similar age.
a boat attack in Venezuela?
The news that the US may have attacked a boat in the Caribbean Sea was one of the surprises that came out of Tuesday’s meandering news conference.
Trump claimed that “we literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat” in the last few minutes. There are a lot of drugs in that vessel. And you’ll be reading about that and seeing that. Just recently, it happened.
Trump has repeatedly accused the president of directing drug-trafficking operations, but he has not provided any evidence to support that claim. Instead, the president identified the vessel as departing from Venezuela.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on social media that the military had “launched a lethal strike against a drug vessel that had left Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization” shortly after the news conference.
He declined to provide more information.
Trump has resumed his policy of putting the most pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro since taking office for a second term, recently increasing the fine for his arrest to $ 50 million.
Trump has also asserted that Maduro’s “invasion” led to the impending immigration into the US.
However, a US intelligence report that was declassified in May found no evidence of Maduro and Tren de Aragua cooperating in this way.
However, the Trump administration designated Latin American gangs like Tren de Aragua as “foreign terrorist organizations” earlier this year. The action represented a diversion from Washington’s convention, which defines foreign criminal organizations separately.
Concerns about US intervention abroad were reportedly sparked by a report that Trump allegedly secretly authorized military action against cartels and other criminal networks in August.
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