President Trump announced Friday that he will soon be sending the National Guard to New Orleans after previously teasing that he would be targeting the city in his next federal crime crackdown.
“We’re going to come into New Orleans, and we’re going to make that place so safe,” Trump said during a Friday night event held in the White House’s newly renovated Rose Garden. “It’s got a little problem right now, a couple of headaches, like murders, a lot of little murders going on, and we’re not going to stand for it. And we’re going to come in, we’re going to clean it up.”
Trump’s confirmation that he’s planning to federalize New Orleans’ law enforcement comes days after he floated the idea. Trump on Wednesday said he was debating between sending Guardsmen into New Orleans, targeting a Republican-controlled state, or to Chicago.
“We’re making a determination now — do we go to Chicago, or do we go to a place like New Orleans where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite tough, quite bad,” Trump said Wednesday.
Illinois Democrats have been vocal about their lack of support for a federal crime crackdown in Chicago, with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) warning the president not to do so and calling his plans “an insult.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) has echoed similar sentiments and established the “Protecting Chicago Initiative” to protect the constitutional rights of Chicago residents.
New Orleans also has a Democratic mayor, but the state of Louisiana is run by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who has previously blamed Louisiana crime on progressive policies.
Trump, in his Friday announcement, pledged that New Orleans would be “safe” within two weeks and touted the crime reduction in Washington, D.C. since the federal crackdown began early last month.
“That’s going to be the safest place, just like this is the safest place,” Trump said. “And then we’ll be going elsewhere throughout the country, we’re going to bring crime down, because we can’t have cities that are unsafe.”
