WASHINGTON — President Trump revealed Wednesday that New Orleans could be the second city to receive a surge of federal resources to tamp down crime — after Illinois Democrats said such an intervention wouldn’t be welcome in 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, [Republican] 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 in the Oval Office.
“So we’re going to be going to, maybe, Louisiana, and you have New Orleans, which has a crime problem. We’ll straighten that out in about two weeks. It will take us two weeks — easier than DC.”
Trump called on Chicago residents to clamor for federal intervention to address gun crimes including murder — after DC’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser said Tuesday she would welcome a longer-term federal deployment in the capital despite mixed local sentiment.
“We can straighten out Chicago. All they have to do is ask us to go into Chicago,” Trump reiterated.
“We don’t have the support of some of these politicians. But I’ll tell you who is supporting us, the people of Chicago, and I sort of want them to let it be known they have incompetent people.”
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Landry has dispatched 135 members of the Louisiana National Guard to DC to help with Trump’s ongoing anti-crime crackdown in the capital, where federal agents have helped patrol and make arrests since Aug. 7.
Trump has vacillated for weeks on whether he will launch a crime crackdown in Chicago over the objections of Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats.
The president said Tuesday that “we’re going in” but “I didn’t say when.”
Pritzker, a possible 2028 presidential contender whose family controls the Hyatt hotel empire, said Tuesday he will continue to oppose any federal deployment — after 58 people were shot, eight fatally, over Labor Day weekend in America’s third-largest city.
“Chicago does not want troops on our streets,” Pritzker said. “I refuse to play a reality game show with Donald Trump again.”
Johnson signed an order Saturday restricting collaboration between the local police and federal agencies.
“This executive order makes it emphatically clear that this president is not going to come in and deputize our police department,” the mayor said.
Trump’s surge of resources into DC began with federal agencies contributing hundreds of officers to supplement local police.
The president asserted temporary emergency control over the DC Metropolitan Police Department on Aug. 11 and mobilized the DC National Guard — powers that he lacks in other jurisdictions without local consent.
A daily White House rundown of the DC surge listed 92 arrests Tuesday — bringing the running total to nearly 1,800 — with the latest offenders including three unnamed people cuffed on warrants for murder.
