U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will not be sending the National Guard to Chicago and will instead be sending them to Memphis after Illinois officials opposed the deployment.
Trump made the comments on “Fox and Friends” Friday morning while discussing the arrest of the suspect in the Charlie Kirk assassination.
The president said he would be deploying the National Guard to Memphis and not Chicago.
He said Memphis is “deeply troubled” and said the deployment could include not just the National Guard but also the Military if needed.
Trump said the mayor of Memphis, who is a Democrat, and the governor of Tennessee, who is a republican, are both in agreement with the plan.
The president said he would have preferred to send the National Guard to Chicago and again called out Illinois Governor JB Pritzker for opposing his plan.
Last week, reporters asked Trump if he had decided to send National Guard troops to Chicago and he responded by saying, “We’re going in.”
Trump referenced the number of people who had been shot and murdered in the city over that past weekend.
“In the last three weeks he’s [Governor Pritzker] lost almost 20 people killed. There’s no place in the world, including you can go to Afghanistan. They don’t even come close to this,” Trump said.
The president called Chicago a “hellhole” and also made the same comment about Baltimore.
“I would love to have Governor Pritzker call me. I’d gain respect for him. And say, ‘we do have a problem and we’d love for you to send in the troops because the people have to be protected,'” Trump said.
The president has touted his federalization of the nation’s capital’s police department and deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. as a success.
Trump said he has an obligation to protect people. “Let me tell you a little story about a place called D.C… District of Columbia, where we are. It’s now a safe zone. We have no crime.”
“If the governor of Illinois would call me up, I would love to do it. Now we’re going to do it anyway because I have an obligation to protect this country and that includes Baltimore,” the president said last week.
Shortly after Trump made his comments about sending the National Guard to Chicago, Pritzker held a press conference addressing the residents of Illinois.
The governor called the president’s remarks from moments earlier “unhinged,” saying he would not call the president and ask for troops to be deployed.
Pritzker said the Trump administration is not working in coordination with the state and local officials. “Chicago does not want troops on our streets.”
“I refuse to play a reality game show with Donald Trump again. What I want are the federal dollars that have been promised to Illinois and Chicago for violence prevention programs,” Pritzker said.
Other Illinois officials were also staunchly opposed to the idea of the National Guard being deployed in the city.