President Donald Trump called the federal takeover of the police in Washington, D.C., a "test," telling Newsmax on Thursday it could be a model for other cities.
Trump made the comments in an interview with "The Todd Starnes Show" that reaired on "Greg Kelly Reports" on Thursday night. Trump said, "I will be," when asked by Starnes if he would consider a federal takeover in Memphis, Tennessee, which FBI Director Kash Patel dubbed "the homicide capital of America" in May.
"We're doing a sort of a test right now in D.C. It's working unbelievably, much faster than we thought," Trump said. "We've arrested hundreds of criminals — hard-line criminals, people that will never be any good, I don't care what they say. ... And we got them out of the system. And, you know, unfortunately, we have a lot of cities like that."
After his interview with Starnes, Trump visited a command center in Washington to thank law enforcement officers for their efforts to clean up the city. Trump also told Starnes he'd be going on a "secret patrol" with law enforcement Thursday night.
"I've straightened out crime in four days in D.C. And all they do is they say, 'He's a dictator.' The people are getting mugged all over the place," Trump told Starnes. "But we've got it going. People are so happy. They're going out to restaurants again. I mean, they're so happy."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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