Democrats are opposing President Donald Trump's vow to send in the National Guard, saying Trump "is a dictator," but Trump fired back saying he does not care how they smear him, as long as crime in Democrat-run sanctuary cities stops.
"I'm not a dictator," Trump said in an open media event before a Cabinet meeting Tuesday in the White House, which aired live on Newsmax and the Newsmax2 streaming platform. "I just know how to stop crime."
In fact, Trump joked he would even let the Democrats peddle their smears if they would just allow the federal government to solve the crime epidemic.
"So the line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime," Trump said, referencing remarks by Maryland Democrat Gov. Wes Moore. "A lot of people say that, you know — if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator.
"But I'm not a dictator."
He is a crime-fighting president, he maintained.
Trump pointed to recent federal operations in Washington, D.C., that he said removed more than 1,000 criminals in less than two weeks, and called out Democrat governors in Illinois, New York, and California for failing to curb violence in their states.
"You would think that Illinois, where they have such a problem with crime, such a bad governor, he should be calling me and he should be saying, Could you send over the troops, please? It's out of control," Trump lamented.
In particular, Trump said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker should be asking for federal help to address what he described as "out of control" crime in Chicago. He also credited his earlier deployment of National Guard forces in California with helping secure the Olympics and World Cup.
"They're going to fight me like the slob of a governor you have in Illinois," Trump said of Pritzker. "Chicago is the worst. These places are really bad."
The president's comments come amid heightened scrutiny of his crime crackdown policies, which include expanded use of federal law enforcement and military assets in major U.S. cities.
"Crime in D.C. was the worst it ever was," Trump said. "And now over the last 13 days, we've worked so hard. We've taken so many — over a thousand [criminals].
"In California, you would have not had the Olympics had I not sent in the troops — sent in the National Guard," Trump added. "They did a fantastic job. We have the Olympics. We have the World Cup coming. I got them in my first term."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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