President Donald Trump said on Sunday he will deploy troops to San Francisco, marking the latest iconic United States city where Trump is seeking to enact a crime cleanup.
Trump said he is “so proud” of the deployment he carried out in Washington, D.C., saying 1,700 “career criminals” were moved out of the city through this. Since then, the Trump administration has been working to allow the National Guard to be deployed in Chicago, insisting that “the people want us there” despite Gov. JB Pritzker’s (D-IL) resistance.
The president confirmed a similar deployment will come to San Francisco, but a difference with this city is that “I think they want us” there.
“San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world, and then 15 years ago, it went wrong. It went woke,” Trump said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
“But we’re going to go to San Francisco, and we’re going to make it great. … It’ll be great again. San Francisco’s a great city. It won’t be great if it keeps going like this,” Trump said.
Trump also said he can use the Insurrection Act following “fake politicians” resisting his National Guard deployment, saying half of previous presidents have used this “unquestioned power.” He added that U.S. cities must be safe and claimed cities under Democratic leadership “exclusively just about” are a “disaster.”
“And I’m going to save the cities. You know, I didn’t run on that,” Trump said.
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The Trump administration filed an emergency petition to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking it to lift a lower court’s order blocking the National Guard deployment to Chicago. A federal appeals court declined to lift the lower court’s order on Thursday, though it did continue to allow the federalization of the Illinois National Guard.
Pritzker said last week that “there has to be a rebellion” for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. “If the Constitution means anything … the Insurrection Act cannot be invoked to send them in because they want to fight crime,” the governor said.