US President Donald Trump on Tuesday (Sep 30) told a gathering of military leaders that they should use “dangerous” American cities as “training grounds” amid the administration’s crackdown against crime and illegal immigrants in major cities.
Trump said that the move was necessary as the US is facing a “war from within”. The US president was speaking at the rare meeting called by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
Trump said that those places were “very unsafe” and that they were “going to straighten them out one by one.” Trump added, “This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too – it’s a war from within.”
“I told [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth], we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military – National Guard, but our military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon,” Trump added. “That’s a big city with an incompetent governor.”
The White House has already ordered the deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC, and Memphis, Tennessee. He has repeatedly threatened to deploy troops to other cities, including Chicago, New York and New Orleans, despite local authorities warning that the move would lead to an increase in tensions in those cities.
Days earlier, Trump announced the deployment of troops in the northwestern US city of Portland, Oregon and at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities. The US president said that the move was taken at the request of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
“America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within,” Trump said in his address on Tuesday. “No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”
‘Fomenting chaos, terrorising people’
Following his remarks, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told CNN, “This is not about safety. This is not about immigration. This is about fomenting chaos and terrorising the people of Chicago and cities across America.”
“These brave women and men who sign up to serve and protect this country, they do not do it with being deployed against American citizens and residents in mind,” he added.