President Donald Trump addressed the press on Friday, August 22, to make an announcement about the FIFA World Cup. While the topic wasn’t revealed until he began, however, the real surprise wasn’t that the FIFA World Cup draw would take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, on December 5. Rather, it came in the form of a few off-the-cuff remarks the president made about crime in DC since the federal government took over, and what happens next.
After talking about how well the National Guard has been working with the police in the nation’s capital – and pointing out that crime is down, the city is cleaned up, and an entire week has passed without so much as a single murder – he dropped a line about doing the same in other cities.
“After we do this, we’ll go to another location and make it safe also. We’re going to make our country very safe; we’re going to make our cities very, very safe. Chicago’s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor – grossly incompetent – and we’ll straighten that one out probably next. That’ll be our next one after this. And it won’t even be tough,” he explained.
Later, the president and vice president mentioned other cities: “So I think Chicago will be our next. And then we’ll help with New York, and we’ll help with …” At this point, Vice President JD Vance chimed in with “Los Angeles.”
So the Trump administration now has a track record of cleaning up America’s capital city and plans to branch out into others. How, though? The District of Columbia is exactly that – a district – and the Constitution established it under the control of the federal government. Chicago, New York, Los Angeles – these aren’t federal districts. Whatever he has in mind, it’ll require more than just invoking DC’s Home Rule Act.
