President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday that the administration says will task Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with establishing “specialized units” in the National Guard that will be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues.” Trump also reacted to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s criticism of his administration, saying, “He’s a dictator.” CNN's Manu Raju speaks with CNN chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny. #CNN #News
00:00All right, welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Manu Raju. In today for Dan Abash.
00:03We've been listening to President Trump in the Oval Office after signing new executive orders to ban flag burning and end cashless bail.
00:11He also ordered the Pentagon to train a specialized D.C. National Guard force that are, quote,
00:17specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues.
00:21Now, he dismissed criticism that expanding his crime crackdown in D.C. to other cities is a classic strongman tactic.
00:31As you all know, Chicago is a killing field right now, and they don't acknowledge it.
00:36And they say, we don't need him. Freedom, freedom. He's a dictator. He's a dictator.
00:40A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator.
00:46I'm a man with great common sense and I'm a smart person.
00:50A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator.
00:53This after President Trump spent the weekend threatening to investigate his political opponents
00:58and to deploy National Guard troops into cities with leaders who oppose him.
01:03CNN's Jeff Zeleny is live for us at the White House.
01:05So, Jeff, there was a common theme with these three executive orders.
01:10Madhuri, there has been a common theme really through the month of August, and that's been authoritarianism.
01:14That is what the president has really talked about and emphasized for most days of this month, certainly recently.
01:22And signing those executive orders really flexing the executive authority of the presidency.
01:27Now, it is unclear if all of these executive orders will actually be enforced, if some will be legally challenged.
01:32But the one that perhaps is the most interesting is the one you read at the beginning there, instructing his secretary of defense
01:41to create a specialized unit of the National Guard to effectively be at the ready to be deployed nationwide in the event of unrest.
01:50Now, of course, the National Guard can already be used for that.
01:54But this is something that sounded a bit different.
01:56We'll have to wait for some of the details.
01:58But the president talking specifically there about having a new form of National Guard to be able to deploy to cities across the country.
02:05Chicago, of course, has been in his crosshairs.
02:08The president contradicted himself just through his comments in the last hour in the Oval Office.
02:12He said at once he would send troops to Chicago and he would have the crime problem solved within a week.
02:18A few breaths later, he said he would not send troops.
02:21He likely would not send troops to Chicago.
02:23So we will see about all of this.
02:25But you're right, there is a common theme throughout the president's remarks.
02:29It's A, to change the subject, of course.
02:31We've barely heard him talk throughout the month of August about his legislative achievements.
02:35Of course, that one big, beautiful bill act where members of Congress have been defending it, at least Republicans have.
02:42The president has talked very little about that.
02:43But at the very end of that very lengthy Oval Office Q&A session, the president was also asked whatever became of that meeting with Vladimir Putin.
02:51President Trump, of course, now met in Alaska with Vladimir Putin more than 10 days ago.
02:56And he said there would be a meeting shortly with Putin and Zelensky.
03:00There are no signs of that meeting.
03:01In fact, the Kremlin has indicated that a meeting is not really being planned.
03:05There's certainly no urgency for it.
03:07President Trump was asked why that was.
03:08He said, look, they don't like each other.
03:10But perhaps it's more complicated than that or more simple.
03:13Depends on your point of view.
03:15Putin wants more time here to extend the war.
03:17So, Manu, even as there are so many issues on the president's plate, he'll be meeting with the visiting president of South Korea any moment here.
03:25It's authoritarianism that has really been a theme here at the White House throughout the month of August.
03:30Yeah, and we'll see if the president responds to any questions when he meets with the South Korean president, the new South Korean president, for the first time at the White House.
03:37Jeff Zeleny, who's live for us there.
03:39Thank you so much.
03:40And I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here at the table.
03:43CNN's David Chalian, Tia Mitchell of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
03:47Tyler Pager of the New York Times.
03:48He's also the co-author of 2024, how Trump retook the White House and the Democrats lost America.
03:54And CNN's Edward Isaac Dover.
03:57Isaac, of course, is a book author himself as well.
04:01From the last election.
04:01From the last election.
04:03Exactly.
04:04Exactly.
04:04So let's just talk about what Trump, you know, he's very much defending what's happening with this federal crackdown and this takeover happening in D.C.
04:13And then he says a lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator.
04:17He says he doesn't like dictators, but a lot of people are saying it.
04:20Yeah.
04:20He said he doesn't like dictators and he doesn't consider himself a dictator right after he said that.
04:26But you say he's defending the crackdown in D.C.
04:29I would say he's sort of championing it in many ways.
04:32I mean, he he was repeatedly touting statistics of no murders.
04:38It sounded like he wanted to tie it up in a bow and be like, problem solved.
04:42We I came in here and D.C. is the safest place in the world right now.
04:47And I'm not sure that all the statistics back that up, but he clearly seems on an accelerated path to try and wrap this up and say, job done.
04:56Yeah.
04:56And it's unclear.
04:58He's made all these claims about what's happening in D.C.
05:02So they're going to go in and fix the medians in D.C.
05:05Beautifications in D.C.
05:06But, you know, as part of this executive order, this is going to be to expand the use of the federal of the National Guard, something that had not really been done.
05:17Federalizing the National Guard is something that without the governor's consent, it had not been done since 1965 until he did it in California.
05:24They're going to do it in Chicago, it sounds like.
05:27And he's making very clear based on his actions today, it's going to be much broader than that, too.
05:31Yeah. And the question is how much of this is real and how much of this is performative?
05:38You know, we all frequent D.C. We're in D.C. right now.
05:42The National Guard isn't necessarily on every corner.
05:46There are parts of D.C. that haven't seen the National Guard at all.
05:49And there's no evidence that the National Guard has actually contributed directly to whatever the crime statistics are showing right now,
05:56because they're not necessarily in the high crime areas of D.C.
05:59And the low crime areas were already pretty safe to begin with.
06:03So we talk about the federalization of troops in California during the immigration raids.
06:09Again, we don't really know what the impact was.
06:12It was pretty short lived. The president moved on pretty quickly.
06:15So the question is how much of this is really going to have an impact on the people who live in these cities
06:21and how much of this is just the latest shiny object that President Trump is championing as he avoids talking about other bigger issues on his place.
06:29How far is he willing to go here? Just look at some of the cities here with the highest homicide rates per 100,000 people.
06:37This is from 2024 data. Jackson, Mississippi, at the top of the list.
06:42D.C. is number 11 there.
06:44But you have a whole bunch of other cities that he is not talking about, Memphis, among them Dayton, Ohio, Cleveland, and the like.
06:52You covered the White House. Tyler, what is the planning right now inside the White House?
06:57And is he actually going to go after any red states?
06:59Because blue states right now, blue cities, have been at the top of his mind.
07:03Yeah, I think one of the most interesting things about the graphic you just showed is the highlighted yellow of those states sending their National Guard to D.C., right?
07:10I think we have seen this playbook before from the president, and it won't be the last time where he is using this issue as a political one, right?
07:18He is trying to make the case that he needs to intervene because Democratic-run cities are out of control in his parlance.
07:26And that's clearly not the case, backed up by data.
07:29There are a whole host of other cities, primarily in Republican-led states, that have higher crime rates.
07:34But that's not the focus for this president.
07:36We've seen him go after Chicago, L.A.
07:39This weekend he was tangling with Governor Westmore of Maryland and talking about Baltimore.
07:44There is a playbook here that the president is using, and it's mostly driven by his politics.
07:50And one of the things just to note about Chicago, Chicago's crime rate has actually been decreasing and at times has been at pre-pandemic levels.
07:58And so this focus on this out-of-control crime is misplaced based on where the data is.
08:04Not to say that there's no crime, but if you really look at the numbers, it is not the sort of picture the president is making.
08:09You heard them signaling out J.B. Pritzker, Governor Westmore, Gavin Newsom, three potential 2028 candidates.
08:15So that's one reason on his mind.
08:18And also, you talked about the politics here, Tyler.
08:20The politics are very clear.
08:22The president laid it out himself on how he sees this issue playing out heading into the midterms.
08:29I think this is another men and women's sports thing.
08:33I think this is one of those, you know, they call them 80-20 issues.
08:36I call them 97-3.
08:39I think the Democrats better get smart.
08:42And, you know, politically, I hope they don't.
08:43But actually, in terms of love for the country, I hope they do.
08:46I mean, it's clear they see this as a wedge to use against Democrats.
08:51They've successfully done this in past election cycles.
08:54Trump thinks they can do it again.
08:55Yeah, and, like, we can talk about the politics of it.
08:57We're sitting here on a show called Inside Politics.
08:58It is, though, pretty significant that we're talking about a situation where American troops are being deployed onto American soil,
09:07where people who are showing up with weapons without any identification, without any explanation of why they're grabbing who they're grabbing,
09:15put them in the back of the cars.
09:17They're not saying where they're taking these people to.
09:19We don't really know what's going on with a lot of this.
09:22And so maybe people will respond to the talk of crime in the ways that they have traditionally in years past.
09:32But it's also, and look, David's point, if you walk around D.C. right now,
09:37you will see National Guardsmen around the Lincoln Memorial, around the Washington Monument,
09:43when the vice president and Secretary of Defense and Stephen Miller went to Union Station last week.
09:48That is not really where the crime rate has been exploding in the past in Washington.
09:54And there's a real question of how much is being done to address even the crime rate that the president says his goal is to address here.
10:05Yeah, and we'll see ultimately what his next step is going to be.
10:08The president made pretty clear that we're going to expand this crackdown.
10:12And also continue to investigate some of his political opponents.
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