'Do not come': IL governor blasts Trump's plan to deploy National Guard

CNN

Illinois Governor Pritzker told President Donald Trump, “do not come to Chicago,” after Trump left the door open to deploying the National Guard to other cities such as Chicago, telling reporters they were “ready to go anywhere” with “less than 24 hours’ notice". #CNN #News  # news #breaking #24x7

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00:00Back off. That is the message to Donald Trump from the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker.

00:05In a fiery speech, Pritzker slamming Trump's unprecedented crackdown on crime, as Trump calls

00:10it, and Trump's threats to send the National Guard to Chicago. This is not about fighting

00:17crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military

00:23in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals. There is

00:30no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no

00:36insurrection. There is no insurrection. Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.

00:48You are neither wanted here nor needed here.

00:53OK, well, that's pretty loud and clear. Pritzker doesn't want the National Guard

00:56in Chicago. Well, that used to be enough to not get the National Guard sent to your city,

01:00but not anymore. Trump has been giving himself more powers to expand his use of force across

01:05the country. And right now, he has set his sights on Chicago.

01:11I made the statement that next should be Chicago because, as you all know, Chicago is a killing

01:15field right now. And they don't acknowledge it. And they say, we don't need him. Freedom,

01:21freedom. I mean, I see Pritzker saying, we don't want them. In the meantime,

01:24a city is being shot to hell. And they do that politically. And they probably do want it.

01:32Trump railing against the crime in Chicago. But just a quick, basic fact check of the situation.

01:37Chicago is a city that has seen a substantial decline in the number of homicides,

01:40something that Pritzker and the mayor of Chicago have pointed out.

01:4613 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors.

01:53None of these cities is Chicago. Chicago is not in the top 25 of the most dangerous cities

02:00in the United States. And these facts.

02:06These facts are indisputable and widely acknowledged.

02:12Another city seeing a decline in violent crime as of late is Baltimore.

02:16Yet Baltimore is also on Trump's radar.

02:20Baltimore is a horrible, horrible deathbed. It's a deathbed.

02:24He calls Baltimore a deathbed. And yet in the same breath, Trump then went on to tell a story

02:32about, I mean, this is an incredible story because he says that he met the governor of Maryland,

02:37Wes Moore, who by the way, infamously grew up in Baltimore, now the governor of Maryland.

02:40So he meets Wes Moore at a football game, an Army Navy game. And this is what Trump says happens.

02:48He came over to me, hugged me, shook my hand. You were there.

02:51He said, sir, you're the greatest president of my lifetime.

02:55Maybe if he'd gone a little shy of greatest, if he'd retold the story of he said you're doing a

03:00good job or something that might be more believable. But here's the thing.

03:04That's kind of hard to swallow. And a short time ago,

03:07Governor Moore responded to Trump's claims.

03:11I'm a person who takes my integrity very seriously. And I spent the past six months before that election

03:19campaigning as to why I did not think that he should be the next president of the United States.

03:25So when I say that that conversation never happened, that imaginary conversation never

03:31happened, I mean, that conversation never happened.

03:34More, Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, all saying no to Trump on using the military in

03:44American cities. But their words don't seem to matter.

03:48What is increasingly becoming self-evident to anyone with eyes wide open in any level of

03:58objectivity, a private army for Donald Trump.

04:02Owing an oath only to him, not the Constitution of the United States.

04:09So Newsom says that. What's interesting is that is a claim that Trump does not

04:15seem to be shying away from at all.

04:18I'm chief law enforcement officer, believe it or not. You know,

04:23I don't like to go around saying that, but I am. That's the position.

04:27It's interesting to say, right? He's not talking about commander in chief,

04:30which isn't something one would usually just be out talking about as president anyway,

04:33but he's he's phrasing it chief law enforcement officer.

04:37Jeff Zeleny is out front live outside the White House beginning our coverage this evening.

04:40And Jeff, there are signs today from Trump that he plans to take this

04:44law enforcement takeover right in certain in certain Democratic cities even further.

04:53Well, the president signed a series of executive orders, Aaron,

04:55and one of them was designed to do just that. He's instructing his defense secretary to

05:01create specialized units, as he described them inside the National Guard for rapid nationwide

05:08deployment in areas that were law and order is needed. Of course, not many specifics on that.

05:14But look, the National Guard is used for emergencies. And the question here is,

05:19is this an emergency? But you would be mistaken if you thought that President Trump was concerned

05:24by any of this Democratic pushback. In fact, this is clearly one of the strategies at play here.

05:30Here we are nearing the end of August and President Trump has spent the lion's share of this month,

05:35at least talking about domestic matters, making the issue of law and order of crime and justice.

05:40And he has quite literally turned this into a new and nationwide issue. Yes, crime existed before,

05:46but he is proudly wearing that hat as the law enforcement commander in chief. That is what

05:52he wants to be seen as, wants to be known as. So he was bragging and crowing about what he says

05:58are changes in the Washington, D.C. crime statistics ever since he federalized the police. He was giving

06:05homicide statistics from the Oval Office. It's something we've really not seen before at all.

06:10But yes, he is going to at least think about discussing sending the National Guard to other

06:15cities. But there are limitations to what the National Guard can do in Baltimore. In Chicago,

06:20yes, they can protect the federal buildings. They can protect the federal assets, but they cannot

06:25serve as law enforcement officers. However, is this going to be a legal challenge? It certainly

06:30seemed that way from Governor Pritzker. But again, you'd be wrong if you think President Trump is

06:34bothered by any of the criticism. Erin? Jeff Zeleny, thank you very much. And of course,

06:39you start one place and you end in another. People don't push back. Everyone is here with me now.

06:44So, Lulu, you have obviously spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C. You were at Union Station today.

06:51National Guard's there, right? So they're stationed. And, you know, I mean, I remember seeing them in

06:55L.A. A lot of them are young guys. They're doing their jobs, right? So it's not about individuals.

06:59This is about the fact that they're just there in large numbers now. And you took some pictures

07:05that you have shared with us. So these are Lulu's pictures from today. So what was it like? What

07:11got to you there? You know, it's strange right now in D.C. because it feels like a city that's being

07:18strangled. Right now, the District of Columbia, which is home to, let me remind you, 700,000

07:25people, more than the population of two states, has the highest unemployment rate in the country

07:33because of what has happened with the federal workforce. Restaurant reservations are down some

07:3830 percent in some places. You can't get deliveries because so much of the enforcement has targeted

07:44delivery drivers that they are afraid to come out. The Latino community, the Latino community is

07:50afraid. And every conversation I have with people in D.C., they all say that it feels like an occupation.

07:57This is not a city that is welcoming what is happening. It is a city that is afraid of what

08:03is happening because it is very unusual in America to see armed military on the streets of an American

08:11city. And this isn't just any American city. This is the capital of this country. And so what does it

08:18say when you have federal forces on the streets of our capital city? You know, Democrats say it is a power

08:26grab. Donald Trump says it's about crime, but he wants to export it to other cities. What I can tell

08:31you from living in D.C. is that this is a very, very uncomfortable and people feel dangerous time.

08:39Yeah. Well, I mean, as you say sometimes when you see law enforcement everywhere and yet you don't feel

08:45safe at the truth, the truth, the true awkwardness of that moment that you're talking about, I think,

08:51Governor, what's your reaction to what Lulu is saying? Well, we should remember that Donald Trump

08:58campaigned on aggressively and boldly tackling the decay and danger that he saw in Americans major

09:04cities. And so this is a fulfillment of a campaign promise. I don't think he got into the details of

09:09exactly how he was going to do that, but directionally, that's what he said. Number two,

09:14you know, how much of an emergency do you need after years and decades of the high crime and danger

09:19in these cities without any real sustained period of turning it around? Yes, crime's down a little

09:24compared to a high base from a couple years ago, but still in our major cities across this country,

09:30public safety and not backing law enforcement is a major concern. And President Trump has boldly,

09:36maybe over the legal boundaries, we'll see, but boldly gone in to try a case study in D.C.

09:41And by the way, the early results for the first two weeks, per the D.C. police, it's working. There's

09:47a significant reduction in significant crime in D.C. since this started. Well, I know, Lulu,

09:53they were saying there had been a stretch here of what was it, two weeks or something. There was a

09:56longer stretch back in March where there hadn't been a homicide. I mean, what you're hearing from

10:01the wards where there is a lot of crime, what you're hearing from those wards is that the criminals

10:07are staying home because they're not going to go out in the streets for sure.

10:12There's not going to be a murder right now because they know that there's

10:15military out on the streets. But is this really a long-term solution to the crime problems in our

10:20cities? Is the federal government going to take over every city in America? And also,

10:25what does it mean when these people are beholden to this president and he's only targeting blue cities?

10:30I mean, as some of these democratic governors have pointed out, a lot of the cities are in red states.

10:36Why aren't they being sent there?

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