Trump repeats threat to send federal troops to other  US cities - video Dailymotion

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Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) joined CNN's Brianna Keilar to discuss President Donald Trump's plans to replicate his law enforcement efforts in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, in cities across the country, with the administration making moves to once again use the US military for its anti-crime agenda  #CNN #News  # news #breaking #24x7

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00:00President Trump dug in on his threat to send National Guard troops to other Democratic-run

00:05cities as part of his federal crackdown on crime. Specifically, he's singling out Chicago

00:10and Baltimore. Let's listen. I'm willing to go to Chicago, which is a big trouble,

00:17but we have a governor that refuses to admit his problems, huge problems.

00:24Baltimore, Westmore, was telling me he wants, I want to walk with the president. Well, I said,

00:28I want to walk with you, too, someday. But first, you've got to clean up your crime,

00:33because I'm not walking in Baltimore right now. Baltimore is a hellhole.

00:39With us now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He is the top Democrat

00:44on the House Judiciary Committee. So thank you so much for being with us. You told my colleague,

00:50Pamela Brown, yesterday that you thought this military invasion, as you called it,

00:54is backfiring on Trump. How so? Because he certainly does not think it is backfiring.

01:00He clearly thinks it's working for him. Well, it cuts against the deepest principles

01:04of the country. I mean, we were founded in opposition to a standing army with a fear of

01:10a standing army. And the military is not supposed to be used for ordinary law enforcement purposes.

01:16In D.C., he was talking about cleaning up the graffiti and, you know, dealing with the blight

01:22of homelessness, which are obviously local, not federal issues. And he's trying to militarize

01:31our society, intimidate its political opponents. The whole idea of picking cities based on their

01:37partisan leadership is absurd. I mean, there are lots of Republican cities in town struggling

01:43with crime. Everybody is across the country, always. Crime has always been part of our history.

01:50And yet crime is down. In D.C., for example, it's at a 30-year low. It's down in Baltimore. It's down

01:58in Chicago. But the point is that in our system of federalism, the different branches of government

02:03and the different departments of government are supposed to work together. If Donald Trump thinks

02:07he's got some great ideas for Chicago or Miami or Houston, Texas or whatever, he should call a

02:14summit for the White House and say, hey, here's some ideas where the feds can work together with

02:18states and localities, not have a series of rolling National Guard invasions of people's cities.

02:24And a lot of what you said may be true. And certainly there was a lot of suspicion of a standing army

02:30when the country was founded. That is a tradition in America. But at the same time, our White House

02:36reporter, Elena Treen, is reporting that Trump is looking at what's happening in D.C., for instance,

02:40especially now that the guard is armed. They're walking around with their weapons. And he's

02:46reveling in these pictures. Again, he does not see this as backfiring. He is reveling in these

02:53images. Well, you can look at his poll numbers, I suppose, if you want some vaguely objective

02:57measure of it. And clearly he's way underwater. But what I'm seeing is that the people who live in

03:04these states, who live in these communities, are deeply offended by it. I mean, is Donald Trump really

03:09more interested in public safety in Chicago or Washington than the people who live in those

03:14cities? It's hard to believe. I mean, that cuts against the whole idea of local government.

03:18The reason that we elect mayors and city councils is so they can embody the priorities of the people.

03:24Now, in D.C., he took away a billion dollars in locally raised revenue that the people in D.C.

03:31had set aside to do crime fighting and criminal justice and public education. They want their money

03:36back. People in Chicago, they've got their own ideas about what should happen. Like the

03:41mayor and the governor said yesterday, we've got a problem with guns here. Why don't we have a

03:48universal violent criminal background check, which more than 90 percent of the American people support?

03:53If you want to get together on a national agenda on crime fighting, let's do it, right? We have

03:58the Brady Gun Safety Act, and it's working, but there's loopholes in it. People are still able to get

04:03guns on the Internet or to gun show, you know, extravaganza. There are different ways people

04:09are getting it. We should have a violent felon criminal background check for everybody who's

04:14purchasing a gun. That's something the feds could actually do in cooperation with the states and

04:19local governments to make America safer. But that would require cooperation and not the series of,

04:25you know, staged theatrical confrontations that Donald Trump is looking for.

04:29Purportedly, the objective is about crime. What do you think his objective is in doing this?

04:33Well, one thing he's clearly doing is changing the subject from a different form of crime, which is

04:41child sex trafficking, which Jeffrey Epstein was a mastermind of, that Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted

04:48of and sentenced to jail for 20 years of. And Donald Trump's name apparently appears throughout

04:53the Epstein file. He had run on a platform promising to release the Epstein files. Then he had 1,000 FBI

05:01agents searching through the files, pouring over them to look for his name, to look for photographs,

05:06to look for video glimpses of him. And then when they came back and reported him, he said,

05:11we're not releasing this. And we have a strong bipartisan majority in Congress demanding the release

05:16of the Epstein files. So this is a convenient and irrelevant distraction from that for him. But I think, look,

05:24there are significant levels of criminality taking place within his own administration, right?

05:32There's a lot of corruption taking place. So all of this is a distraction.

05:35But Americans also, they do have concerns about crime, even if you look at statistics showing that it's going down.

05:41Nobody more than the mayors and the council people and the police. Certainly no doubt. And people who

05:45live in these communities. But he sees opportunity. So how do Democrats counter that? And why have they

05:54not been able to effectively counter that? Even as statistics have gone down, you're seeing people

05:59actually worried even more about crime in their communities. Well, look, I mean, if you're the victim

06:04of a crime, you don't care what the general rates are. I mean, crime could be falling, but if,

06:09you know, your car is carjacked, if your house is robbed, if you're the victim of a scam,

06:16then you feel it just as much as if crime were going up, right? It's the same thing from your

06:22perspective. So let's have a national crime summit with the mayors, with the governors. Let's get

06:28everybody in Congress on both sides of the aisle to come together to deal with it. I'm part of a

06:32bipartisan anti-scam task force because a lot of my constituents have been scammed by these ripoff

06:38artists. And yet the Trump administration has been dismantling a lot of the infrastructure that

06:44we use to deal with it, just like they've been dismantling the infrastructure that fights human

06:49trafficking. They've cut funds from the Department of State, from the Department of Justice. And I

06:53think, you know, the people out in Chicago were raising this just yesterday. They cut hundreds of

06:59millions of dollars from local police departments and victim assistance organizations and crime-fighting

07:05civil society groups because one doge guy just said we should cut these hundreds of millions

07:11of dollars in grants. That was money that was approved by the House, by the Senate, signed into

07:15law by the president, and doge cut it. And we want those hundreds of millions of dollars restored,

07:20just like I know the people in D.C. They want their billion dollars restored. That's locally raised

07:25revenue that was taken away from them. So there's a lot we can do if we're going to be serious about

07:29it. And it's not just a, you know, a bunch of photo ops. Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you so much for

07:34being with us. You bet. Really appreciate it.

Trump repeats threat to send federal troops to other US cities

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