President Donald Trump, speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday alongside FBI Director Kash Patel, said his administration is going to “go into other cities” to combat crime.
“We’re going to have a surge of strong, good people, patriots. And they’re going to go in, they straighten it all out,” Trump said.
In the rare event, Patel joined Trump to give a presentation on what they dubbed “Operation Summer Heat.” Patel talked at length about the thousands of arrests he said the administration made over the past few months.
The Trump administration has increased federal law enforcement resources in mainly Democratic cities, in some cases sending in the National Guard — a move that has faced legal challenges in Portland, Chicago and other areas.
A judge in Oregon on Wednesday extended the temporary restraining order against Trump’s plan to send Guardsmen to Portland for an additional two weeks, setting a trial date for Oct. 28 on the troop deployment.
Trump said another target on his list is San Francisco, calling the California city a “mess.”
“I’m going to be strongly recommending, at the request of government officials, which is always nice, that you start looking at San Francisco,” Trump said as Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi stood at his side.
The president also said his administration is going to “save Chicago.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, disputed the administration’s claims on crime in Chicago and Portland.
“Portland is not on fire. In Chicago, we’ve cut the homicide rate in half. We’ve got double-digit declines in all of our violent crime statistics. He says that we’ve got the highest crime rate in the entire world. That’s ridiculous,” Pritkzer said.
Trump on Wednesday said the crackdown on crime has become a “passion for him.”
“We’re going to save all of our cities and we’re going to make them essentially crime-free,” Trump said.
“This is an amazing thing,” Trump added. “And we’re just at the start. We’re going to go into other cities that we’re not talking about purposely. We’re getting ready to go in.”
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