President Donald Trump suggested he might send U.S. troops to Chicago next after he had the National Guard deployed to the nation’s capital.
There are currently nearly 2,000 troops in Washington, DC as part of the president’s crime crackdown.
Trump argued he has saved the city, but his portrayal that Washington, D.C. was a hellscape where people feared for their lives and could not go out to restaurants for years was a far cry from reality.
The president claimed the National Guard, which has been spotted largely at Union Station and the National Mall, has been doing a great job working with police and they have not had to bring in what he called the “regular military.”
National Guard troops patrol around Union Station and the National Mall as part of ongoing security measures in the U.S. capital Washington, D.C. on August 21, 2025. / Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty Images
Now the president is considering other military options across the country.
“After we do this, we’ll go to another location, and we’ll make it safe also,” Trump declared.
“Chicago’s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent,” Trump rambled. “We’ll straighten out that one probably next.”
The president also suggested that he would then “help with New York,” while someone else in the room could be heard mentioning Los Angeles.
Trump again repeated that he would likely be deploying troops to Chicago next, moments later.
“When we’re ready, we’ll go in and straighten out Chicago just like we did DC,” Trump told reporters while taking questions.
President Donald Trump suggested he would sent the National Guard into Chicago next as he spoke in the Oval Office on August 22, 2025 where he was joined by Vice President JD Vance and FIFA President Gianni Infantino for a 2026 World Cup announcement. / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
The president said he had not spoken to Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, but he claimed that Democrats we calling for help from cities. He refused to say who was making those calls.
Not only did Trump greatly exaggerate what was happening in Washington, he also contradicted crime statistics on Friday when he argued the violence in DC was “more than any other city in the country actually by far.”
“It may have been more than any other city in the world,” he insisted. “We looked to some of the worst cities in the world, it was worse.”
