President Donald Trump on Wednesday lauded his intervention in Washington, D.C., as a success and suggested launching a similar initiative to combat crime in New Orleans.
Speaking to journalists from the Oval Office, Trump depicted D.C. as a crime-ridden city until he declared a public safety emergency in the nation’s capital and federalized the city’s police force three weeks ago. “Now it’s considered a totally safe zone,” he stated. While city data indicated that violent crime in D.C. was already significantly decreasing before the Administration’s operation, it does show a further reduction during the federal takeover. Taking credit for this recent decline, Trump proposed deploying National Guard troops to other major cities as well.
“I could do that with Chicago. We could do that with New York. We could do it with Los Angeles,” Trump remarked. “We’re currently making a decision—do we proceed to Chicago, or do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have an excellent governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and rectify a very nice area of this country that has become quite challenging, quite problematic.”
He asserted that New Orleans “has a crime issue” and that his Administration could “resolve that in approximately two weeks,” adding that it would be “less complicated than D.C.”
New Orleans was designated the “murder capital” of the U.S. in 2022. However, the city—much like D.C., Chicago, and many others nationwide—has experienced a decline in violent crime in recent years.
Trump has previously indicated that he would address crime in other cities beyond D.C., including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, and Oakland—all located in Democratic-run states. Louisiana, conversely, is led by a Republican governor, and the GOP controls both chambers of its state legislature. Gov. Jeff Landry, whom the President commended on Wednesday, was endorsed by Trump during the 2023 gubernatorial election. After Trump initiated his federal intervention in D.C. last month, Landry was among several Republican governors who deployed National Guard troops to the city to assist in the operation.
The President’s comments come amidst rising tensions between him and local leaders in Illinois. Trump announced a couple of weeks ago that Chicago would likely be the “next” city his Administration targets in its efforts to combat crime. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson—both Democrats—have rejected the concept of federal involvement. Over the weekend, Johnson instructed city departments not to cooperate if Trump deploys the National Guard to Chicago. Yet, on Tuesday, Trump dismissed local leaders’ objections: “We’re going to do it anyway,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
He continued to criticize local officials on Wednesday, referring to Pritzker as an “incompetent governor.” He then turned his criticism towards California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and vocal Trump critic. The President claimed that he “saved” L.A. after deploying the National Guard earlier this summer, bypassing Newsom. This action ignited widespread outrage among state leaders and the public, and has faced judicial opposition. On Tuesday, a judge ruled that the Trump Administration’s deployment of troops to L.A. violated a longstanding federal law.
Nevertheless, Trump portrayed the operation as a success, even contending that the 2028 Summer Olympics would not be held in L.A. as planned if he had not intervened.
“If we didn’t go into Los Angeles with our soldiers, with our National Guard, you wouldn’t even be having the Olympics there,” he stated. “We preserved Los Angeles and we preserved the Olympics.”
