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New York: National Guard troops will be deployed to the cities of Chicago and Baltimore despite opposition from Democratic governors, President Donald Trump said as he returned to public view following a week’s absence that sparked speculation about his health.
A spate of gun violence in Chicago over the Labour Day weekend – in which at least 50 people were shot, eight of them fatally, in 37 separate shootings – prompted Trump to renew his threat to deploy the Guard to the country’s third-largest city as he previously did in the capital, Washington.
“We’re going in. I didn’t say when, but we’re going in,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), noting 20 people had been shot dead in the city over the past 2½ weeks.
Trump said he would welcome a phone call from the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, one of the Democratic Party’s most vocal critics of Trump and a potential presidential candidate in 2028. But Trump asserted he was entitled to send in the Guard without Pritzker’s permission.
“We’re going to do it anyway, we have the right to do it because I have an obligation to protect this country,” he said.
Baltimore, a city of about 500,000 in Maryland just north of Washington, would also be targeted, with Trump calling it “one of the most unsafe places anywhere in the world”.
US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday.Credit: Bloomberg
“You can go to Afghanistan, you can go to places that you would think of – they don’t even come close to this,” Trump said. “Chicago is a hellhole right now, Baltimore is a hellhole right now.”
The National Guard is a branch of the military that serves both state governors and the federal government. It is commonly deployed for disaster relief upon request from a state, but in most circumstances, guardsmen are not allowed to participate in domestic law enforcement.
Trump’s legal authority to dispatch the Guard against a state governor’s wishes was also dealt a major blow on Tuesday when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled the administration broke the law by sending troops to Los Angeles in June to help quell protests against the government’s immigration raids.
Pritzker labelled Trump’s comments “unhinged” and said he would not call the president to ask him to send troops to Chicago.
National Guard troops on patrol in Washington DC.Credit: AP
But he accepted it had been an “unsettling and difficult” time for his state amid the violence and rumours about how Trump would respond.
“Chicago does not want troops on our streets,” he said, adding that he had tried to co-ordinate with Trump’s administration previously, only to have the “rug pulled out from underneath” when it came time to deliver.
“I refuse to play a reality game show with Donald Trump again,” Pritzker said. “What I want are the federal dollars that have been promised to Illinois and Chicago for violence prevention programs that have proven to work.”
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Despite the looming legal showdown with constitutional implications, much media attention was focused on Trump’s physical appearance during his first in-person media event in a week – a relatively long absence for a president who usually appears every day or second day.
Trump was photographed on the weekend arriving at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia for a round of golf. Posts were also regularly appearing on his social media platform during his public absence.
Along with images of bruising on his hand, the absence prompted speculation about Trump’s health, and even unfounded internet rumours that he had died.
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Trump rejected concerns about his health, noting that he conducted an hour-long interview with The Daily Caller on Friday, and that it was a long weekend. He also noted his predecessor, Joe Biden, rarely held press conferences.
“I was very active over the weekend… It’s fake news,” Trump said.
In July, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said bruising on the president’s hand was due to minor soft tissue irritation from frequent hand-shaking and the use of aspirin to aid cardiovascular health.
He also had chronic venous insufficiency, a common and relatively benign condition that led to swelling in his lower legs. Trump “remains in excellent health”, she said.
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