He has recently used the National Guard in Washington D.C, to tackle what he called ‘crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,’ and CNN reports he said Chicago and New York were next.
Trump has faced criticism from representatives in Illinois who responded to his comments about crime in their state, with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker insisting ‘there is no emergency… there is no insurrection’.
Trump has responded strongly to the press, hitting back at Pritzker, saying: “You have a guy in Illinois, the governor of Illinois, saying that crime has been much better in Chicago recently and Trump is a dictator.
“Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ — I am not a dictator, by the way.”
Later, he added he ‘would have much more respect for Pritzker’ if he approved a National Guard deployment in his state.
It was then that some felt he violated his presidential oath, with the president saying: “Not that I don’t have…the right to do anything I want to do.”
“I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country is in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it,” he insisted. “No problem going in and solving, you know, his [Pritzker’s] difficulties. But it would be nice if they’d call and they say, ‘Would you do it?’”