“Morning Joe” questioned President Donald Trump’s plan to deploy the National Guard onto the streets of Chicago on Tuesday despite Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and other city officials denouncing the move.
Co-host Joe Scarborough kicked off the conversation by expressing mild confusion over the president’s decision to zero in on Chicago when there are “a lot of cities that need help” elsewhere.
“A lot of red-state cities. If you look at most crime charts, seven, eight of the top 10 deadliest cities in America, big cities, are usually in red states,” Scarborough said, adding of Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state that Americans are “400 times more likely to be killed in Louisiana than in California.”
The “Morning Joe” remarks came after Trump set plans to send the National Guard to Chicago, citing heightening crime rates and — once again — pushing to override the authority of a governor. He recently sent troops to Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles (against the will of California Gov. Gavin Newsom), and said on Friday that Chicago would be next.
“I think Chicago will be our next, and then we’ll help with New York,” Trump said at the time, calling the city a “mess.”
Watch the “Morning Joe” segment below:
Like Newsom’s rejection of federal armed forces in Los Angeles, Gov. Pritzker slammed Trump’s proposal for Chicago in a press conference Monday.
“This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against, and it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances,” Pritzker said. “What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”
After Scarborough pointed to red-state cities as populaces deserving of Trump’s attention, panelist Willie Geist chimed in to share that while he agrees there is an issue of violence in Chicago, Trump doesn’t need to resort to using the military to clear it out.
“You don’t want to minimize what’s happening in Chicago — it is a generational problem with gun violence. Been going on for generations,” Geist said. “But you’re right, why Chicago? Why Baltimore? Why Los Angeles? Is he picking these states and not Louisiana?”
Geist continued: “I think what these cities would love to actually partner with the president on is what we’ve talked about, give us more funding. Let us hire more cops. Let’s put people in the streets. We want to do that. We just don’t need the federal military in our streets.”
Watch the full clip via MSNBC’s YouTube channel above.
