President Donald Trump has waved the white flag regarding his efforts to station National Guard troops across Democratic American cities.
Posting to his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump, 79, acquiesced to backlash over his decision to station armed National Guard members in left-leaning cities.
“We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,” Trump wrote on the platform.
“Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in,” he continued. “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again—Only a question of time!”
“It is hard to believe that these Democrat Mayors and Governors, all of whom are greatly incompetent, would want us to leave, especially considering the great progress that has been made???”
The president made a big show of his decision to deploy National Guard troops on U.S. soil—a choice that the Supreme Court, packed with Trump appointees including Brett Kavanaugh, shot down last week.
The court declared in an unsigned order that the Trump administration did not have sufficient justification to federalize troops in Chicago, a Democratic-led city in the state of Trump’s new nemesis, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
“At this preliminary stage, the government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the court decided.
Another Trump-appointed federal judge, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, blocked the president’s federal deployment of troops to Portland in October, saying that the president’s claims that the city was a site of civil unrest were “untethered to facts.”
“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Immergut wrote in the court’s decision.
It’s not the first time Trump has chickened out, either. In May, the term “TACO,” which was coined by Wall Street traders for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” began gaining mainstream popularity—and the president’s ire.
The president neglected to follow up on his promise of deploying National Guard troops to New York City after a particularly friendly meeting with the city’s Democratic Socialist mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani.
Speaking to reporters after the November meeting, he said he would send troops only “if they need it.”
“Right now, other places need it more. We had a very good meeting yesterday. We talked about that. But if they need it, I would do it,” Trump said.
The president had previously threatened to revoke federal aid and deploy troops if the city elected the “communist” Mamdani. But following the two opposing political leaders’ White House meeting, the only thing the president could deploy was a beaming grin and niceties.
