With his feverish fantasies about occupying Chicago dashed, President Donald Trump on Friday announced he’s moved on. He now plans to send federal troops to Memphis, with the blessing of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.
“We’re going to Memphis,” Trump told Fox and Friends, calling the city “deeply troubled.” The president claimed that Memphis Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat, and Lee, a Republican, approve of the decision.
Young contradicted Trump on Friday afternoon, saying that it was “an overstatement” to describe him as “happy” about the move, per a Washington Post reporter. “I do not support the National Guard; however, they are coming. It’s not the mayor’s call,” Young said. “My goal is to make sure that as they come, that I have an opportunity to work with them.”
The Republican governor, for his part, issued a statement Friday confirming he has been in “constant communication with the Trump administration to develop a multi-phased, strategic plan to combat crime in Memphis, leveraging the full extent of both federal and state resources.”
Lee’s statement represents a stark reversal from his stance two weeks ago, when he claimed there were “no plans” for the National Guard to come to Memphis, citing existing investments in crime fighting and a 15 percent decrease in crime in the city in the past year.
But the governor changed his tone last week, saying, “Nothing is off the table.” According to Trump, that means not even the military. “By the way, we’ll bring in the military too if we need it,” the president said Friday.
Mayor Lee Harris of Shelby County, where Memphis is located, condemned Trump’s decision as “anti-democratic” and in violation of “American norms and possibly US laws.”
“The President sending troops to Tennessee will interfere and have a chilling effect on Tennesseans’ ability to exercise critical freedoms, such as the freedom to protest and the liberty to travel,” said Harris, a Democrat. “We will do everything in our power to prevent this incursion into Tennessee.”
With Memphis in his sights, the president has apparently backed down on his musings about stationing troops in Chicago. In recent weeks, the president has expressed interest in recreating his federal takeover of Washington, D.C., in the Windy City, but wavered amid pushback from local leaders, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. On Friday, Trump said he would have preferred targeting Chicago over Memphis.
Johnson celebrated Trump’s retreat in a statement: “Because of the unified opposition from community leaders and elected officials in Chicago and throughout the state, the Trump administration backed down from its threats of sending in the National Guard to Chicago,” he wrote. “We continue to call on the federal government to send additional resources to help us continue to drive down violent crime, but we reject any military occupation of our city.”
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