Armed National Guard members patrol near the U.S. Capitol as security tightens following President Donald Trump’s deployment order. (Getty Images/Tasos Katopodis)
"Governor Pritzker should spend less time demonizing the police, more time trying to recruit more police, and more time trying to call the president of the United States to get crime in his city under control," Leavitt said. "The president wants to allow law enforcement, whether it's state, local, federal, to do their jobs, to arrest criminals, to put them behind bars, and to remove public safety threats from American communities, he'll continue to do that."
Pritzker, a Democrat who hasn’t ruled out running for president in 2028, has pushed back against the possibility of National Guard troops arriving in Chicago to address crime, and said Monday that the move would be "unconstitutional" and "un-American."
"Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish its dissidents and score political points," Pritzker said. "If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is — a dangerous power grab."
National Guard troops stood at Union Station, days after being deployed in the city, just down the road from the U.S. Capitol. (Fox News Digital/Emma Woodhead)
"He should put politics aside," Leavitt said. "He should pick up the phone and call this president, who would be more than happy to do right by law-abiding American residents in the city of Chicago. And we hope that he will."
Chicago does not have the most murders per capita, and isn't listed in the top five cities for murder per capita in compilations of 2024 FBI data.
Trump disclosed plans Aug. 11 to mobilize troops from the D.C. National Guard and to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department to address crime in the nation’s capital. Since then, Trump has indicated that he might dispatch National Guard troops to other cities in the U.S., including Chicago.
"We go in, we will solve Chicago within one week, maybe less," Trump told reporters Monday morning. "But within one week we’ll have no crime in Chicago, like no crime in D.C."
Diana Stancy is a politics reporter with Fox News Digital covering the White House.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-slams-pritzker-blue-cities-crime-fight-escalates-decline-choice