President Donald Trump said he plans to “force” federal troops into Los Angeles when it hosts part of the World Cup this summer.
At a press conference in the Oval Office on Tuesday, the president breathlessly veered from complaints about voter fraud to the Olympic ban on trans women to touting the success of his crime-fighting efforts in Washington, D.C., before announcing plans to deploy the same kind of crime-fighting efforts in Los Angeles — whether the city, its citizens or its leaders like it or not.
“We will have to do something when it comes World Cup time, and we will have to impose ourselves on them, and we have the right to do that,” he said. he told reporters. “Because we don’t want to have crime, we don’t want to have problems.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has threatened to send troops to patrol Los Angeles during a global sporting event.
Last August, Trump said he and his administration would do just that ‘Everything necessary to keep the Olympic Games safe’ including sending the National Guard or other branches of the military when the Games come to LA in 2028.
The Trump administration already imposed itself on Los Angeles last summer amid widespread protests surrounding a wave of deportation raids across Southern California.
The president has also said he would like to move the Cup — and the economic boon that comes with it — out of blue states and Democratic-run cities that he felt weren’t doing enough to fight crime.
Warn the Democrats to get in line or elsehe told the press last November: “The governors will have to behave, the mayors will have to behave.”
World Cup matches will take place in the US, Mexico and Canada in June and July. Host cities include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle.
