Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) is tearing into President Donald Trump for suggesting that the navy use a number of the nation’s “dangerous cities as training grounds.”
Talking with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Bass accused Trump of “creating warfare within” main cities after he made the suggestion whereas assembly Tuesday with a whole lot of senior U.S. navy officers. Trump held the uncommon assembly alongside Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth in Quantico, Virginia.
“The statements that were made to the military yesterday, acknowledging that we are going to experiment with our cities and use our cities as training grounds for warfare, what that is saying is that the president of the United States wants to turn the U.S. military against the American people,” Bass mentioned Wednesday, in accordance with a number of shops.
She added, “You are talking about creating warfare within cities, and again, I will point out, there’s something these cities have in common.”
Bass went on to recommend that “instead of using us as a test ground for the military,” the Trump administration is selecting “to cut programs that actually help to lower the violence and crime rate.”
Talking on the assembly, Trump mentioned, “I told [Hegseth], we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military — National Guard, but our military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor.”
Additionally naming San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, Trump, who signed an government order final month rebranding the Protection Division as the Division of Warfare, claimed that there’s a “war from within.”
“Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security,” he added.
Trump and Hegseth additionally outlined a myriad of impending adjustments to the armed forces that they argued will increase the requirements of America’s fight troops.
Bass’s feedback got here after the Trump administration had drawn ire for sending Nationwide Guard troops to a number of Democratic-led cities it claimed had been crime-ridden in an effort to curb crime and shield federal amenities.
Trump deployed the Nationwide Guard and Marines to Los Angeles in June to mitigate protests over his administration’s immigration crackdown.
Bass known as Trump’s transfer “a chaotic escalation” and the “last thing our city needs” in a June 8 assertion.
Early final month, a federal choose in California dominated that Trump’s deployment of the troops to Los Angeles this summer season was unlawful.
Bass additional decried Trump’s deployment after the ruling, declaring that Los Angeles “will not break” nor “be defeated.”
“The White House tried to invade the second largest city in the country,” Bass mentioned in an announcement. “That was illegal. Los Angeles will not buckle and we will not break. We will not be divided and we will not be defeated.”
