Sept. 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump praised Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday for supporting a crackdown on crime, as he declared the nation’s capital “a crime free zone.”
After signing an executive order last month to deploy the National Guard inside the nation’s capital, the president said the mayor’s support helped bring “crime down to virtually nothing in D.C.”
“Wow! Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C., has become very popular because she worked with me and my great people in bringing crime down to virtually nothing,” Trump wrote Monday in a post on Truth Social, as he issued a warning to other Democrats.
“Her statements and actions were positive, instead of others like Pritzker, Wes Moore, Newscum and the 5% approval-rated mayor of Chicago, who spend all of their time trying to justify violent crime, instead of working with us to completely eliminate it,” Trump said.
“NOW A CRIME FREE ZONE. Wouldn’t it be nice to say that about Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and even the crime-drenched city of Baltimore?” Trump continued. “It can happen and it can happen FAST! Work with us!”
According to Bowser, there has been an 87% decrease in carjackings as well as a 15% drop in overall crime since the federal government took over law enforcement on Aug. 11.
“We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhanced what MPD has been able to do in this city,” Bowser told reporters Thursday. “We know that when carjackings go down, when use of guns goes down, when homicidal robbery goes down, neighborhoods feel safer and are safer.”
While Bowser praised the federal crackdown on crime, she criticized ICE agents as “not being an efficient use of those resources.”
“I’m devastated by people living in fear. I think you know very clearly how I feel about our nation needing comprehensive immigration reform, about the Congress establishing a pathway to citizenship for hard-working people who came to this country for a better life and who are not criminals.”
As Trump appealed to other Democratic leaders, he claimed “Mayor Bowser’s ratings have gone up, in a short period of time, 25% and the people of D.C., are thanking her for stopping crime wherever she goes.”
On Saturday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order, demanding that Trump end “his threats to deploy the National Guard” to his city.
Johnson said the Protecting Chicago Initiative was needed because “we have received credible reports that we have days, not weeks, before our city sees some kind of militarized activity by the federal government.”
“I don’t take orders from the federal government,” Johnson said, as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Sunday any response would be considered an “invasion.”
“No one in the administration — the president or anybody under him — has called anyone in my administration, or me. So, it’s clear that in secret they’re planning this — well, it’s an invasion with U.S. troops, if they in fact do that,” Pritzker said.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson criticized both responses to the federal government’s crackdown on crime, saying, “If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the president, their communities would be much safer.”