Aug. 21 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said he will go out on patrol with Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police on Thursday night amid his federal crackdown on crime in the district.
“I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police and with the military, of course. So we’re going to do a job,” Trump told conservative radio host Todd Starnes on his show. “The National Guard is great. They’ve done a fantastic job.”
A senior White House official said that the details of the evening were still being worked out.
White House officials said Thursday that there had been more than 600 arrests since federal officers were deployed in the city on Aug. 7. Of those, 251 were arrests of immigrants in the country illegally, the White House said.
On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth treated National Guard members to lunch at the city’s Union Station. They were greeted with protests, which Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller derided.
“We’re going to ignore these stupid White hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old,” The Hill reported Miller as saying. “And we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.”
A Washington Post-Schar School poll of 604 District residents published Wednesday found 65% did not think Trump’s actions would make the city safer. About 80% of residents said they opposed Trump’s executive order to federalize the city’s police.