President Donald Trump said he plans to “force” federal troops into Los Angeles when it hosts part of the World Cup this summer.
During a Tuesday press briefing in the Oval Office, the president breathlessly swerved from complaints about voter fraud to the Olympic ban on trans women to touting the success of his crime crackdown on Washington, D.C., before announcing plans to deploy the same sort of crime crackdown in Los Angeles — whether the city, its citizens or its leaders like it or not.
“We’re gonna have to do something when it comes World Cup time, and we’re gonna have to force ourselves upon them, which we have the right to do,” he told reporters. “Because we don’t want to have any crime, we don’t want to have any problems.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has threatened to send forces to patrol Los Angeles during a global sporting event.
Last August, Trump said he and his administration would do “anything necessary to keep the Olympics safe,” including sending in the National Guard or other branches of the military, when the games head to LA in 2028.
The Trump administration already imposed itself on Los Angeles last summer amid widespread protests around a swell of deportation raids throughout Southern California.
The president has also said he would happily move the Cup — and the economic boon that comes with it — out of blue states and Democrat-led cities that he felt weren’t doing enough to combat crime.
Warning Democrats to fall in line or else, he said to the press last November, “The governors are gonna have to behave, the mayors are gonna have to behave.”
World Cup matches are scheduled to take place throughout the U.S., Mexico and Canada this June and July. Host cities include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle.
