The President announced that Memphis, Tennessee, will be the next city to receive National Guard troops, broadening his nationwide crime crackdown after deploying forces to Washington, D.C., just weeks earlier.
In a Friday interview with Fox News, Trump called Memphis “deeply troubled,” adding, “We’re going to fix that, just like we did Washington.”
🚨 BREAKING: President Trump just announced he will be sending the National Guard into MEMPHIS
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 12, 2025
Both the Republican Governor AND the Democrat Mayor are happy with this
"We're bringing in the National Guard... and the military, if we need it." 🔥 pic.twitter.com/25fB6IopLu
He also said his administration would send the “National Guard and anybody else we need,” leaving open the possibility of deploying U.S. military forces to other struggling blue cities.
The Memphis Police Department reports that overall crime is at a 25-year low, though the city’s murder rate remains above the national average.
The President noted that he would prefer to send National Guard troops to Chicago, a move he has discussed for weeks, but “The Democrats don’t want it." Before adding, “We’d love to save Chicago,” but “we don’t want to go into a hostile” area.
He added that other Democratic-led cities remain under consideration, pointing specifically to New Orleans. The city "is really in bad shape and the governor wants us to go and we’ll do that too,” he said.
In the four weeks since National Guard troops and federal law enforcement have been present in Washington, D.C., over 2,300 arrests have been made. Violent crime has fallen by 39 percent, property crime is down by 18 percent, robberies fell by 50 percent, carjackings by 37 percent, and burglaries by 48 percent. The national capital experienced its first-ever recorded 13-day period without a single murder.