‘A hellhole!’: Trump says he fixed D.C. crime, so naturally, he’s sending troops to Baltimore

Following a public exchange with Maryland Governor Wes Moore, President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy troops to Baltimore to combat what he calls a crime crisis. The president’s comments came after Governor Moore invited him to join a safety walk in the city, an invitation the president described as nasty and provocative.

According to BBC, the president stated that he would much prefer for the governor to clean up this crime disaster before he would consider visiting. Trump said, “If Wes Moore needs help, like Gavin Newscum did in L.A., I will send in the ‘troops,’ which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the crime.”

Governor Moore, a frequent critic of the president’s strategy, said, “come off as so, so tone deaf and so ignorant. It’s because they have not walked our streets. They have not been in our communities, and they are more than happy to keep making these repeated tropes about us.”

Trump’s comments are based on ignorance, says governor

The threat to Baltimore is the latest development in the president’s ongoing effort to use military personnel for domestic law enforcement in Democratic led cities. The use of the National Guard for this purpose has been met with significant criticism from Democratic leaders.

The president has already deployed approximately 2,000 troops to Washington D.C., a Democratic stronghold. The military confirmed that on Sunday, the Guard began to carry weapons in the capital, although their use is intended only as a last resort. The president has claimed that since the operation began, it has brought total safety to Washington, describing the city as a hellhole that is now safe. The White House claims hundreds of arrests have been made since the operation commenced.

However, these assertions are contradicted by official crime figures from Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police (MPDC). The data shows that violent offenses fell after peaking in 2023 and had already hit their lowest level in 30 years in 2024. Preliminary data for 2025 indicates that the downward trend is continuing, with violent crime overall down 26 percent and robbery down 28 percent this year compared to the same period in 2024. This suggests that the crime reduction the president is touting was underway well before the deployment.

Democratic leaders have condemned the president’s domestic troop deployments as an abuse of power. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, whose state has been mentioned as a potential target, has stated that the threats to deploy troops to Chicago constitute an abuse of power.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has also weighed in, asserting that the president lacks the legal authority to dispatch troops to cities like Baltimore and Chicago. He contends that the president is exploiting a reduction in crime, such as Baltimore’s recent milestone of the fewest homicides in over 50 years, to manufacture a crisis.

A poll conducted by the Washington Post and Schar School found the deployment to be deeply unpopular among D.C. residents. Despite Trump claiming “DC was a hellhole, but now it’s safe,” Almost 80 percent of those polled were opposed to both the deployment of federal officers and the National Guard, as well as the federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department.