WATCH: Trump suggests using U.S. cities as 'training grounds for our military'

President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that the military and National Guard should use their deployments to U.S. cities as “training grounds.”

The Trump administration has sent the National Guard to several U.S. cities to combat what it calls high crime and lawlessness, including Washington, D.C., Memphis and Portland, Oregon. Trump said Chicago is next on his list.

“I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military – National Guard, but military – because we're going into Chicago very soon,” the president said, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, during a gathering of military officials in Quantico, Virginia.

Trump called Chicago “a big city with an incompetent governor, stupid governor,” referring to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat.

According to a University of Chicago Crime Lab report from December 2024, “murders and non-fatal shootings continued to decline from their recent peak in 2020 and 2021” in the city, yet violent crime, while down from the previous year, is “still higher than the 5-year average.”

“If they lose 5 [people], they're considering it a great week. They shouldn't lose any. You shouldn't lose any. This is civilization,” Trump said. Pritzker is “always up there saying, ‘We're in very good shape. We don't need the military.’ No, they need the military desperately.”

The president also described Portland, Oregon, as “a war zone,” despite a drop in the city’s violent crime rate.

“We are under invasion from within. We're stopping it very quickly,” the president said. “After spending trillions of dollars defending the borders of foreign countries with your help, we're defending the borders of our country from now on. We're not going to let this happen.”

Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app

Find more from PBS NewsHour at

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

X (formerly Twitter)

Subscribe:

PBS NewsHour podcasts

Newsletters