Trump Officially Spreads His Fascist Military Takeover to Memphis
President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi want to “Make Memphis Great Again.”
On Monday, the president signed a presidential memorandum to establish the “Memphis Safe Task Force,” delivering on weeks of threats to send federally controlled law enforcement into the Blackest city in America. The National Guard, FBI, ATF, DEA, ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, and the U.S. Marshals will all be present.
Trump used a perceived crime wave as justification for the memorandum, a move similar to his federal takeover of D.C. last month.
“A person is four times more likely to be murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, today than in Mexico City. And you know Mexico City is not a cakewalk,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “It’s been overrun with carjackings, robberies, shootings, and killings … so we’re not gonna allow this kind of savagery to destroy our society anymore. We’re stopping it.”
Trump also reaffirmed that he was still planning the same operation in Chicago, although he noted that the administration would wait a bit, perhaps to prepare legal defenses to the lawsuit that would surely come from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.
Trump’s attack on Memphis—along with his threats to Chicago and Baltimore—reaffirms his aggressiveness toward Democratic, majority-Black cities with Black leaders.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young has already made his disapproval of the president’s decision clear.
“It’s not something that I believe is going to reduce crime in our city. I think that the way to reduce crime is to invest in the things that are going to intervene and prevent crime in the first place,” Young told the Reverend Al Sharpton Sunday on MSNBC.
This story has been updated.