Trump lashes out after liberal think tank says National Guard deployments did not reduce violent crime

Administration Trump lashes out after liberal think tank says National Guard deployments did not reduce violent crime Comments: by Ryan Mancini - 08/11/26 10:36 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Ryan Mancini - 08/11/26 10:36 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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President Trump on Monday lashed out at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, after it released a report last month suggesting the National Guard deployments failed to reduce violent crime.

“Chandler Hall, representing, on Television, the foolish Center for American Lack of Progress, stated that adding the National Guard to Cities, including our now Great Again, Washington, D.C., had ‘NO impact on Crime,'” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to the report’s author. “How crazy is that. Hall was met with furious dissent.”

Trump called the research “another Radical Left SCAM, as are the people who fund this gaggle of Lunatics, including George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, Google, Apple, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Walmart, Toyota, T-Mobile, and NBC Universal.”

He added that he will file a lawsuit and add “some of the contributors to this Fake Organization.”

“Crime is way down since I took Office, and they know it,” the president concluded. “Liars, at this level, must be held accountable!”

Chandler Hall, CAP’s associate director of public safety, appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” on Monday to talk about the July report, titled “The Trump Administration’s $1.7 Billion National Guard Deployments Fail To Reduce Urban Crime.”

His findings suggest that the deployments have not reduced violent crime, as incidents were already trending downward well before Trump deployed the National Guard to various cities.

“What we find is that across multiple cities, multiple datasets, and multiple time windows, we find no effect that violent crime actually did change post the National Guard deployment in any of the cities,” Hall said, later noting that there is a lack of “consistent data infrastructure” when tabulating what constitutes violent crime in different American cities.

He was faced with questions around Trump’s recent remarks to reporters about the crime rate in the nation’s capital, saying the District went from being the “crime capital, frankly, in the world” to “one of the safest places in the United States.”

The CAP author said that violent crime and homicides decreased in Washington even before the COVID-19 pandemic, thus predating Trump’s National Guard deployment. He added that it was “quite evident” that there is still crime in the city despite the president’s claim that it’s among the safest.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the president is continuing to still choose to boast that these deployments, these very costly interventions, are showing any results to try to convince voters that they should sign on for more of these kind of interventions in federal overreach, when, again, there’s no proof that they have any effect,” Hall said on C-SPAN. “And, in fact, it actually is making it more difficult for the work that’s already been done in the city.”

He also noted toward the end of the report that, based on the findings, the deployments “effectuated a dangerous power grab by the Trump administration” and “increased unrest in the cities that felt their independence being threatened.”

The Major Cities Chiefs Association’s own report, which breaks down crime statistics from January through the end of June this year, found crime rates declining across the board, with homicides down just more than 17 percent and robberies down more than 16 percent.

The Washington Post reported last week that the Pentagon’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington is projected to cost another $1.4 billion through the end of Trump’s term in 2029.