Trump Declares, ‘I Have the Right To Do Anything I Want’ Because ‘I’m the President’
President Donald Trump claimed all-encompassing powers for himself during a marathon cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Cabinet officials took turns praising the president, who also took questions from reporters in a meeting that lasted three hours and 17 minutes. That’s about 40 minutes longer than a flight from New York to Chicago, where Trump has indicated he will deploy the National Guard next.
Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles in June and to Washington, D.C. this month, ostensibly to fight crime. In each case, he did so against the wishes of local officials. The president’s plan has received a similarly cool reception in Chicago.
“This weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker noted in Chicago on Monday. “This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s Founders warned against.”
Trump brushed aside Pritzker’s opposition.
“I would have much more respect for Pritzker,” the president said on Tuesday, “if he’d call me up and say, ‘I have a problem. Can you help me fix it?'”
Trump added:
I have the right to do anything I wanna do. I’m the President of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it, no problem going in and solving, you know, his difficulties. But it would be nice if they’d call in and say, “Would you do it?” And we do it in conjunction. Now, we work very well with the police because we naturally get along with the police. So, the police and us work really well together, whether the mayor is opposed or whether– I mean, you have a really rotten mayor there, too. He’s got a six percent approval rating in Chicago.
And I see Black women wearing a red MAGA hat last night on television. “Please let the president come in. My son was attacked. My this–”. You have a force of Black women, Black Women. They’re like, “Only Trump.” They want Trump to come in.
The president has insisted on multiple occasions that Black women in Chicago are clamoring for his assistance.
“They are wearing red hats, just like this one,” Trump alleged last week. “But they are wearing red hats. African American ladies, beautiful ladies are saying, ‘Please, President Trump, come to Chicago, please.’”
Watch above via The White House.
