Trump says he will patrol D.C. streets with police, military on Thursday

President Donald Trump said he will join law enforcement officials on D.C. streets Thursday, as his administration continues its effort to exert control over the capital city.

“I’m going to be going out tonight with the police and with the military, of course,” Trump said in an interview with talk show host Todd Starnes.

The White House and the administration of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declined to comment on the president’s plans. A D.C. police spokesperson said they didn’t have additional information.

Earlier this month, Trump ordered a federal takeover of the D.C. police force, an extraordinary flex of federal power and part of his wide-reaching effort to make his mark on deep-blue American cities, which he has described as chaotic dystopias in need of occupation.

While a judge walked back some of Trump’s efforts to put his staff at the helm of the D.C. police department, his administration has successfully infused the city with federal law enforcement agents and transformed a jurisdiction historically accepting of immigrants into ripe ground for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to detain people.

Over the past week, the Trump administration has repeatedly taken credit for bringing down crime in the nation’s capital, touting the number of arrests made daily and arguing the surge in federal law enforcement is making the city safer.

Speaking to reporters Thursday morning before the president’s announcement, Bowser said the city’s police department had overseen significant drops in violent crime before the Trump administration’s actions.

“Our police department has been consistently precipitously driving down crime for the last two years,” she said at a news conference, calling the D.C. police department’s work “effective.”

Bowser added that an order from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi seeking to compel D.C. police to cooperate with federal officers “almost exclusively focused on immigration enforcement and homeless encampment enforcement,” rather than crime.

“I’ll let you draw your own conclusions,” Bowser said.