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Trump orders Democrats jailed, but poll shows majority oppose military deployments

US President Donald Trump’s civil war with Democrat-held cities just heated up. Trump has ordered Chicago and Illinois democrat leaders to be arrested, despite no evidence of legal wrongdoing.

However, a new poll shows the US government’s military deployment’s into cities like Chicago are opposed by a majority of the population. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that troops must be deployed to a number of US cities for their own security.

The president called for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to be arrested on 8 October.

Trump announced on his personal social media platform:

Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!

No to military deployments

The poll, carried out by Reuters/Ipsos, followed Trump’s mass meeting with hundred senior military officers on 30 September. In it, he warned that the US faced an enemy within.

The study’s findings are clear, however.

Reuters reported:

Some 37% of poll respondents said they agreed with a statement that presidents of either political party should have the power to deploy troops into states even when state governors object, compared to 48% who disagreed.

The study found that

…83% of respondents said the military ‘should remain politically neutral and not take a side in domestic policy debates’ while 10% said the armed forces should start taking sides and support the president’s domestic policy agenda. About one in five Republicans said the military should take the president’s side in political debates.

Troops from the Texas National Guard started arriving near Chicago Tuesday.

Trump’s attempts to deploy the military to some cities has been blocked by judges he himself appointed:

US district Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, previously blocked the deployment of Oregon’s own National Guard to Portland on Saturday. Then, when the Pentagon attempted to redeploy 200 National Guard from California to Oregon, she criticised federal government lawyers for trying to circumvent her earlier orders.

You can read a full Canary overview of Trump’s war on US cities here.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

This post was originally published on Canary.