‘Maybe we like a dictator’: Trump defends his federal crackdown on cities
By Danny Kemp
Washington: US President Donald Trump suggested many Americans would like a dictator, as he signed orders to tighten his federal clampdown on the capital, Washington, and to prosecute flag-burners.
During a rambling 80-minute event in the Oval Office on Monday, Washington time, Trump lambasted critics and the media as he complained that he was not getting credit for his National Guard-backed crackdown on crime and immigration.
US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday.Credit: AP
“They say, ‘We don’t need him. Freedom, freedom. He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator’,” Trump told reporters.
“A lot of people are saying: ‘Maybe we like a dictator’. I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”
Trump – who attempted to overturn the results of his 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden at the end of his first term – said before winning a second term in November that he would be a “dictator on day one”.
The US president deployed the National Guard to Washington this month to counter what he alleged was an out-of-control crime problem, also taking federal control of the city’s police department.
Members of the National Guard after an individual set fire to an American flag in Lafayette Park outside the White House on Monday.Credit: Bloomberg
Trump said he was also considering sending the military into the cities of Chicago and Baltimore as he targets a series of Democratic strongholds. He sent the National Guard to Los Angeles – against the mayor’s and California governor’s wishes – in June.
He was particularly disparaging of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a vocal opponent who has strongly rejected any move to send troops to Chicago.
“You send them, and instead of being praised, they’re saying, ‘You’re trying to take over the Republic,’” Trump said. “These people are sick.”
Pritzker, a billionaire businessman like Trump, launched his own broadside at the president in a Monday press conference, calling him “a wannabe dictator” who “wants to use the military to occupy a US city, punish his dissidents, and score political points”.
Trump tried to bring North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in from the cold during his first term.Credit: AP
Trump further tightened his clampdown on Monday by signing an executive order to investigate and prosecute people who burn the American flag – despite a 1989 ruling by the US Supreme Court saying that the act is protected by freedom of speech laws.
“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail – no early exits, no nothing,” Trump said.
Trump also announced new measures tightening his grip on security in Washington, ordering Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to set up a specialised unit within Washington’s National Guard for public order and ending cashless bail.
He also said he would soon be changing the name of Hegseth’s department to the Department of War, its name from 1789 to 1947. “Defence is too defensive,” Trump told reporters.
Democrats have repeatedly accused Trump of pushing presidential power way past its constitutional limits, most recently by deploying troops in the US capital.
He has also cracked down on everything from the federal bureaucracy and “woke” policies to his political opponents.
But Trump rejected all criticism in his angry and wide-ranging Oval Office diatribe, speaking for more than 45 minutes before taking reporters’ questions.
Trump dismissed opponents who have called him racist by proclaiming “I love black people” – before describing a Salvadoran man who is set to be deported to Uganda in an immigration row as an “animal”.
He went on a long detour about what he called a lack of gratitude from Pritzker about measures to tackle a “pretty violent” invasive fish species in the Great Lakes.
Trump also called his Democratic predecessor Biden a “moron” and dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal 2022 invasion of Ukraine as being the result of “big personality conflicts”.
The US president later repeatedly expressed his admiration for another strongman leader – North Korea’s Kim Jong-un – during a meeting with South Korea’s president in the Oval Office.
“I’d like to have a meeting. I get along great with him,” Trump said of Kim, whom he met three times in his first term.
Trump also said he had spoken to Putin in recent days and that he believed the Russian president’s dislike of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was holding up a meeting between the two leaders aimed at ending the conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.Credit: Getty Images, AP
“He doesn’t like him,” Trump said. “I have people I don’t like, I don’t like to meet with them.”
He said Ukraine and Russia would ultimately have to decide whether to set the meeting.
“That’s going to be up to them. It takes two to tango, I always say, and they should meet,” Trump said.
The stalemate over a Putin-Zelensky meeting is the latest blow to Trump’s effort to bring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now in its fourth year, to an end.
The town of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine after heavy battles with Russian troops in the Donetsk region on Sunday,Credit: AP
Trump’s separate shuttle diplomacy with the two leaders this month raised the possibility of the first in-person talks since the conflict started, but those hopes have been dashed as Putin has dragged his feet on a sit-down with Zelensky.
“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. They’d like me to be at the meeting. I said, ‘You, you guys ought to work it out. It’s between you. It’s not us,’” Trump said.
He added that there could be “very big consequences” if Russia didn’t come to the negotiating table, threatening to “step in” if nothing happened in the coming two weeks.
Trump has previously threatened to impose fresh sanctions and tariffs on Russia if it did not end its invasion, but has yet to follow through.
Zelensky has said that he expects to unveil security guarantees backed by the US and European partners “in the coming days”.
“At present, the teams of Ukraine, the United States, and European partners are working on their architecture,” Zelensky said in a social media post last week.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government slammed American filmmaker Woody Allen for speaking virtually at a Russian film festival over the weekend, calling his participation “a disgrace and an insult” to the victims of the war.
According to Russian media, Allen spoke on Sunday via video conference. The appearance put him at odds with the Hollywood establishment, which has embraced the Ukraine cause during Russia’s war.
Woody Allen in 2023.Credit: Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP
Footage aired by Russian state TV showed Allen addressing a tightly packed movie theatre from a massive screen, with pro-Kremlin film director Fyodor Bondarchuk moderating the session.
Russian media reports quoted Allen as saying that he has always liked Russian cinema, recounting his past trips to Russia and the Soviet Union, and talking about what he would do if he were to receive a proposal to direct a movie in the country.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in an online statement it “strongly condemns” Allen’s participation in the festival, which “brings together supporters and mouthpieces of Putin”.
The ministry called it “a disgrace and an insult to the victims among Ukrainian actors and filmmakers who have been killed or wounded by Russian war criminals”.
In a statement to the Associated Press, Allen criticised Putin and denounced the invasion but called for cultural exchange to continue.
AFP, Bloomberg, AP
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