CNN host Kaitlan Collins and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner on August 12, 2025

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania District Attorney Larry Krasner didn't mince words when asked about President Donald Trump's latest proposal to put troops on the ground in major American cities.

During a Tuesday interview with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Krasner was asked to comment on Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Washington D.C., and his suggestion that the nation's capital was a trial balloon for a similar strategy in other cities across the country. Krasner slammed the proposal as "a profoundly un-American attempt to exercise power in ways that are illegal," adding that it was an attempt "to after Democratic cities that are diverse to serve his racist, fascist agenda."

Trump has countered that his actions are necessary to counter what he claims is a violent crime wave plaguing U.S. cities. His deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops to D.C. came after 19 year-old Edward Coristine (who also goes by the online moniker "Big Balls") was beaten up by teenage carjackers.

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"We have other cities also that are bad. Very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is,” Trump said. “New York has a problem. And then you have, of course Baltimore and Oakland, we don’t even mention that anymore. They’re so far gone. We’re not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We’re starting very strongly with D.C., and we’re going to clean it up very quickly, as they say.”

Trump's claims about D.C. are inaccurate. A Department of Justice press release from January found that violent crime in the nation's capital was at a 30-year low. Krasner also boasted that violent crime in Philadelphia was also at its lowest in several decades, and posited that Trump's push to take over predominantly Democratic cities was instead a purely political move.

"We may set the record — the record — for lowest crime overall in Philadelphia for more than 50 years. And at the same time, we have some of the lowest incarceration [rates]. That's not an emergency," Krasner said. "Donald Trump is the emergency, folks. Listen, the emergency is Donald Trump. It is not anything else ... This is a staging ground. This is a normalization of troops being deployed to do what they should not be asked to do, what they're not equipped to do, and what violates the constitution and laws."

"And why is he doing it? He's doing it for the same reason he had that stupid birthday parade," he continued. "He's doing it because he really likes the idea of being a dictator. He likes the idea of destroying our legal system. He likes the idea of eliminating the courts and taking away individual rights ... I'm sorry to put it out so plain, but that is what this is. and we all have to stand up to it."

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Watch the video of Krasner's comments below, or by clicking this link.

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