National Guard troops will soon carry weapons in Washington, DC, where President Donald Trump ordered their deployment as part of a crackdown on crime, a US defense official said Friday.

Trump has said Washington was a “crime-infested rat hole” before he sent troops onto its streets last week and said Friday that Chicago and New York — two more major Democrat-led cities — are set to receive similar treatment.

“At the direction of the secretary of defense, JTF-DC members supporting the mission to lower the crime rate in our nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons,” the defense official said on condition of anonymity, referring to the Joint Task Force-DC.

The US Army previously said as troops began to arrive that “weapons are available if needed but will

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