Maryland Governor calls National Guard in DC ‘performative’
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., is “performative,” despite a recent drop in the violent crime rate.
In an interview that aired Sunday on ABC News’s “This Week,” Moore acknowledged there’s more work to do in Baltimore to bring down the crime rate. He said while he would welcome federal help, he pushed back on the idea of sending in the National Guard.
“I would love more federal support, but federal support on things that actually make sense and not things that are performative,” Moore, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said in the interview.
“The National Guard is completely performative because the National Guard is not even trained for it,” he added, noting local law enforcement and FBI agents are better trained to do municipal policing.
ABC News’s Martha Raddatz asked Moore in the interview, which was filmed earlier this week in Baltimore, about Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser saying Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital has been a success, when measured by the drop in crime, especially in robberies and carjackings, which have long plagued the city.
Moore said he’s glad Washington has seen a reduction in crime but called the deployment of National Guard troops to major cities inefficient and “not sustainable” for the cost.
“If the president of the United States were to have a serious conversation with me and say, ‘What can we do?’ — particularly when you look at the cost of the National Guard of well over a million dollars a day,” Moore said, “Do you know what I would tell him?”
“I would tell him things like, we need to make sure we’re increasing funding for local law enforcement. And we have to invest in our community groups and community organizations,” Moore said.
“That’s a serious approach how to address this issue, but asking me to deploy my National Guard — people who are not trained for municipal policing — is just not a serious approach.”