Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) pointed out that President Donald Trump's so-called "crackdown" on crime in Washington, D.C. included National Guard troops picking up trash instead of backing up law enforcement.
During a Sunday interview on ABC, Moore told host Martha Raddatz that the National Guard had not been trained for municipal policing.
"You know who is trained for municipal policing?" he noted. "Things like local law enforcement and things like FBI agents and ATF agents who, by the way, in the President's proposed budgets, actually cut funding for them."
"And yet one of the things that they're trying to do in D.C. with the National Guard is have them back up local law enforcement," Raddatz argued.
"They're picking up trash," Moore observed.
"They are definitely picking up trash in certain places," Raddatz admitted, "but if you look at the crime and you've heard Mayor Bowser say, 87% reduction in carjacking, robberies, cut by half, why wouldn't you want that here if that is actually helping?"
Moore said he was willing to have a "serious conversation" with Trump about fighting crime.
"What can we do, particularly when you look at the cost of the National Guard, of well over a million dollars a day," he remarked. "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."
"Like that's that's a serious approach how to address this issue, but asking me to deploy my national guard people who are not trained from municipal policing is just not a serious approach," the governor added.
