MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk celebrated President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” takeover of the nation’s capital by calling for the Trump administration to unleash a “full military occupation” of other large American cities “once we liberate” Washington, D.C.
In what appeared to be spurred by the recent late-night attack on former DOGE employee Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, who was allegedly assaulted during an attempted carjacking, Trump announced on Monday that he was deploying 800 National Guard troops and temporarily taking control of Washington’s police department to fight crime in the city.
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we're not going to let it happen anymore,” Trump exclaimed on Monday. Despite violent crime falling for two straight years in Washington under the current chief of police, the president likened the city to the “worst places on Earth” while repeatedly framing it as a dystopian hellscape.
Having already deployed thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles earlier this summer to quell protests that erupted over his immigration raids, Trump also suggested that other large cities in Democratic-led states – such as New York City and Chicago – could be next.
At the same time, as the New York Times noted, the president did not mention cities in red states with much higher murder rates than Washington, and he also ignored the “most violent episode” in the capital’s recent history – the January 6 Capitol riots. Shortly after returning to office in January, Trump issued a blanket pardon of hundreds of rioters, many of whom had been convicted of violent crimes and were serving time in prison.
During his podcast on Monday, Kirk – one of the president’s most loyal media acolytes and founder of the MAGA youth organization Turning Point USA – urged Trump to send more American military forces into other cities in short order, claiming it would create favorable press coverage.
“I guarantee the crime's gonna go… way down,” he proclaimed. “And then the media will say, oh, it's only going down because he brought in the military. Exactly. We need full military occupation of these cities until the crime desists. Period.”
Claiming “we have a big teenage problem of crime in our country,” Kirk specifically spotlighted Chicago as a problem area before demanding that more teenagers be given decades-long prison sentences for auto thefts.
“Simple fix. You steal a car, 25 years in prison,” the pro-Trump pundit raged. “I don't care if you're a teenager. I don't care if — well, I was raised without a dad. Well, you're going to go meet a new dad in jail. We're done. We're not putting up with it. We need more prisons, and we need more prisoners.”
Kirk also rebuked his own support for Trump’s criminal justice reforms during the first administration, saying it was a “totally wrong premise” and it now makes him “cringe at myself.” Instead, he said the country needs “the humiliation of criminals” and to “stop coddling criminals because they happen to be a protected class,” claiming that “we don’t believe in protected classes” in America anymore.
“Game over. No more protected classes,” Kirk proclaimed. “We are all citizens made in the image of God. Oh, you're a protected class because, you know, different skin color. Wrong. That regime was defeated back in November.”
Kirk, who recently slammed the White House’s push to deem marijuana a less dangerous drug, further warned Trump not to just have the military “symbolically” occupy Washington, calling for a true show of force in the nation’s capital.
“Now, again, I want to say, President Donald Trump, he's gotta go play to win here,” the right-wing activist said. “The one piece of caution we'd have to say is that if we just kind of do this symbolically, we will lose. The criminals will win. We got to go hard. We gotta go big league. We're talking National Guard, tanks — every street, you need military.”
Kirk – whose rhetoric has grown more extreme and racially charged in recent years – also advised conservatives to push back on any criticism that “Trump is a fascist because he's bringing the military” by calling the president’s detractors “anarchists” in response.
“We're not fascist. We're order. Call them a name right back,” he bellowed. “You're an anarchist. You want the criminals, the thugs, the gang members, and the worst of society to run the streets of D.C.”
After downplaying the Capitol riots as nothing more than people who wanted to “go say a prayer in the U.S. Capitol” in order to mock the use of the National Guard after January 6, Kirk then concluded by name-checking which cities he wants to see under military occupation.
“Once we liberate D.C., you better believe it — Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco. We got a big military. We should be willing to use it,” he stated.
