On Monday, MAGA firebrand Charlie Kirk escalated his rhetoric to new levels, calling for what he described as a “full military occupation” of American cities once former President Donald Trump’s administration “liberates” Washington, D.C. Kirk, the founder of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA and one of Trump’s most loyal media allies, delivered the demand during his podcast, urging the White House to deploy tanks, soldiers, and the National Guard to restore what he framed as “law and order” across major urban centers.
The comments came on the heels of Trump’s latest crackdown in the capital. Following reports of a late-night carjacking attempt that allegedly involved Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, a former DOGE employee, Trump announced that he was sending 800 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. He also declared that his administration would temporarily assume direct control over the city’s police department. In his statement, Trump described the nation’s capital as a city overrun by “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people.” He vowed that “we’re not going to let it happen anymore.”
Trump’s language painted an apocalyptic picture of Washington, even though violent crime in the city has fallen for two consecutive years under its current police leadership. Nevertheless, the president compared the capital to “the worst places on Earth” and insisted it required an iron-fisted response. His plan mirrors the controversial deployment of thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles earlier this summer, when protests erupted in response to aggressive immigration raids. He hinted that other Democratic-led cities, such as New York and Chicago, might be next in line for federal intervention.
Noticeably absent from Trump’s remarks were references to Republican-controlled states with higher murder rates than Washington, as well as acknowledgment of the city’s most violent modern episode: the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. That event, in which Trump supporters stormed the seat of government, left multiple people dead and hundreds injured. Yet, after regaining office in January, Trump issued a sweeping pardon to hundreds of rioters, many of whom had been convicted of serious offenses.
Kirk seized on Trump’s announcement during his podcast, framing it as only the beginning of what should become a nationwide campaign of military force in American cities. “I guarantee the crime’s gonna go… way down,” he said with characteristic certainty. “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.”
In his remarks, Kirk identified what he called a “teenage crime wave” as a particular problem. He singled out Chicago as a prime target for military intervention and demanded dramatically harsher sentencing for young offenders. “Simple fix,” he said. “You steal a car, 25 years in prison. 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.”
The rhetoric marked a sharp turn from Kirk’s earlier support for Trump’s first-term criminal justice reforms, which had been designed to reduce mandatory minimums and encourage rehabilitation. On Monday, he disavowed those reforms entirely. “It was a totally wrong premise,” he admitted. “It makes me cringe at myself.” Instead, he now argues for humiliation and punitive measures against criminals, rejecting what he characterized as the “coddling” of offenders who belong to so-called protected classes.
“Game over. No more protected classes,” Kirk declared. “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.” His phrasing, which critics describe as racially coded, echoed his increasingly combative rhetoric over the last several years, which has drawn fire from both liberals and moderates.
Kirk’s comments also included a warning to Trump himself not to make the military presence in Washington symbolic. “Now, again, I want to say, President Donald Trump, he’s gotta go play to win here,” Kirk 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.”
Beyond the policy prescriptions, Kirk also offered a rhetorical strategy for conservatives to push back against accusations of authoritarianism. Critics have already compared Trump’s aggressive use of federal forces to fascist governance. Kirk urged his listeners to deflect such accusations by labeling opponents as “anarchists.”
“We’re not fascist. We’re order,” Kirk shouted. “Call them a name right back. 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.” He downplayed the violence of the January 6 riots, recasting them as nothing more than people who “wanted to go say a prayer in the U.S. Capitol.” In doing so, he mocked the use of the National Guard after that insurrection, even while demanding its deployment in cities across the country now.
In his conclusion, Kirk listed the cities he most wanted to see subjected to 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 said.
The remarks come at a time when Kirk’s influence within conservative circles is at an all-time high. Through Turning Point USA and his daily media appearances, he has built a large following of young conservatives, amplifying Trump’s agenda while adding his own brand of uncompromising rhetoric. Critics argue that his latest statements cross into outright authoritarian advocacy, proposing a militarized America where dissent and crime alike are stamped out by force.
Supporters, however, say Kirk is responding to what they view as lawlessness in Democratic-run cities and is voicing the frustrations of ordinary Americans who feel abandoned by local leaders. To them, Kirk’s call for order resonates in an era of fear over crime, even if statistics show that many of the president’s claims are exaggerated.
What remains clear is that the conversation over crime and safety is being shaped by increasingly extreme proposals. While Trump frames Washington as a dystopian city in need of rescue and Kirk demands tanks on the streets of New York and San Francisco, the broader reality is far more complex. Crime rates vary widely across the country, and many of the most violent areas are in states far from the ones being targeted.
Yet, nuance rarely dominates in the current political climate. As Trump flexes his power with military deployments and Kirk demands that cities fall under federal control, the lines between rhetoric and policy blur. For millions of Americans, the question is no longer whether such ideas are extreme—it is whether they might actually become reality.
