Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, who has denied crime is out of control in her city, described the troop deployment as an "authoritarian push". Trump, a Republican, has also threatened similar deployments against New York and Chicago, two other Democratic-controlled cities.

President insists capital in need of ‘liberation’ from ‘violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people’ but data says no such problem exis