New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio Wednesday threatened to go to court "immediately" if President Donald Trump sends federal law enforcement personnel into his city to quell protesters as he has done in Portland.
"What the president is doing is he's tearing up the Constitution," the mayor said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "What he did in Portland is already a horrible step in the wrong direction, and it’s been counterproductive. It’s created more violence, more harm, more protest."
And if just one of the federal officers steps in New York City "with the intention of denying the First Amendment rights of New Yorkers, we will be in immediately," said de Blasio. "And we will win."
"Every time the Trump administration has tried to bend the Constitution to their will, they have lost in court," said de Blasio. "When you look at the law of the Constitution, the federalism, but also the specific mandates of these agencies, it has nothing to do with crowd control or addressing protest."
De Blasio noted that for years, New York City was the safest large city in the country, but that has changed in recent months and he blames that on the coronavirus pandemic.
"It is directly related to the coronavirus, the dislocation it's caused in our society, the fact that our court system is not functioning yet," the mayor said. "But we will beat it back because we've done that for a quarter-century. We need people's involvement to make the city safer. The NYPD, and if we ever need any assistance, that's what localities do, when they feel they need assistance, then wait for that request from the locality that knows what's right for its people."
But that help should not come from the federal government because it's never been its place to "decree" that it knows better than people in a certain city or state who have chosen their leaders and policies, said de Blasio.
Federal agents "do not know how to work in this environment" without causing more violence and problems, he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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