Last Friday on Fox & Friends, President Donald Trump teased sending the National Guard into the Tennessee of Memphis. He had been talking up Chicago, so this was a bit of a surprise. Late yesterday with Tennessee Governor Bill Lee by his side, Trump signed the order to deploy the National Guard into the Delta city. While the city has a rich history, it is also famous for crime and corruption. Will the deployment work? Not without NEW local leadership.

President Trump signed the order for to deploy the National Guard sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office with Governor Bill Lee and Senators Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn looking on. Marsha Blackburn is running to succeed Lee as Governor of the Volunteer State.

#AspiringDictator #Trump deploys #National #Guard to #Memphis, continuing military crime-fighting push. https://t.co/UQrBKfK24C

— rblumel (@rblumel) September 15, 2025

Trump is some kind of dictator acting with the approbation of the Governor and Senators.

If you know nothing about Tennessee, it is truly three separate regions. East Tennessee, my beautiful home, has the Great Smoky Mountains. Middle Tennessee has Nashville and Vanderbilt University and is rolling hills country. West Tennessee has Memphis and is part of the Mississippi Delta and has a Naval Station.

Last week, Lee gave Fox Digital the news that he has been working this plan with Trump for a while:

“For months, I have been in constant communication with the Trump Administration to develop a multi-phased, strategic plan to combat crime in Memphis, leveraging the full extent of both federal and state resources,” Lee said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.

“The next phase will include a comprehensive mission with the Tennessee National Guard, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Memphis Police Department, and other law enforcement agencies, and we are working closely with the Trump Administration to determine the most effective role for each of these agencies to best serve Memphians.”

“As one of America’s world-class cities, Memphis remains on a path to greatness, and we are not going to let anything hold them back,” Lee added.

Trump admitted that he would have “preferred going to Chicago.” The Trump administration has recently clashed with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson over possible National Guard deployment to the Windy City.

Trump told “Fox & Friends” that both Memphis Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, were on board with the plan to have the National Guard sent to what’s known as the Bluff City.

Mayor Paul Young isn’t exactly on board so much as accepting what’s coming:

“I did not ask for the National Guard, and I don’t think it’s the way to drive down crime,” Young said at the Memphis press conference. “However, that decision has been made.”

Young stressed the need to work strategically with federal agencies and noted the city has been making progress on reducing crime, specifically mentioning that violent crime, murder, car thefts and overall crime were down in 2024.

The mayor said local officials have been implementing deliberate strategies, such as investing in a city-wide camera network and using an FBI initiative, adding that they should double down on those methods that work.

However, crime is still an issue in Memphis, Young said, providing examples of recent shootings on 901 Day and later in Hickory Hill, where four people were shot.

“The pain of violence, we feel it,” the mayor said. “We know it all to well. To me, this is not about politics…the crime is still too high, and there’s still too many victims.”

Too many victims? What is the acceptable number of victims?

MAKE MEMPHIS SAFE AGAIN

In 2024, Memphis had:
249 murders
429 rapes
5,616 burglaries
12,522 violent assaults

Today, President Trump signed a Memorandum to restore LAW and ORDER in the city! pic.twitter.com/0Q2HOlNj8t

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 15, 2025

Tens of thousands of victims? Nearly three years ago, our Nina told you about a victim, photographer Tyre Nichols. He was murdered by an “elite” Memphis police unit named the Scorpions:

Folks, it’s not that he was just beaten on a little bit, nor tased once. Tyre Nichols was beaten with fists, kicked more than once, beaten with a police baton multiple times, pepper sprayed, and tased by some or all of the five police officers involved.

What these Memphis police officers did was so beyond the pale, it’s unreal. It makes the George Floyd incident or the Rodney King beating look like chump change.

The New York Times searched for and found negative comments:

Several Democrats in the city are concerned about what the addition of National Guard troops might mean to Memphis. They want to know what the role of the Guard would be, how it would be identified to the public and where it would be based in the city or surrounding Shelby County. Like some of the other cities Mr. Trump has singled out, Memphis has a significant share of Black residents; more than a third of the state’s Black residents live there.

“I do not think it is a wise or necessary move for the National Guard to come in,” said Earle Fisher, a Memphis pastor and community activist, on Friday. It was, he said, “the inverse” of when troops were called in to other Southern cities to protect demonstrators during the civil rights movement.

That’s just flat Trump Derangement Syndrome. This is not the fault of Black citizens. This is the fault of local leadership.

In this video, a man pleads for poverty eradication and investment. With crime out of control, investment would be just flushing money into the Mississippi River:

We are not just talking about violent and property crimes, we are talking corruption and organized crime. I asked Grok for the number of gangs in Memphis and Grok blew up, but gave me this:

The exact number of gangs operating in Memphis, Tennessee, is not a fixed or universally agreed-upon figure, as it depends on definitions (e.g., whether “gangs” include national organizations like Crips or Bloods, local subsets/cliques, or only actively tracked groups), data sources, and time periods. Gang activity is fluid, with groups forming, dissolving, or becoming inactive due to arrests, violence, or law enforcement efforts. Based on recent and historical data from reliable sources like the Memphis Police Department (MPD), Wikipedia compilations, and government reports, estimates vary significantly. As of September 2025, the most current official figure from MPD indicates at least 48 active gangs, primarily local subsets alongside national ones, with no major updates suggesting a dramatic increase or decrease in 2025.

Memphis and surrounding Shelby County should just thank President Trump, if he makes any progress using the National Guard.

Featured Image: Mattbeat1981/Wikimedia Commons.org/cropped/Public Domain