President Trump is preparing to send federal troops into Chicago and Baltimore, after denouncing both cities as crime-ridden ‘hellholes’ that require military interventions to restore order.

His intentions were announced during a press conference in the Oval Office on Tuesday. He stated that he would be ordering National Guard troops to both cities, but did not provide a deployment timeline.

“Chicago is a hellhole right now, Baltimore is a hellhole right now,” Mr. Trump said.

“We have a right to do it because I have an obligation to do it to protect this country, and that includes Baltimore,” he added.

The president immediately met opposition to his plans from officials in Maryland and Illinois.

“While we try to decipher exactly what the President meant today, the Governor has been consistently clear: The use of the National Guard for municipal policing is theatrical and not sustainable,” a spokesman, David Turner, for Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, said in a statement to the Associated Press.

Baltimore’s mayor, Brandon Scott, took to social media to refute Mr. Trump’s claims that the city is a “hellhole” riddled with criminal activity.

In a post on X, Mr. Scott said, “The reality is Baltimore is safer today than it’s been in 50 years,” citing figures showing that August had the lowest total of homicides on record.

The announcement comes after a back-and-forth with Mr. Moore, who recently sent a letter to Mr. Trump inviting him to visit Baltimore at a day and time of his choosing for a public safety walk. Mr. Trump responded, telling the governor he would need to “clean up this crime disaster” before he would come to the city.

The governor called Mr. Trump’s latest remarks about Baltimore “insults from the Oval Office.”

“While the President is spending his time from the Oval Office making jabs and attacks at us, there are people actually on the ground doing the work who know what supports would actually work to continue to bring down crime. But it’s falling on the deaf ears of the President of the United States,” Mr. Moore said in a statement to CBS News.

Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, has continued his tête-à-tête with Mr. Trump over the pending deployment of troops to the Second City. On Tuesday, he called Mr. Trump’s comments “unhinged” for suggesting that he should contact the White House and say, “Send in the troops.”

“No, I will not call the president asking him to send troops to Chicago,” Mr. Pritzker said at a news conference with Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and other leaders. “I’ve made that clear already.”