President Trump said the head of a railroad company suggested sending the National Guard to St. Louis.
Trump announced Friday he would send the National Guard to Memphis to address crime during an interview on Fox & Friends. He said he had chosen Memphis because it was suggested by Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena.
Trump said when he asked Vena where else he should send guard members, Vena said St. Louis.
"I said to him, 'Where else should we go? Where would you say,'" Trump said. "He said, 'Sir please, do me a favor. St. Louis has been so badly hit. It's very hard. Very very hard.'"
A spokesperson for Union Pacific would not comment on the specifics of the conversation, but said Vena and the president discussed the creation of a transcontinental railroad during a recent Oval Office meeting.
"They also addressed the safety and security of all Americans, and that we regularly collaborate with communities to keep our employees and customers' cargo safe," the spokesperson said in a statement.
President Trump has been focused on deploying the National Guard to majority-Democratic cities in what he says is a push to combat crime and illegal immigration.
A month ago, President Trump declared an emergency, took over Washington, D.C.'s police force and deployed more than 2,000 National Guard troops in the city. He was able to take control of Washington's National Guard because it is not a state, but otherwise the National Guard is commanded by a state's governor.
Chicago had also been a focus for the president. But earlier this week, Trump said he would instead focus on another city in a state whose governor "would love us to be there," according to the Chicago Sun Times. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has repeatedly said the military does not belong in cities.
In Missouri, the Trump administration has asked Governor Mike Kehoe to deploy the national guard to help federal immigration enforcement.
In June, Kehoe declared a state of emergency and activated the Missouri National Guard in response to planned immigration protests. The demonstrations were peaceful, and the governor did not ultimately deploy the guard. The Missouri National Guard was also in St. Louis for about a month after the May 16 tornado to help with debris clean up.
A spokeswoman for the governor did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what discussions his administration has had with Trump about deploying the guard to St. Louis for crime-fighting purposes.
Megan Green, the president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, said although Trump seems to fixate on a different city every day, it was important not to discount the rhetoric.
"If St. Louis is on his mind, it needs to be on his mind for disaster response," she said. "We are still reeling from the May 16 tornado and are waiting on the federal government to act. If the National Guard is to come here, it needs to be for disaster removal, not to take over our city or try to suppress our population."
The narrative of out-of-control crime pushed by Trump and others does not match the reality of the numbers in St. Louis.
Data provided by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department shows that as of the last week of August, serious crime such as murder, shootings and felony theft was down across the city by 17% compared to 2024. Murder dropped more than 40% between 2020 — when the city saw a near-record 263 killings — and 2024.
But the perception of crime among the public remains a complicated issue. A poll by YouGov released July 30 found that more than half of U.S. adults surveyed believed that murder had increased since 1990, even though the number of homicides per 100,000 people has fallen by about a third since 1990 according to the Council on Criminal Justice.
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