Members of the city council of Memphis, Tennessee, object to the city paying for police to take Donald Trump to a nearby rally later this month because the former president doesn’t pay his bills.
“He is notorious for not paying,” Democratic City Council member Martavius Jones noted to NBC affiliate Action News 5 in Memphis last week.
“When you talk about these rallies, there’s a huge expense that different jurisdictions have to pay, and these expenses are not being reimbursed by the Trump campaign or the Trump Organization,” he said.
The Center for Public Integrity reported in 2020 that Trump owed 14 different police agencies and local governments nearly $2 million for the services they provided at his rallies at the time.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, officials were so frustrated last year with a $211,000 long outstanding loan due to the Trump campaign that they sent the bill straight to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
El Paso, Texas, officials told KXAN-TV last month they are still awaiting a payment of $570,000 for the cost of Trump’s reelection rally in 2019.
Trump’s rally on June 18 will take place in South Haven, Mississippi, about a 20-minute drive from the Memphis airport.
Jones and fellow council member JB Smiley, who is running for governor of Tennessee, plan to introduce a resolution to the full council on Tuesday asking the Memphis Police Department not to provide any manpower or other resources for Trump’s presence. has been asked for.
“As we know, the Memphis Police Department already faces a shortage of officers to patrol our communities. I do not believe taking the former president to an event in Mississippi,” Smiley said in a statement. For is a prudent use of police manpower and Memphians’ taxpayer dollars.
“He’s no longer president. He has a Secret Service detail, I think that’s enough,” Smiley told Action News.
Larry Ward, a spokesman for The American Freedom Tour, the organizer of Trump’s rally, said the councilors’ proposal is “meaning-spirited, partisan, absurd and pathetic.”
A Memphis Police Department spokesperson told Action News 5 that if police are asked to “assist a federal partner with regard to the safety of a group or individual, we will assist.”
