Hours before Donald Trump announced that he would hit the streets of Washington, D.C., and join a police patrol amid his administration’s federal takeover of the city’s law enforcement, one of the hosts of his favorite morning talk show urged him to seize control of New York City.
It wasn’t the first time she had done so, either.
“I don’t understand why anyone would be against this, more policing, more people being arrested that are criminals,” Fox & Friends co-anchor Ainsley Earhardt declared on Thursday morning. “I would love for this to happen in New York City. I hope our city is next.”
Trump, meanwhile, was almost certainly tuning in when Earhardt made her comments. It was just two days ago when he called into the show for his first television interview following the White House visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders. Trump said he agreed to the last-minute appearance on the show because co-host Charlie Hurt personally called him to see if he’d phone in.
Additionally, the president derailed the interview towards the end when he went on a tangent about Earhardt and Trump’s close pal Sean Hannity, the Fox News star that Earhardt got engaged to this past Christmas. According to Trump, the pair – who he claimed shared the “greatest relationship” – should be thrilled with his militarized crackdown in D.C. since it meant they could go out to dinner without the fear of being “mugged.”
Earhardt’s call for Trump to take over the policing of New York City, which is where Fox News is headquartered, came in response to D.C. residents protesting Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday when he visited National Guard troops deployed in the city and bought them hamburgers.
Vance, who later that evening defended the federal crackdown by claiming violent crime had been significantly reduced, dismissed the “crazy liberals” demonstrating against him by saying “they’ve never felt danger” in their lives – which seemed to fly in the face of the administration’s justification for taking over the city’s law enforcement. In the meantime, following a spike in violent crime in recent years, D.C. has seen a sharp decline in most major crime categories – including murders.
At the same time, the vice president suggested on Wednesday that Washington represented a “test case” and that other Democratic-led cities could soon see military troops and federal law enforcement swarm their streets as the administration takes control of their police departments.
Of course, after he announced his federal takeover of D.C., the president warned New York that it could be next, even though homicides and shootings had tumbled during the first quarter of 2025. Additionally, New York City’s murder rate is below the national average and is among the lowest of any major city.
Following Trump’s suggestion last week that other blue cities could see the military patrolling their streets soon, Earhardt publicly wished for that to happen.
“So the president implemented this Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, and in less than a week, they’ve taken 100 violent criminals off the streets. I think it’s great,” she said last Thursday.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the National Guard, especially if it’s in areas where there is a lot of crime,” Earhardt added. “I mean, think about Times Square. There is a lot of crime there. We cover a lot of stories there. If they had National Guard troops in Times Square, it would make me feel safer.”
Earhardt is far from the only one on Fox News cheering on the federal crackdown in D.C., which is hugely unpopular among residents of the city.
Anchor John Roberts, who broadcasts from the right-wing network’s Washington studio, has repeatedly downplayed the use of military force on the capital’s streets while expressing confusion as to why the city’s population dislikes the idea. “I don’t understand why people would protest against their presence here, if they are merely trying to deter crime,” Roberts said on Wednesday.
In the end, though, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Earhardt and other Fox News stars are actively supporting the takeover or urging the president to deploy more troops in American cities.
It was the conservative cable giant, after all, that seemed to push Trump into pulling the trigger on his takeover plan, which was initially spurred by his anger over a former DOGE staffer nicknamed “Big Balls” getting bloodied by teenagers in an attempted carjacking.
