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