President Trump visits Key West for briefing on drug interdiction efforts

President Trump visited Key West for a briefing on drug interdiction.

April 19, 2018, 2:52 PM

Fresh off his two-day summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President Donald Trump made a short jaunt to Key West, Fla., on Thursday for a briefing on the military's efforts to counter smuggling of illegal drugs.

The president visited the Joint Interagency Task Force-South for an update with members of NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM on drug interdiction efforts, a key issue pushed by the president dating back to his campaign promise to stop drugs from "pouring" into the U.S.

"You have done really an incredible job," Trump said to interagency members during their meeting, adding theirs is "a thankless job in many ways."

The visit comes as the president ratchets up his immigration rhetoric following his recent order to deploy the National Guard to assist in patrol efforts at the southern border.

Just prior to his departure from his private Mar-a-Lago club where he's expected to spend the rest of the weekend, the president slammed California again in a tweet over its 'sanctuary city' policies and said the federal government would not pay the state for the National Guard's mission.

Trump's tweet appeared to contradict an exchange Wednesday evening between Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen where the two indicated an agreement was reached between the state and federal government on funding and the role National Guard troops would play at the southern border.

"This order from the Governor, in his capacity as the commander-in-chief of the California National Guard, is being issued after securing the federal government’s commitment to fund the mission," Brown's office said in a press release.

During his briefing at the task force, Trump again targeted California, saying "there's a little bit of a revolution going on" with counties who are pushing back on the state's sanctuary laws.

“If you look at what’s happening in California with sanctuary cities — people are really going the opposite way," Trump said. "They don’t want sanctuary cities. There’s a little bit of a revolution going on in California.”

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