Trump trashes Chicago and its police superintendent at police chief convention in Chicago
Donald Trump has apparently never learned some very basic manners.
Most people know that when you are invited to a city to address a crowd, you do not spend a good portion of your speech denigrating your hosts.
That, however, is exactly what Trump did this morning during his appearance at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in the Windy City.
The president has never been a big fan of the heavily Democratic city in a state that he lost to Hillary Clinton by a margin of over 17%.
His antipathy grew even larger when Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson announced this weekend that he wouldn’t attend the annual conference of his peers because of Trump’s attendance, citing his own — and the city’s — values as the reason for boycotting the president’s prominent presence at the event.
“I have to take into account, not just my personal feelings about it, but our core values as a city,” Johnson said. “We are nothing without trust and with some of our communities under siege, it just doesn’t line up with our city’s core values along with my personal values.”
Chief Johnson’s decision certainly rankled Trump, and the president made a point of attacking the Chicago Police Chief in his remarks to the crowd, as documented by CNN’s Daniel Dale who live-tweeted the speech for the public.
Trump bashes Chicago's police superintendent for saying he wasn't coming to see Trump because of his values and Chicago's values: "That's a very insulting statement after all I've done for the police." (This appears to be in his prepared text.)
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 28, 2019
Exactly what Trump imagines he’s done for the police remained unstated.
Trump is now mocking Jussie Smollett. He says that was a "scam just like the impeachment of your president is a scam."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 28, 2019
The president’s logic in “mocking” Empire actor Jussie Smollett — who was arrested by Chicago police for filing a false police report after an alleged assault in charges that were later dropped by prosecutors — makes little sense except as an excuse to equate Democratic efforts to hold Trump accountable to the rule of law to the type of scam Smollett is accused of perpetrating with a supposedly set-up mugging.
Trump says Chicago is an embarrassment to America. "All over the world, they're talking about Chicago," he claims. He says Afghanistan is "a safe place by comparison. It's true."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 28, 2019
Chicagoans must find it vaguely amusing to have their city called an embarrassment to the nation by the man who is — to use his own hyperbolic language — the biggest embarrassment on the international stage that our country has ever encountered.
His claims that Afghanistan is “a safe place by comparison” to Chicago is predictably not true, as this chart from the web site of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute clearly demonstrates.
Trump is now telling a many-Sir story about an unnamed man who told him "it's sad, sir, it's very, very sad" what's going on in Chicago, that it's the mayor and police leaders' fault, and that the cops could solve the local "killing problem" in 1 day if they were left alone.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 28, 2019
Trump’s implication that “cops could solve the local ‘killing problem’ in 1 day if they were left alone” again suggests the president’s total contempt for the rule of law since his predicted timetable would surely be impossible without the suspension of civil liberties and the protection of due process.
His very mention of the idea of setting police loose in a vengeful spree to “solve” Chicago’s violent crime issues — many of which are caused by the easy access to guns smuggled into the city from places with looser gun regulations — is the type of authoritarian thinking that should be frightening to any citizen who values the civil liberty protections guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.
Yes, Trump is doing this attack on Chicago in Chicago. This stuff is not aimed at the people of Chicago. https://t.co/zJcgkQ44yZ
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 28, 2019
Trump’s bad manners in denigrating the city that is hosting the conference that he was addressing are finally called out by an incredulous Twitter reader with higher expectations of the president than any of his behavior has ever warranted — just ask the residents of Baltimore.
Of course in Trump’s eyes, the significance of the homicide rate is not in the premature deaths of actual human beings, but in the numbers and statistics and how they reflect on his own performance, popularity, and the adulation he is seeking.
The irony of a thoroughly criminal president lecturing an audience of law enforcement officials while simultaneously attacking the city to which he has been invited may be lost on many Americans, but, sadly, that’s part and parcel of the surreal existence in which we now find ourselves in Trump’s America.
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Original reporting by Daniel Dale at CNN.
