Trump Targets Cities as Bastions of Crime, Poverty, and Corruption

Democrat crime, corruption, and poverty. If leftists stick with Democrats on this issue, you know politics isn't about improving the lives of people. It's only about stroking your fellow ideologues and tribalists.

At LAT, "It’s not just Baltimore; Trump is running against America’s cities":

.@Michael_Nutter told me efforts to demotivate black voters may do the opposite.

“In 2016, people just couldn’t believe that this kind of bizarro character had any possible chance.. Now, I think that folks’ eyes are wide open. People are fully woke.”https://t.co/2ZXkJb1JpQ

— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) August 3, 2019

WASHINGTON —  He was born in Queens and lives on Fifth Avenue. His skyscrapers dot city skylines on several continents. But President Trump is increasingly intent on disparaging urban areas, depicting them as blighted and overrun by criminals and homelessness — all part of a divisive reelection strategy heading into 2020.

Trump’s denigration of cities is part of an effort to animate a base of rural, mostly white supporters while depressing minority turnout in places like Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia — a repeat of the two-pronged strategy that helped him to a surprising electoral college victory in 2016 and could be determinative again four years later.

“No one has paid a higher price for the far-left destructive agenda than Americans living in our nation’s inner cities,” Trump said Thursday night at a rally in Cincinnati, drawing cheers from the mostly white crowd. “We send billions and billions and billions for years and years, and it’s stolen money, and it’s wasted money.”

“For 100 years it’s been one party control, and look at them,” he continued. “We can name one after another, but I won’t do that because I don’t want to be controversial.”

In reality, the country’s largest urban areas are major engines of the national economy and generate more tax money than they receive from the federal government. By contrast, most rural areas receive more from Washington than they generate.

The president singled out California and two of its largest cities, commenting on a homelessness problem that he laid at the feet of the state’s leaders.

“Nearly half of all the homeless people living in the streets in America happen to live in the state of California. What they are doing to our beautiful California is a disgrace to our country. It’s a shame,” he said.

“Look at Los Angeles with the tents, and the horrible, horrible disgusting conditions. Look at San Francisco, look at some of your other cities,” Trump added.

Trump’s administration has not made homelessness a priority and has offered no new policy ideas for dealing with the problem.

After a skirmish in the crowd, as Trump supporters swarmed around a small group of protesters who had unfurled a sign that read “Immigrants Built America,” the president took the opportunity to punctuate his chosen message.

“Cincinnati, do you have a Democrat mayor?” Trump asked the crowd. “Well, that’s what happens.”

Last weekend, Trump tweeted more than 30 times about Baltimore, the nation’s 30th largest city, calling it a “very dangerous & filthy place” where “no human being would want to live.”

He blamed Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight Committee that is investigating the administration on multiple fronts, and described his district, which includes parts of Baltimore as well as its suburbs, as a “disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess.”

A Trump campaign aide defended the president against critics who called those statements racist.

“It’s notable that no one has challenged the President’s descriptions of the problems in Baltimore and other cities. Critics would rather focus on the word ‘infested,’ which is the very same word Congressman Cummings used to describe his own city’s drug problems in a congressional hearing 20 years ago,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump’s reelection campaign.

“After all this time, why hasn’t it gotten better? It’s completely legitimate to call out the leadership in cities where conditions haven’t improved decade after decade.”

“When the nation and our economy are clearly on the right track, why would we turn the country over to the same political party whose ideas have failed so many of our city residents?” Murtaugh added, noting, as the president often does, that African-American unemployment is dropping.

While Trump avoided mentioning Cummings by name at the rally Thursday night, he did assert that Baltimore’s homicide rate was higher than several Central American countries...