Again shows how mentally diseased the Orangutan is...

Trump compares Chicago to Afghanistan and rips into police chief for snubbing him

“All over the world they're talking about Chicago. Afghanistan is a safe place by comparison,” Trump told a gathering of police chiefs.

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

President Donald Trump on Monday used a speech to a gathering of international police chiefs to tear into his host city of Chicago, calling its violence worse than Afghanistan's, while also singling out the city’s top cop for snubbing his visit.

“It is embarrassing to us as a nation,” Trump said at an annual gathering of the International Association of Chiefs of Police of Chicago’s crime rate, during his first official trip to the city as president.

“All over the world they're talking about Chicago. Afghanistan is a safe place by comparison,” he said, recycling an attack he's used before to disparage cities. The aside elicited chuckles from the audience.

Trump has railed against Chicago’s high rates of violent crime, even threatening at points to have the federal government intervene in the city.

But on Monday, the president specifically trained his focus on Eddie Johnson, Chicago’s superintendent of police, who boycotted Trump’s appearance at the IACP convention, citing “not just my personal feelings about it, but our core values as a city.” Johnson’s boycott spawned backlash from officers in the city, and prompted the local police union to issue a vote of no confidence in their superintendent.

“There is one person that’s not here today — we’re in Chicago,” Trump said toward the start of his speech Monday.

“I said where is he? I want to talk to him. In fact, more than anyone else, this person should be here because maybe he could learn something,” he continued, pausing for cheers in the audience. “And that's the superintendent of Chicago police Eddie Johnson. He said the values of the people of Chicago are more important than anything President Trump would have to say.”

Trump denounced the snub as a “very insulting statement after all I've done for the police,” beginning to rattle off statistics about gun violence in the city.

He also ripped Chicago's status as a sanctuary city, claiming that Johnson had denied more than 1,000 requests from immigration officials to detain immigrants in Cook County, which includes Chicago.

“Eddie Johnson wants to talk about values?” he asked. “No, people like Johnson put criminals and illegal aliens before the citizens of Chicago and those are his values and frankly, those values to me are a disgrace.”

He went on to call Johnson and other Chicago officials’ support of its sanctuary status as a “betrayal of their oath to the shield and a violation of his duty to serve and to protect the courageous police officers of Chicago,” asserting, to continuing applause from the audience, that Chicago police deserve a leader who “has their backs and knows what he is doing” and “who sides with you, with the people of Chicago.”

But even as he sought to highlight Chicago’s high rates of crime, an unusually localized attack to be delivered to an audience of international law enforcement officials, he applauded a nationwide decline in violent crime, including murders, since he took office, which reversed two consecutive years of an uptick in violent crime, according to FBI data. According to the Chicago Tribune, shootings and violent crime have also decreased in Chicago. But Trump attacked Chicago’s gun laws, often inaccurately held up as the strictest in the nation, casting doubt on their effectiveness.

“That doesn't seem to be working too well, does it? A lot of you people know exactly what I mean,” Trump contended of the city's gun restrictions. “But under Johnson's leadership, they certainly don't protect people.”

Johnson held a news conference Monday afternoon to refute Trump’s attacks, beginning his comments by telling reporters: “Facts matter.”

He acknowledged Trump’s accuracy in hailing a nationwide decrease in violent crime over the past two years. But he contended, contrary to what the president indicated, that Chicago’s crime reductions were a major driver of those figures. “We could’ve easily continued to rise,” Johnson said, asserting that “the national narrative that Chicago is a city on fire is just simply not true.”

Johnson defended his officers, telling reporters that he is “exceptionally proud” of the work his police force has been doing. He also professed his dedication to the city, saying he'd "poured my heart out" for his hometown. Johnson also shamed the president for Trump's purported lack of faith in his cops, who he vowed would always be willing to stand up for the city of Chicago.

“Today, the same police officers the president criticized for their inability to protect this city spent all day protecting him,” he said.

But he expressed an openness to working with Trump, an offer the president made at one point during his speech. “If he’s truly ready to roll up his sleeves to partner with us, so are we, as long as that partnership reflects who we are as Chicagoans,” he added, pointing out that his department already has received some federal resources.

Other Illinois officials lambasted the president in response to the broadsides. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blasted Trump’s comments as “insulting, ignorant buffoonery” writing on Twitter that she was not surprised to see him bring up personal gripes.

“Luckily, in this city, we know the truth and we will not let anyone — no matter how high the office — denigrate who we are as a people or our status as a welcoming city,” she continued, mocking the impeachment inquiry awaiting Trump back home and urging him to “go back to D.C. and face his fate.”

Lightfoot also defended Johnson and her city’s police force, writing in a separate string of tweets in which she invoked his so-called zero tolerance immigration policy and challenged Trump’s moral authority to advise the city on issues of law and order.

“It is ironic that you have chosen to speak at a law enforcement conference after you have demonstrated zero respect for the rule of law and actively work to destabilize communities,” she said.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker implored more civility, telling reporters that Illinois “is the Land of Lincoln and when you come to the state of Illinois you should respect all the people that live here in the state of Illinois."

After airing his grievances with Chicago's police chief, Trump moved to recite the steps his administration had taken to bolster law enforcement, including, he said, stymieing violent attacks on police officers. Recounting the story of a Chicago officer in the audience who was ambushed while serving a warrant, Trump denounced "an attack on law enforcement" as an "attack on all Americans."

He also used the occasion to take a victory lap after approving a raid over the weekend said to have killed the founder and leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Trump ripped former President Barack Obama for not having caught the Islamic militant sooner, despite previously downplaying Obama’s role in the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden.

“He should have been killed years ago — another president should have gotten him,” Trump said Monday, claiming an unrivaled focus on the leader. "But to me it was very important. I would say all the time, they would walk into my office, ‘Sir, we killed this leader at a low level.’ I said I never heard of him. I want al-Baghdadi. That's the only one I know now, I want al-Baghdadi, get him. And they got him.”

Trump, too, continued to brag about the decimation of ISIS’ physical caliphate in Syria and Iraq, though military experts have warned that the recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria could allow the terrorist group to regain its strength.

“It was once the physical size of the state of Ohio and had 7 million people and growing big, big, big,” Trump said of ISIS’ grip in the region. “And they had a problem — it started about 2½ years ago,” he said, apparently alluding to his inauguration and drawing laughs and cheers from the crowd.

“During my administration, I — we — all together destroyed the caliphate 100 percent. Remember, I got it down to 97 percent and I said let's go home and then those people started saying 100 percent,” he told the audience, claiming, without providing evidence, that “before me they didn't care.”

Now, Trump argued, “they said what about 100 percent? And we met some great generals. I learned a lot about generals. I met some good ones and I saw some bad ones. Some that didn't have what it takes and others that had more than anyone would have thought. It was supposed to take a year, maybe two years. I said to one of them, ‘How long will it take?’ ‘I think we can do it in one week, sir.’”

Trump also used the official event to complain about the ongoing impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives, comparing the investigation into whether he abused his power to pressure a foreign government into investigating a political rival to the alleged staging of a hate crime against himself by actor Jussie Smollett earlier this year.

"It's a scam," Trump asserted. "It is a real big scam just like the impeachment of your president is a scam."