President Trump once again criticized Chicago and its violence on Monday, saying the city is "worse than Afghanistan" or any war zone that the U.S. is in, according to Forbes.
He made the comments during a law enforcement roundtable at the White House where the president made his clear opposition to defunding police and attacked Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for supporting police reform.
The president also condemned cities that are run by Democrats and “radical libs,” claiming that they are racked with violent crime and overrun with protesters who “rip everything down in front of them," according to Forbes.
Chicago, which saw at least 60 shootings over the weekend, including 13 deadly incidents, has been a frequent target of the commander-in-chief.
In June, the president sent a letter to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker calling on them to "urge action on the devastating violence in Chicago."
"Your lack of leadership on this important issue continues to fail the people you have sworn to protect," the letter read. "I am concerned it is another example of your lack of commitment to the vulnerable citizens who are victims of this violence and a lack of respect for the men and women in law enforcement."
In a speech on police reform earlier the same month, Trump pointed to the Chicago Police Department's murder clearance rate.
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"47% of all murders in Chicago and 68% of all murders in Baltimore went without arrests last year. Americans want law and order. They demand law and order," Trump stated.
The Chicago Police Department confirmed in a statement at the time that the murder clearance rate for 2019 stood at 53%.
Trump has a long history of disparaging Chicago and its violence, most recently doing so in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference held in Chicago last October.
In that speech, Trump repeated a story he's often told about a conversation he claimed to have had with an unnamed police officer in Chicago who said he could "fix this killing problem" in one day - a story CPD has refuted multiple times since he first told it as a candidate in 2016.
