President Donald Trump may have launched his most scathing insult yet at Democrats during a speech he gave to the International Association of Police Chiefs on Monday in Chicago, comparing them to former “Empire” actor and alleged hate crime hoaxer, Jussie Smollett.
The President took aim at several characters in his Chicago speech, excorating the city’s major and police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, who skipped the conference to avoid Trump, as well as Congressional Democrats currently conducting an impeachment “inquiry” behind closed doors in Washington, D.C.
Smollett, of course, is now famous for being the victim of a “hate crime” last winter. Smollett claimed that two white men wearing “Make America Great Again” hats waited for him outside his apartment in Chicago’s tony Streeterville neighborhood, and accosted him when he returned home with a midnight snack in the wee hours of January 29th. The actor eventually told police that the two men assaulted him, beat him, tossed a “noose” over his neck, and then ran away, shouting a host of racial and homophobic slurs, capped off with the declaration, “This is MAGA country!”
An extensive police investigation appeared to reveal that Smollett had collaborated with two friends — both “Empire” extras and local personal trainers — to stage the attack. He was charged with sixteen counts of lying to police officers, but the charges were eventually dropped in a sweetheart deal with Chicago’s chief prosecutor.
Trump clearly hasn’t forgotten that he and his supporters were drawn into Smollett’s alleged hoax, and that, for days, celebrities and media figures assailed President Trump over the attack. And he certainly hasn’t forgotten that some of Smollett’s top defenders are now involved in establishing a case for his impeachment.
“You have the case of this wiseguy Jussie Smollett who beat up himself, and he said MAGA country did it. It’s a crime, a hate crime. That’s a scam, a real big scam just like the impeachment of your president is a scam,” Trump told the room full of police officers.
“And you look what’s going on, Smollett is still trying to get away with it. He would have been better off with his face on [a] $100,000 bill,” he continued.
The Trump Administration maintains that the President should not be the subject of an impeachment inquiry, but Democrats are pursuing one, regardless, under the theory that Trump made a quid-pro-quo deal with Ukrainian officials: international aid dollars in return for a Ukrainian investigation into whether former Vice President (and current candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination) Joe Biden used his office to pull strings for his son, Hunter, who was doing business in the country.
Trump followed up his criticism of Democrats with criticism of Chicago’s police.
“People like Johnson put criminals and illegal aliens before the citizens of Chicago,” Trump said, referencing Chicago’s “sanctuary city” policy and the city’s high murder rate. “Those are his values and, frankly, those values to me are a disgrace.”
“It’s embarrassing to us as a nation,” Trump added. “All over the world they’re talking about Chicago. Afghanistan is a safe place by comparison.”
While Trump is generally correct about the Afghanistan numbers, Johnson has presided over a steep decline in violent crime in Chicago, according to the Chicago Police Department’s own numbers. Shootings — by far Chicago’s most public problem — are down more than 10% year over year, and Chicago has officially lost the title of “most violent city in America,” dropping to twenty-first after cities like Baltimore, Maryland, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, according to USA Today.
Johnson is also, ironically, the chief motivating force behind an ongoing city of Chicago lawsuit against Jussie Smollett, seeking to recover $130,000 worth of overtime pay accrued by detectives investigating Smollett’s “hate crime.”