But if the President were really worried about bringing law and order to cities with high rates of violent crimes, he would also send the agents to -- wait for it -- Oklahoma City. Despite having almost exactly the same number of residents as Portland, Oklahoma City had a violent crime rate 67% higher and a murder rate more than double that of Portland, according to the most recent complete FBI statistics from 2018.
Or the President might consider a recent rally host: Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 2018, Tulsa's was double Portland's and its murder rate more than triple. Preliminary FBI data for January to June of 2019 tells a similar story. Though not perfect, the FBI data presented is the best information available on crime in the US.
Then why not Tulsa and Oklahoma City? Perhaps because they are run by Republican mayors. It is true that violence is spiking in major cities across the country and that almost all of America's largest metropolitan areas are run by Democrats. However, not all of them are being singled out for mass infusions of federal law enforcement.
The President might even look to Fox News' own ranking of America's five deadliest cities from earlier this year. Inconveniently for the President, only one, Baltimore, is in a reliably blue state. Meanwhile, three others, New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and St. Louis, are in red states and the final one, Detroit, is in Michigan -- a state crucial to his reelection. He has sent federal agents into none of them.
Consider three of America's largest cities after New York and Los Angeles: Chicago, Philadelphia and Houston. All three have experienced sharp increases in homicides in recent months: 34% in Chicago, 31% in Philadelphia and 37% in Houston, according to each city's respective police department.
But President Trump has ordered the Feds into just one: Chicago. What sets the second pair of cities -- Philadelphia and Houston -- apart? Political geography. The first is in a swing state, and the second is in an increasingly pink state that early polls suggest may be in play in November.
President Trump has not flooded the streets of these cities with federal law enforcement, presumably because his gambit has nothing to do with fighting crime and everything to do with political theatrics and cracking down on free speech.
In weaponizing largely peaceful protests that have occasionally involved violence, Trump sees a new wedge issue that could win back the suburbs and reclaim votes among non-college educated women and men who have drifted away from him in recent polls.
He's trying to create a narrative that Democratic cities are in chaos and only he can restore law and order. He's tried to paint Joe Biden as a far left liberal, but it hasn't stuck. So, he does what he does best: creates his own false narrative based on distortions, racially tinged rhetoric and constitutionally dubious assertions.
As the US is gripped by a global pandemic and calls for racial justice grow louder, we must embrace change to quell the unrest and violence in our cities. But committing crimes against the fabric of democracy is not the answer.
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Why don't all cities with high rates of crime get the same Trump treatment? - CNN
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