Chicago PD: Trump’s Lying About Meeting With Leadership Over “Tougher” Police Tactics
Another day, another blatant lie by the Republican standard-bearer easily debunked.
During an appearance on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor Monday night, Donald Trump told his milkshake buddy that he had spoken to some of the top police officers in the Chicago Police Department. He said he was informed by them that all police would need to do in Chicago to eradicate all crime in a week would be to use tougher policing tactics. This was in response to Bill O’Reilly’s question about improving the city’s issues with crime.
“How? By being very much tougher than they are right now. They’re right now not tough. I could tell you this very long and quite boring story. But when I was in Chicago, I got to meet a couple of very top police. I said, ‘How do you stop this? How do you stop this? If you were put in charge — to a specific person — do you think you could stop it?’ He said, ‘Mr. Trump, I’d be able to stop it in one week.’ And I believed him 100 percent…he wants to use tough police tactics, which is OK when you have people being killed.”
Well, the Chicago PD didn’t take too kindly to Trump claiming their leadership was telling him that all they needed to do was crack some heads to stop the violence. Speaking to the Chicago Tribune, department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi refuted Trump’s claim.
“No one in the senior command at CPD has ever met with Donald Trump or a member of his campaign,” Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
Guglielmi clarified later that since at least March, when a Trump rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago was planned and ultimately canceled, none of the department’s deputy superintendents, commanders of the city’s 22 districts, chiefs of patrol or chiefs of detectives has met with Trump.
It’s not the first time Trump has gotten into a disagreement with Chicago police about their consultation. Trump had cited security reasons for canceling the March 11 event, and his campaign workers said at the time that a Chicago police commander had talked with them prior to it being canceled. But Chicago police issued a statement then denying they had been consulted.
As for Trump’s suggestion that Chicago police could be tougher, Guglielmi responded that the department believes community policing and stricter gun laws are key.
“The best way to address crime is through a commitment to community policing and a commitment to stronger laws to keep illegal guns and repeat violent offenders off the street,” he said in an email.
Ha! The funny thing here is the CPD remembers that Trump through them under the bus in March when he canceled a rally at UIC, claiming falsely at the time that the police had advised him to do so. So what makes Trump think they’ll back up another one of his demonstrable lies?
Of course, the Trump camp disputed that the candidate actually said he met with leadership, with spokesperson Hope Hicks telling the Tribune that he merely met with smart and talented officers, which is what he meant by “very top police.”
The whole thing is reminiscent of the time when Trump said that the NFL sent him a letter regarding the dates of the presidential debates. Right away, the league corrected the record, letting the world know no such letter was sent. And this just keeps happening. Every. Single. Day.
And Trump just goes about his day, neither acknowledging the lies not the debunking of said lies.
