We are seeing a dangerous pattern here. Donald Trump reads conspiracy theory sites and he doesn’t know they’re conspiracy theory sites. Or satire sites. Trump quoted a satire site a few days ago that said that Barack Obama was getting $40 million in taxpayer money as royalities for Obamacare. That was three days ago. Now today we find out that Trump is incensed over a shopping center in the Miracle Mile area of Chicago which is overridden with crime. He wants to send in federal troops. There’s only one stickey wicket here: the place does.not.exist. Daily Beast:
President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy troops to Chicago over a distressed shopping center that does not exist.
“The Miracle Mile Shopping Center in Chicago, once considered our Nation’s BEST, now has a more than 28% vacancy factor, and is ready to call it quits unless something is done about the murder and crime, which is prevalent throughout the City,” the 79-year-old president raged in a Truth Social post just past midnight on Tuesday.
“CALL IN THE TROOPS, FAST, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!” he added.
WHY DON’T YOU STOP READING CONSPIRACY THEORY, YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH?! Ahhh, that felt good, even if Trump will never read it.
There is no “Miracle Mile Shopping Center” in Illinois’ largest city. While there are shopping districts with that name in California, Florida, New York, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, it would not appear the president plans to stage a military intervention in Chicago by dispatching personnel to other cities between 800 and 2,000 miles away.
Trump likely intended to refer to Chicago’s famous Magnificent Mile shopping district in his late-night post, but he also appears to have muddled his source material. Trump seems to have drawn on a Nov. 8 article by the conservative site Just the News headlined “Chicago Blues: Downtown office space vacancy rate jumps to record high levels,” which outlines how over the past two years, businesses cutting their office space in Chicago’s Loop district have resulted in about 2.3 million square feet being vacated.
That story makes no mention of crime rates as a driving factor behind the trend of increasing vacancies, instead attributing the changes to structural shifts in work culture following the COVID-19 pandemic, with more employers offering remote or hybrid roles.
Under the second MAGA administration, the federal government has undertaken multiple deployments of law enforcement agents to Chicago in an effort to combat what Trump insists is an immigrant-driven crime wave in the Windy City.
That claim is similarly unsupported by the facts. Statistics released by the Chicago Mayor’s Office indicate that violent crime over the past year is down 22 percent, including a 32 percent reduction in robberies and a 49 percent reduction in carjackings. Murders in the city this summer were at their lowest in more than 60 years.
You would think that if Trump had a lick of common sense that he would find a way to take credit for crime going down and claim that this is the new Golden Age. His Golden Age certainly isn’t an economic one. That much we know.
Just one more example of his worsening dementia. As you see from reading the Daily Beast excerpts, he’s making this crime data up himself. He reads questionable sources to begin with and then he extrapolates from there facts that simply do not exist. The man is mentally deteriorating and is a menace. And he’s in the Oval Office, not some basement office in charge of something mundane like dispensing office supplies.
I was born and raised in Chicago, so I know that the top-end retailers along the Miracle Mile will allow a “shopping center” to be built there the day after hell freezes over and Donald Trump goes to heaven….
Decision by conspiracy – wow – what could go wrong?
“… the place does.not.exist …” you say. Well, it appears that that confabulation exists in the ever worsening demented ‘bombrainium’ of … errrr Prez What’s His Name … and that, to him, qualifies it as being real. Sad, isn’t it. Reap what you sew Dementure Don, you can’t have your cake and eat it … errr, brain function and functioning neuro psychological integrity. He’s probably displaying cerebral decline due to his, say, familial inheritance, the acquired damage from allegedly hoovering certain substances up his nostrils, and his diet, over the years.
I hate defending Felonious Trump, but he’s obviously talking about the failing Water Tower Place mall on the north end of the Magnificent Mile.
He’s “… he’s obviously talking …” as you pen it, and that’s about the strength and extent of it. His words hold no water, as they’re full of leaky holes.
Well, there’s NO mention of such a place in the article that “The Daily Beast” is using for its source (“the conservative site, Just the News”) and clicking the link at “outlines how over the past two years.” So PLEASE. If you REALLY “hate defending” Drumpf, stop assuming facts not in evidence.
HEAR, HEAR!