During a private meeting with congressional Republicans Thursday, convicted felon Donald Trump reportedly called Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention will be held in July, a "horrible city." He then lied about crime in the city, where homicides are down 42% since 2022.
But don’t worry, Wisconsin, you are not alone in Trump's disdain for the country’s most populous areas. Born in New York City, Trump spent his school days in Philadelphia and lived in Washington, D.C., while president. Yet he seems to have a very low opinion of metropolitan areas.
Here are 11 other places in the U S of A that Trump openly despises.
1. Atlanta
The location of his upcoming RICO trial, Trump has made false claims that Atlanta has the “WORST IN NATION” crime and murder rates and is experiencing a “GIANT MURDER WAVE!” It isn’t, and it doesn’t. He's called Atlanta a "record setting Murder and Violent Crime War Zone" run by “radical left lunatics.”
2. Baltimore
After Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland criticized detention conditions for migrants along the border due to Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy, Trump lashed out at the city of Baltimore, saying it was a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” and "a very dangerous & filthy place." Trump also claimed Baltimore was “considered the Worst in the USA.”
3. California (and Los Angeles)
Trump has attacked the entire state of California, calling it a "disgrace to our country," but he’s also zeroed in on Los Angeles for its homeless population. Trump also called California’s sanctuary laws a “ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept.”
He’s also said California has been captured by “radical left lunatics” and “Marxist monsters,” and is “becoming a symbol of our nation’s decline.” Regarding San Francisco and Los Angeles, Trump called them “cities, which are absolutely being destroyed rapidly on a daily basis.”
4. Chicago
In general, Republicans love attacking Chicago, and Trump is no different. He’s routinely called the city “totally out of control.” While visiting in 2019, Trump said Chicago is “embarrassing to us as a nation.” And in an interview with Hannity during the 2020 election, he said it’s "worse than Afghanistan," adding that Chicago—and Baltimore—is "like living in hell."
5. Lawrence, MA
Trump blamed Lawrence for the opioid crisis ... in New Hampshire. He said it was because Lawrence was a sanctuary city, and that "they're protected by these cities, and you say, 'What are they doing?' They're safe havens for just some terrible people.” “They're making it very dangerous for our law enforcement officers," he told an audience at Manchester Community College in 2018.
6. Michigan
During a rally in Grand Rapids, Trump attacked Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer by saying that Michigan is terrible. “By the way, your streets are bad, your everything’s bad,” Trump told the audience.
7. Philadelphia
Trump, who went to business school in Philadelphia, lied about the city’s violent crime rate, saying it was “just terribly increasing.” It isn’t. It’s gone down, actually. And during a 2020 presidential debate with Joe Biden, Trump said “bad things happen in Philadelphia,” in an early effort to claim corruption and election fraud in the City of Brotherly Love.
8. Puerto Rico
Following criticism of his lackluster support of Puerto Rico after the devastating Hurricane Maria in 2017, Trump lied about death toll numbers and then slandered the government as “incompetent or corrupt,” saying “the place is a mess - nothing works.”
9. New York
Now known as the scene of Trump’s recent felony conviction, New York has been a target of Trump’s hate for years. In 2019, he claimed that New York State was so bad that people were “fleeing” in “record numbers.” And during the 2020 election, he said that New York City had "gone to hell" and was a "ghost town."
10. Tallahassee, Fl
In 2018, when Trump endorsed Ron DeSantis’ gubernatorial run, he maligned Tallahassee as “poorly run,” and made the erroneous assertion that it was “said to be one of the most corrupt cities in the [c]ountry!”
11. Washington, D.C.
Trump has called our nation’s capital a “filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation.” He attacked the city during his presidency, saying its infrastructure had “fall[en] into a state of total disrepair.” He never did get around to passing any infrastructure legislation, did he?
During his 2024 campaign, Trump has called for a federal takeover of Washington, D.C., saying that it “has become a dirty, crime-ridden death trap, that must be taken over and properly run by the Federal Government.”
Of course, none of this is surprising coming from a man who first campaigned on the notion that the U.S. is “a failing nation,” that “has become a dumping ground for the world.”
Or maybe, like Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin said, Trump is just “a horrible person.”
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
