Joy Behar says former President Donald Trump should be seen as a man who spent years “normalizing crime” instead of a pro-cop Republican.
ABC’s “The View” co-host told viewers Wednesday that a current climate of lawlessness across the U.S. should be attributed to Mr. Trump, given a spike in crime starting in 2019.
“From 1993 to 2019 — and that is a period that I was not scared to go out — crime steadily decreased in the United States,” Ms. Behar said. “Every president since Clinton inherited basically a declining crime rate, and then it continued to decline until Trump came along because Trump presided over the greatest crime rise in modern American history.”
Not noted by the comedian were the 2020 riots by Black Lives Matter activists and Antifa — excoriated by Mr. Trump — that tallied between $1 billion to $2 billion in property damage claims.
Similarly, in hotbeds of chaos such a Portland, Oregon, local news reported in October 2020 that roughly 90% of riot-related charges were dropped by the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.
“I don’t want to lay the whole thing at his feet,” Ms. Behar added. “But he did create four years of normalizing crime.”
Mr. Trump regularly touted his support for law enforcement during his White House tenure and blamed extended bouts of crime in Democrat strongholds such as Seattle, Portland and Chicago on its leaders.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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