Former President Trump escalated his claims about rampant crime during a campaign stop Friday, alleging without proof that mobs of crowds are stealing large appliances from department stores en masse without action from law enforcement.
“You go to some of these department stores, 500 people walk into the stores, they walk out with air conditioners — they strip the whole store,” Trump said in a nearly hourlong, off-the-cuff
address to Turning Point Action in Arizona while railing against the Biden administration’s policies. “The company goes out of business, the store is vacant for 25 years. The whole city becomes a slum.”
It’s not the first time the former president has cited massive waves of unchecked large appliance thefts from department stores.
He alleged that “gangs of hundreds of young” people regularly “attack” department stores and walk out with “big stuff” like refrigerators and air conditioners, during the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum in Indianapolis last year.
“As an example, when you see these gangs of hundreds of young, usually young people go and attack a department store, department stores and they run in by the hundreds and they’re running out carrying refrigerators and carrying air conditioners and big stuff,” he said.
Let me just say: bahahahahahahaha