title:  After Months Of Concern Trolling, Trump Proves He Really Thinks Chicago Murders Are HILARIOUS
text: Amid one of the most racist presidential campaigns in modern history, Donald Trump spent a lot of time apparently attempting to appeal to African-Americans by telling them they live in poor, murderous hellholes called,  inner cities.  By and large, they don t.Trump seems particularly concerned about one city: Chicago. Now, Chicago s murder rate is on the rise, there s no question there, but it s not the most murderous city. It s not even close. So what is it about Chicago?Murder rates are up across the country. The biggest jumps in murder rates have been in cities that Trump doesn t call hellscapes. In fact, he doesn t talk about the rising murder rate in these cities at all. Not coincidentally, they are all in states that voted for Trump. Oh, and did I mention that Chicago is President Obama s home town?Among the notable rises outside of Chicago were increases of 56 percent in Memphis, 61 percent in San Antonio, 44 percent in Louisville, 36 percent in Phoenix and 31 percent in Las Vegas. Taken together, those six cities accounted for 76 percent of the overall big city murder rise in 2016.In all there were six big cities   Louisville, Kentucky; Memphis, Tennessee; Anchorage, Alaska; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Durham, North Carolina; and Indianapolis   that appear to have set records for highest murder counts in one year dating back to 1960.3 There were also at least 16 big cities that tied or surpassed their worst murder years since the start of 2000 in 2016.Source: FiveThirtyEightStill, Republicans insist on holding up Chicago as the perfect symbol of blacks behaving badly and they love it. In fact, on Thursday, Trump and a group of Republicans had a big hearty laugh at the expense of Chicago s dead. This, less than two days after Trump threatened to  send the Feds  into Chicago to deal with the  carnage. If Chicago doesn t fix the horrible  carnage  going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017To the group of congressional Republicans, Trump asked: What s going on in Chicago?  Trump said.  I said the other day, what the hell is going on? In response to Trump s question, somebody in the court yelled,  Democrats! The room burst out in laughter. Trump smirked and said,  There s a lot of truth to that.  As of Tuesday, 37 people had been killed in the city in January alone.Oh my god. Isn t that just hilarious! There are dead black people and probably dead Democrats. Trump better get back on Twitter and pretend he cares.F Featured image via Sara D. Davis/Getty Images.