Joy Behar blamed former President Donald Trump for the “greatest crime rise in modern American history.”
Behar said on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The View” that Trump spent four years “normalizing crime.” (RELATED: Meghan McCain Blasts Joy Behar For Introducing Kyrsten Sinema As A ‘So-Called Democrat’)
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Behar said that crime had been declining over several decades before Trump became president, but all that had ended while he was in the White House.
“Well, you know, I’m old enough to remember many decades where crime spiked, and I was afraid to, you know, go out at night, and, you know, you were scared you were going to be mugged in New York City,” Behar began.
“I have another statistic here that’s interesting because from 1993 to 2019 — and that is a period that I was not scared to go out — crime steadily decreased in the United States,” Behar continued. “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.”
Behar went on to say that murder rates and mass shootings had spiked, along with hate crimes, adding, “Now I don’t want to lay the whole thing at his feet, but he did create four years normalizing crime.”
“All I see is more crime coming out of that administration where he seemed to let everybody off the hook,” Behar concluded, suggesting Republicans should not be known as the “law and order” party.
Former President Trump addressed the rise in crime, attributing it to major cities — that were primarily led by Democrats — where efforts had been made to defund or reimagine policing.