Mayor Kenney Claps Back at Trump’s Derogatory Claims

Hurricane Donald Trump blew into town last Friday, kicking off the Labor Day weekend with a lot of big-mouthed blustering that caught fire from city officials. The Republican presidential candidate has been shown to be lagging far behind Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the state of Pennsylvania (which has voted Democrat in all of the last six presidential races), but that didn’t stop Trump from meeting with minority leaders and addressing his concerns over the state of the city regarding crime and safety.

Things are not “okay” in Philadelphia, as per Donald Trump. The city’s mayor disputes that claim.

Trump, who attended the Wharton School of Business in the City of Brotherly Love, claimed that Philadelphia had gotten “much worse” since he’d lived there. “I know the city so well, because I went to college here, but it’s very sad to see what’s going on inside Philadelphia,” the candidate told the Philadelphia Inquirer in an interview. “It’s gotten so much worse than when I was going. It’s dangerous; the crime numbers are up. Your mayor is doing a terrible job.”

Unwilling to sit back in the face of such a blatant insult, Mayor Jim Kenney fired back with facts: the rate of violent crime has fallen since this time last year, and June’s unemployment rate of 6.9% was the lowest in that month since 2007. Kenney called the facts “annoying little things” to Trump, who Kenney claims lives “in his own odd version of reality.” Not content to let the matter rest, Kenney clapped back with a zinger of his own: “Several words come to mind after reading the candidate’s comments, but perhaps ‘nincompoop’ is the most family-friendly.”

Trump was in town for a lunch with local black leaders and a 10-minute Q&A session. Protestors amassed outside. Trump compared Philadelphia’s inner city to Afghanistan and said that “It’s very unfair to the African Americans; they’re the ones that are suffering with it.” Trump later added: “They get bad education, they have no money, the jobs are a disaster, most of them don’t have jobs, inner-city people. . . . They can’t walk their child down the street – and people have heard my message.”

If the t-shirts, signs, and chants at Philly’s Labor Day parade yesterday were anything to go by, Philadelphia voters may or may not have heard the message… but they are still supporting Clinton.