Trump tore into the media and Joe Biden on Thursday
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at the mainstream media on Thursday morning, accusing outlets of ignoring a surge in crime cropping up in America's cities.
Over the last month California has grappled with a troubling wave of smash-and-grab incidents, including in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hometown of San Francisco.
'You know, the media, outside of you people and a few others, the media isn't reporting this problem but when you have hoards of people running in, kids mostly, running in and stealing, robbing stores where drug chains are closing all their stores in different cities because they can't keep them open, we just don't have law enforcement, we're not allowed to have law enforcement,' Trump told Fox & Friends.
During a half-hour interview Trump also claimed President Joe Biden is 'knowingly destroying our country' and forcing people out of work with his COVID vaccine mandates.
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked the former president about a tweet from the National Fraternal Order of Police claiming that ambush attacks on US police officers rose 126 percent from 2020, when Trump was still president.
'Well when you look at San Francisco and you look at 100 kids or people running into a store together and the cops are standing out there not allowed to do their job, they aren't allowed to do their job and you allow a thing like that to happen, we have a country that has no law enforcement, has no law and order,' Trump fumed.
'They're not allowed to do their jobs and they're now being hit. People aren't even afraid. They go and shoot police, they don't respect them.'
California was hit by a string of robberies last month, including Nancy Pelosi's home town
Trump called in to Fox News for roughly half an hour to bash Biden and promote his book
Last month, a band of up to 40 thieves stormed a Louis Vuitton store in San Francisco, smashing windows and grabbing whatever items were in reach before loading them into cars that were waiting outside. They made off with over $1 million in merchandise.
On Black Friday, a roaming pack of burglars ransacked the Bottega Veneta store in Los Angeles' trendy Beverly Grove before making their way to Home Depot. At the home improvement chain, eight of them stole sledgehammers, wrenches and hammers, threatened customers and then fled in 10 getaway cars.
And earlier in the week, so-called 'smash-and-grab' gangs struck a Nordstrom in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, snatching $25,000 of high-end luxury goods and bear spraying a security guard in the process.
Nordstrom was also targeted by flash mob thieves who raided a branch of the department store in Walnut Creek, east of San Francisco.
'If you allowed them to do their job that would stop and crime would stop, but they're not allowed. You look at what's going on in New York. You look at what's going on in Chicago, and look at what's happening in San Francisco - and it's happening in many other cities that they don't want to report about.'
In another Black Friday incident, dozens of looters descended on a Minneapolis mall and brazenly marched through two Best Buy locations, taking whatever they liked with them off the shelves.
One incident occurred near the Burnsville mall in suburban Minneapolis with about 12 people rushing in to steal items, while a second incident occurred in Maplewood - about 25 miles northeast - on Friday night with a larger group of 30 people looting electronics.
Police investigate a crime scene outside of the Barclay's Center in downtown Brooklyn on October 01, 2021 in New York City
Evidence technicians collect evidence at the scene where a 28-year-old man was shot during an attempted car jacking on the 4700 block of West 64th Street in Chicago's West Lawn neighborhood in May
Both incidents occurred at around the same time and police are looking to see if they are connected in any way.
The wave of robberies come as a number of Democrat-run cities are reversing plans to divert funding from their police force.
New York City allocated an additional $200 million to its police department this year after cutting its budget last year; Los Angeles gave its department a three percent boost. New York overwhelmingly elected a tough-on-crime former police officer to be its next mayor come January.
Cities like Dallas and Austin brought their police budgets to new heights this year after slashing them last.
On Tuesday Trump called on Democratic leaders to active the National Guard to fight the crime wave.
'If Democrats don't immediately stop smash-and-grab robberies, which are taking place in their cities, the National Guard must be called out,' the former president said in a statement at the time.
He said the Biden administration's policies are wreaking havoc across the US.
'I don't know if it's Biden, it might not be, but we have a group of people that are destroying our country, and perhaps knowingly destroying our country,' Trump said.
Trump called in to Fox News on Thursday morning where he spent roughly half an hour attacking Biden over his COVID-19 mandates, taking credit for the vaccines and accusing the current administration of turning the United States into a 'dumping ground' for migrants coming to the southwest
