Trump claims mobs of 500 people are raiding stores to steal air conditioners

Former President Trump escalated his claims about rampant crime during a campaign rally on Friday, claiming without evidence that crowds were stealing large amounts of major appliances from department stores without police intervention.

“You go into a department store and 500 people walk in and walk out with their air conditioners. The whole store takes their air conditioners out,” Trump said in an impromptu speech that lasted nearly an hour. Addressing Turning Point Action “Businesses are going bankrupt, stores are sitting empty for 25 years, whole towns are turning into slums,” he said in Arizona, slamming the Biden administration’s policies.

President Trump and President Biden are likely to face off in a close 2020 presidential rematch when voters head to the polls on Nov. 5. Both men have been traveling around the country making the case for why their respective positions will be better for the country going forward.

When The Hill asked the Trump campaign for more information about its Arizona remarks, a spokesman pointed to news reports of home HVAC thefts and a spate of “pack thefts” in urban areas.

“Thiefs keep stealing HVAC units. He might pay them $100 to tell them to go away.” One news agency About a contractor who had multiple parts of an HVAC unit stolen from a job site in Virginia.

“AC theft is a bigger problem than you might think,” the campaign said, sending a link to another report on the theft of residential air conditioning units. This time in Texas.

Trump has focused heavily on inflation, immigration and crime, all of which he has blamed his successor, Biden, for despite statistically strong economic performance.

This is not the first time the former president has pointed out the rampant theft of large-scale home appliances from department stores.

Speaking at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum in Indianapolis last year, he claimed that “groups of hundreds of young people” regularly “raid” department stores and take “large items” such as refrigerators and air conditioners.

“For example, when you see gangs of hundreds of young people attacking department stores — usually young people attack department stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago — you see groups of hundreds of people running into the store and running away carrying large items like refrigerators and air conditioners,” he said.

“Puck stealing,” as Trump likes to call it, Less than Organized crime has also emerged targeting expensive cosmetics, designer clothing and other luxury goods, with footage of package thefts occasionally circulating on social media targeting smaller retailers and pharmacies. Experts generally agree Shoplifting is an often exaggerated problem.

Trump’s tough stance on crime has not wavered despite his conviction last week on 34 federal criminal counts for allegedly falsifying business documents during the 2016 presidential election to conceal an affair with an adult film star a decade earlier. The 77-year-old Trump is the first former U.S. president in modern history to be criminally charged. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has impeached Trump twice during his presidency, for attempting to influence the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Biden, and for his alleged influence in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But recent polls suggest support for Trump has remained largely intact among his supporters, with some in recent polls saying they are more likely to support him in this year’s election and Republicans in general reporting that they are more likely to support the election of someone with a felony conviction in light of Trump’s conviction.

In his campaign for a second term, President Trump used the opportunity to revive the enigmatic slogan “Make America Great Again.”

“We’ve rebuilt our country,” Trump said in Arizona. “We can now say this slogan because we are a failed nation.”

Trump, who launched his “Swamp the Vote USA” campaign aimed at “boosting” — or significantly boosting — early voting, mail-in voting and popular vote turnout, acknowledged that as he embraced the term, his view of how “swamp” has been used in the past has changed.

“It’s another version of the word ‘swamp,'” he said. “We like the word ‘swamp,’ because it has many meanings.”