During a Facebook Live “telerally” Tuesday night President Donald Trump served up to Iowa supporters a wide menu of racism, fear-mongering, lies, and mistruths. Among them, that “they” – presumably Democrats – want U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) to “run low income housing” in the Hawkeye State.
“They want to end school choice, they want to abolish charter schools, it’s ridiculous, they want to abolish and really hurt the suburbs, because under their plan, that’s very much agreed to by them, they want to make it worse,” Trump said, according to a transcript posted by CNN Politics reporter DJ Judd.
“They don’t mind if low-income housing is built in a neighborhood, in a beautiful suburb of Iowa, but a beautiful suburb anywhere in the country. They want low – and this has been going on for years, Obama made it much worse, and now they want Cory Booker to run that program, Cory Booker of New Jersey, to run that program and make it many times worse than it is right now.”
“People have gone to the suburbs, they want the beautiful homes, they don’t have to have a low-income housing development built in their community, which is going to reduce, which has reduced the prices of their homes, and also increased crime substantially.”
CNN’s Judd on Twitter noted that Trump is “appealing to racial anxiety in white suburban voters.”
Trump is also lying. Vox reported on a 2016 study that found “adding low-income housing to poor neighborhoods lowers crime and boosts property values.”
And the federal government’s own Dept. of Health and Human Services found that the opening of an affordable housing development in Mount Laurel, NJ, “was not associated with trends in crime, property values, or taxes, and discuss management practices and design features that may have mitigated potential negative externalities.”
Here’s how some responded to Trump’s remarks: