President Donald Trump bragged about his crowd sizes in New York and bashed Chicago over crime statistics while returning from his Middle East victory lap following the historic Israel-Hamas peace deal that he helped broker.
Trump last week announced Israel and Hamas had agreed to the initial phase of his plan to bring peace to the warring neighbors. In the first agreed-upon actions, the remaining 20 living hostages in Gaza, and four of the 28 hostages who had died, were brought home, in exchange for 1,950 Palestinian prisoners on Monday.
Also on Monday, Trump made a trip to Israel, where he received a warm welcome. He met with families of hostages and spoke at Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset.
“Now it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East,” he told Israeli lawmakers.
Trump later attended a peace summit of nearly 30 world leaders in Egypt to discuss the peace plan.
“We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put the old feuds and bitter hatreds behind us,” Trump said at the summit, urging his fellow heads of state “to declare that our future will not be ruled by the fights of generations past.”
Returning home Trump took questions from journalists on Air Force One.
Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked, “ What does it tell you about the world that it seems like you got a much better reception in Israel than you get in like New York City right now?”
Trump then went on a tangent about his perceived crowd sizes at events in the Big Apple.
“ I think I get a great reception in New York City,” he said. “I went to the Bronx, and we had 31,000 people in a park in the Bronx, in New York City, during the campaign…And it was the friendliest you’ve ever seen and very diverse.”
When Trump hosted a rally in the South Bronx in May 2024, he drew in between 8,000 to 10,000 attendees, according to law enforcement officials who spoke with the New York Post.
Trump later compared Egypt’s crime rates to those of Chicago, saying the Middle Eastern country doesn’t have violent crime like the American city does.
“You can actually walk down a park and not get mugged or hit over the head with a baseball bat,” Trump said. “There were 4,000 shootings in Chicago, murders, over a fairly short period of time, meaning like a year and a half.”
There were about 500 gun-related murders and 2,225 non-fatal shootings in Chicago in 2024, which was a decrease from years prior, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. The mayor’s office announced in late August there had been a 33 percent drop in murders and a 38 percent dip in shootings in the first six months of the year.
Trump sent the National Guard to Illinois but a federal judge quickly blocked the move. An appeals court ruled over the weekend that the troops can stay in the state under federal control but can’t be deployed to guard government property or patrol the streets for the time being.
Former President Joe Biden commended Trump and his team on Monday “for their work to get a renewed ceasefire deal over the finish line.”
More than 130 hostages had been released before the short lived Israel-Hamas ceasefire this past January, according to The New York Times.
