Trump said Detroit murder rate 'is higher than El Salvador, Guatemala, or even Afghanistan'

During his a Saturday rally at a Tulsa arena that was less than half full (and may have been sabotaged by tech-savvy teens and K-pop fans), President Donald Trump took a jab at Democratic-run cities, saying that they have higher murder rates than some countries.

"The murder rate in Baltimore and Detroit is higher than El Salvador, Guatemala, or even Afghanistan," Trump told the crowd. "How they doing, the Democrats running those cities? Your whole country will be like that."

It's true that Baltimore and Detroit have higher murder rates than Guatemala and Afghanistan. According to the New York Times, in 2017, the last year there was data to compare all of the locations, Baltimore had a rate of 55.8 homicides for every 100,000 residents, while Detroit reported 39.8.

Meanwhile, Guatemala reported a rate of 26.1 murders per 100,000, and Afghanistan saw 7.1.

El Salvador, however, reported a rate of 61.8, making it higher than Detroit and Baltimore.

It's worth noting that the Afghanistan murder rate does not include the tens of thousands of deaths from the U.S.-led war that started in 2001, the longest war in U.S. history. Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, and 2,300 have died. More than 100,000 Afghanistan civilians have died in the war.

Estimates for the total cost of the war near $1 trillion. (A Michigan State professor tried to review the Dept. of Defense budget, which he found is essentially a black hole.)

Last year, Detroit reported 273 homicides in the city – up from 261 the year before, which was the city's lowest number in 50 years.

"I'm not waving a flag of success," Detroit Police Chief James Craig said earlier this year. "But I will tell you — progress. Absolutely. But we can’t do it alone."

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