Cincinnati, Ohio (CNN) President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed "the far-left's destructive agenda" for poverty and crime in American inner cities , broadening his effort to tie Democrats to poverty-stricken neighborhoods even as he resisted naming names to avoid being "controversial."

Trump accused Democrats of prioritizing undocumented immigrants over American citizens, called California "a disgrace to our country" and sought to talk up his efforts to lift up minority communities after he spent recent weeks lobbing race-based attacks at Democratic members of Congress and disparaging the city of Baltimore as though it were not part of his constituency.

"For decades these communities have been run exclusively by Democrat politicians and it's been total one-party control of the inner cities. For 100 years it's been one-party control, and look at them," Trump claimed. "We can name one after another, but I won't do that because I don't want to be controversial."

"We want no controversy," Trump insisted, even as he repeated attacks reminiscent of his 2016 campaign rhetoric also aimed at exploiting racial tensions in America.

Trump's remarks were a clear reference to his recent attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings , the black Democratic lawmaker who represents West Baltimore in Congress, and his labeling of Cummings' district as "rat and rodent infested" and a place where "no human being would want to live."

Trump pressed forward with his disparagement of Baltimore, a majority-black city, claiming that its homicide rate is higher than war-torn Afghanistan's, where tens of thousands of people have been killed over the course of the US war there.

"I believe it's higher than -- give me a place that you think is pretty bad," Trump said to a member of the crowd. "The guy says Afghanistan. I believe it's higher than Afghanistan."

Some of the President's aides have been uncomfortable with those attacks, but Trump has shown no signs of backing away from them.

The crowd at Trump's rally in Cincinnati on Thursday was tamer than at the President's last rally, in North Carolina, which came after Trump continued his racist broadside at a foursome of Democratic congresswomen of color known as "The Squad," telling them to "go back" to the countries they came from even though three of them were born in the US. Trump supporters at that rally amplified the attack with chants of "Send her back!"

Those chants were not revived on Thursday night and Trump did not attack any of those congresswomen by name after he and his and his aides had fretted about the possibility of more "Send her back" chants.

The President even extended his criticism of Democratic leadership of cities to the host city of his rally, telling the crowd that "you must have a Democrat mayor" after a small handful of protesters disrupted the rally.

Trump notably spent more time on Thursday night than he typically does during his campaign rallies focusing on initiatives he has implemented to the benefit of African Americans, touting a provision in the 2017 tax law to incentivize investments in low-income communities and his signature of the First Step Act, a significant piece of bipartisan legislation that overhauled parts of the criminal justice system.

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Trump took the stage in the battleground state of Ohio on the heels of the most recent Democratic presidential debates , which laid bare ideological fissures in the Democratic Party and which Republicans have seized on as emblematic of the party's leftward lurch.

But Trump was relatively muted on the topic. After joking that Democrats "spent more time attacking Barack Obama than they did attacking me," he largely ignored the topic for the rest of his remarks -- an uncharacteristic decision to set aside an opportunity to attack his would-be opponents and seek to tie all Democrats to some of the most liberal positions espoused by some of the candidates in the debates.

He sporadically recycled a few criticisms of candidates former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren and painted Democrats with a broad brush as supporting socialist policies on issues from health care to immigration.

But his comments fell far short of Republican and Trump campaign operatives' efforts in recent days to capitalize on the Democratic infighting, attacks on front-runner Biden and the progressive politics on display in the debates.