On Tuesday, MSNBC aired a pre-recorded interview between Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker with the latter having felt the need to downplay the prevalence of violence in Chicago and described President Trump’s use of National Guard as authoritarian.
Brzezinski asked the Governor to respond to recent remarks made by Trump:
BRZEZINSKI: At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, President Trump said this, “We’re going to have Charlie very much in mind when we go into Chicago. We’ll get that straightened out. You have an incompetent Governor. He thinks it’s okay when 11 people get murdered over the weekend.” What is your response?
PRITZKER: Well, let’s start with the idea that apparently Chicago is living rent free in the President’s head. He seems to mention Chicago at every turn. The reality is that Chicago isn’t even in the top 25 cities in terms of violent crime rates.
Instead of admitting to the fact that the third largest American city has a murder problem, Pritzker practically ignored the statistic and reframed the city in a safer light.
The Governor decided to psychoanalyze the President, “So, he’s attacking Chicago because he doesn’t like that people in Chicago don’t vote for Donald Trump.”
Or maybe it’s because rampant crime is still a problem. Urban environments, where violent crime tends to happen, also tend to lean left. And for those who think Trump is only going after blue states, he may also deploy National Guard in Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisana.
He continued:
And I’ve asked the President for help. FBI, ATF, DEA. We want to fight drugs and gangs and guns on the streets of Chicago, and we’ve done a good job of it over the last four years. We’ve cut the homicide rate in half. All of the violent crime rates for the city of Chicago have gone down by double digits.
Regardless, that doesn’t fully address the problem. If liberal cities actually cared about cracking down on crime, then they would have already. The imposition of federal troops isn’t to conquer or “occupy,” but to tamp down the problem until local authorities actually do their job.
Brzezinski continued to sit on the sidelines as Pritzker decried how the President wants to send National Guard instead of the resources Illinois wants:
But we want more help. He’s not offering that. Instead, he’s offering troops, who are not trained to do law enforcement. They don’t know how to do arrests. They’re really not appropriate for an American city. And frankly, this is part of a broader effort on his part to impose his authoritarian rule on big cities across the United States.
This alleged authoritarian regime has yet to materialize. If the Democrats’ approach was legitimately effective, then there would be no need for any federal assistance. Trump wants to use what works.
Brzezinski invited Pritzker to double down instead of pointing out the interview with said rhetoric was taped a day after Charlie Kirk’s memorial service:
BRZEZINSKI: How would you describe it as authoritarian rule?
PRITZKER: Well, one after another—look at everything that he’s been about as President. Just recently, trying to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air by having his FCC Chair threaten stations with taking away their licenses. Donald Trump has very often talked about bringing troops not just into cities, but anywhere where he sees an opponent that he thinks he should come after.
Somehow, the flash free speech scare over Kimmel’s now-reversed suspension was a part of Trump’s “authoritarian rule on big cities.” It was clear Pritzker didn’t think through his line of reasoning ahead of time and fell back on partisan finger pointing.
The hodge-podged argument didn’t stop there: “Much of his rhetoric, as we’ve seen in his speeches, even last night during the Charlie Kirk memorial, he talked about the fact that although Charlie Kirk didn’t hate his opponents, that Donald Trump does. And that he harbors ill will toward them continually.”
And yet we’re supposed to be told state-run media is only on the right?
According to Pritzker, the President “is a person who thinks that his personal will should be imposed upon the United States.”
Trump has iterated that his re-election was a mandate given to him by the American people. And considering during his first term there were those in the executive branch willing to subvert his authority, coupled with the fact that Congress is largely dependent on Presidential initiative, Trump’s perspective is not at all inconceivable:
He wants his Justice Department to go after his opponents. We’ve seen that over and over again. And indeed, I believe yesterday, we saw news that he is planning to do that, accidentally publishing what would have been a private communication with Pam Bondi.
And nothing from Brzezinski to present any semblance of push-back.