Former Barack Obama chief of staff and mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel had some harsh things to say about big-city Democratic mayors, including the current administration in Chicago.
"I don't want to hear another word about the locker room; I don't want to hear another word about the bathroom. You better start focusing on the classroom," Emanuel said on "Real Time" with Bill Maher.
"What’s going on in Chicago?" asked Maher after observing current Mayor Brandon Johnson's feeble 6.6% approval rating.
"Round it up. 7," Emanuel joked. Getting serious, he pointed out that when he was mayor, he had three major areas to focus on. "Safe streets, strong schools, stable finances. Focus on those three things, and your city’s going to be fine."
Several horrific scandals involving the Chicago police occurred during Emanuel's terms in office, including the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was murdered while walking away from police after being shot 16 times. Emanuel tried to prevent the release of that video for more than a year. That murder and his subsequent mishandling of the aftermath led to the Justice Department slapping a "Consent Decree" on Chicago that hamstrung police and kept them from doing their jobs.
Also under his watch, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) grew more powerful as he needed the teachers for his re-election campaign in 2015. And he raised property and other taxes to the tune of $700 million.
Emanuel is not wrong about the problems in Chicago. He places the blame on permissiveness.
"We've gone through five years where people became way too permissive as a culture – which is why everything is locked up at CVS and Walgreens, and that's a disaster," Emanuel said.
Back on Friday’s show, Emanuel then torched the city’s education standards, saying the government is fixated on woke policies rather than the grades of their students.
"We have the worst reading scores for eighth graders in 30 years, and nobody – not a governor, not a mayor, not a president, not a secretary of education is talking about it. We’re all wrapped up."
Mocking woke policies and progressive gender language, he quipped, "Look, in seventh grade, if I had known that I could have said the word ‘They’ and got in the girls bathroom, I would have done it."
"We literally are a superpower, we’re facing off against China with 1.4 billion people and two-thirds of our children can’t read eighth grade level," he added.
"In 7th grade if I had known I could have said 'they' and got in the girls bathroom, I would have done it," Emanuel quipped.
"This is a huge Democrat party problem. Democrat cities are terribly run. Cost of housing is crazy," said panel member Fareed Zakaria. "The budget of New York state is twice that of Florida. Lots of taxes, lots of regulation, but nothing gets done. Democrats have to own this: The answer to everything is not more taxes, more regulations. People are fed up with it, and feel that it isn't working."
Democrats can't own up to their failures. The entire corrupt system is far beyond "reform." Chicago is a perfect example of that truism. Mayor Brandon Johnson and his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, were both "reform" candidates. Instead of trying to change anything about the system, they sought to milk the corruption to spread political favors to their friends and supporters.
No one is interested in anything except getting as much as can be gotten before the entire smelly, rickety structure collapses in a heap.
No one wants to be left holding the bag when the bill comes due.