Rather than admit that Chicago has a violence problem, Democratic Illinois leaders are dismissing it as a non-issue and trying to score points on Republicans instead.
President Donald Trump is continuing to threaten to send the National Guard into Chicago to get the city’s crime problem under control. In response, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker posted a video of himself walking through a nice part of the city at 6 a.m. on a Monday. When confronted in an interview about 54 people being shot, and seven killed, over the weekend, Pritzker dismissed it as “big cities have crime … but let’s just pay attention to what President Trump is doing.”
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Pritzker’s subsequent deflection to “red state” crime (crime in Democrat-run cities in red states) is pathetic and predictable, but his dismissive attitude is noteworthy. “Big cities have crime” is now what someone who treasures human lives says in response to decades of homicides. It is made worse by the fact that Pritzker, an uber-wealthy white man, portrays himself as an ally of minorities while shrugging off violence that predominantly affects black and Hispanic communities in Chicago. So, just how many dead poor minorities is Pritzker Ok with in Chicago as part of supposedly unavoidable big city crime?
Chicago has had 274 homicides in the past 244 days. Chicago’s lowest homicide rate in the past seven years was in 2019, when the city had 510 homicides. Last year was considered a success as the city dropped below 600 murders for the first time since 2019. That “success” still left behind 573 bodies.
CHICAGO MAYOR BRANDON JOHNSON BLAMES CITY’S VIOLENCE PROBLEM ON ‘RED STATES’
Chicago is the third-largest city in the country, and its primary reputation is for murders and other crimes. Pritzker thinks all those dead bodies are just the price of a city like Chicago existing, and that crime isn’t a serious issue because he can walk around (likely with armed security) at 6 a.m. in the nicest part of the city.
Pritzker can deflect to other Democrat-run cities and pretend this is a GOP problem all he wants, but he is showing that he does not care about hundreds of deaths every year in Chicago. He views those victims as just cogs in the machine of a big city, able to be handwaved away as just “big cities have crime,” while he enjoys his armed security and the immense wealth that means he will never live in a community affected by violence.