A Chicago Democrat's Deranged Explanation for His City's Violent Weekend

Democrats around the country are test driving different responses to President Trump's (quite successful) crime crackdown in Washington, DC -- which he is threatening to impose elsewhere, albeit under different authorities and jurisdictional constraints, given the capital's unique status as a federal district. In DC itself, Mayor Bowser surprised many last week by acknowledging the dramatic reduction in crime and sounding positive about the federal-local partnership achieving those results. She enraged leftists in the process, but adopting a 'plummeting crime is good' position is typically very safe terrain for a politician. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been trolling Trump for weeks, so when he rolled out new anti-crime squads in his state, he had to do so with all sorts of requisite criticisms of the president. But his action alone was something of a nod to the reality Trump has been highlighting: Crime remains far too elevated in large swaths of the country, very much including on the West Coast. It has been the Democrats of Illinois who seem to have planted their heads in the sand as aggressively as possible, shouting resistance slogans into that dust while rampant crime rages around them.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has achieved historic, breathtakingly low approval ratings, repeatedly refused to answer whether thousands of more local police on the beat would help reduce crime in his city (which has led the nation in murders for more than a dozen years running). He's against what he calls an unconstitutional Trump intervention and "military occupation," you see, but he's also against more local enforcement:

WATCH: Even MSNBC's Joe Scarborough is baffled that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson won't just give a straight answer when it comes to the safety of his city.

This is difficult to watch. pic.twitter.com/sZSGURm72n
— DeVory Darkins (@devorydarkins) August 26, 2025

This is an effectively pro-crime and pro-criminal mayor who has earned his disastrous public opinion numbers. Gov. Pritzker, meanwhile, has been whistling past the graveyard. He's peddling a conspiracy theory that Trump pushing for a possible federal intervention in Chicago is really about an attempted election coup, not crime. He also infamously published a recent video of himself walking along the city's lakefront at dawn, mockingly noting that he didn't notice any sort of crime hellscape...at daybreak...in a nice part of the city...while allegedly accompanied by a personal security detail. Oddly, his phone wasn't out and filming in furtherance of his self-serving, reality-avoiding narrative in any of these places over the weekend:

At least 54 people have been shot, seven fatally, in shootings across Chicago so far this Labor Day weekend, police said. The weekend gun violence comes as the Trump administration prepares to potentially deploy the National Guard to the Chicago area...The violence comes after Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order to fight the Trump administration's immigration enforcement plans and potential deployment of National Guard troops to the city.

Tragically and unacceptably, this sort of orgy of violence is hardly atypical in this city during a summer weekend. "Progressives" really don't like that reality being reflected in headlines, including 100 percent accurate ones:

This is not reporting. This is propaganda. pic.twitter.com/eUgbz5jSNp
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) September 2, 2025

When confronted with the terrible statistics on CNN, an elected Chicago Democrat responded that the shootings were Trump's fault, then echoed the governor's "dictator" rhetoric. He didn't go quite as far as Pritzker with appalling Nazi references, but this truly unhinged and totally unresponsive to the crisis that he and others will not address:

Chicago Alderman is asked what more can be done about the 50+ people shot over Labor Day weekend in his city.

His answer?

Trump is a dictator and is normalizing violence. pic.twitter.com/8NggG2wMuf
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 2, 2025

This is facially ludicrous and insulting. Weekend bloodbaths are commonplace in Chicago. That has been the harrowing reality for many years, very much including when Donald Trump was not President of the United States. Take a look at this headline from one decade ago, before Trump's first term. Sound familiar? This man is either wildly ignorant, or he knows he's deflecting to an approved bogeyman because he doesn't have any real solutions for his city becoming a shooting gallery on a regular basis. Pathetic doesn't even begin to describe it. This Illinois Congressman is trying to sound upbeat about trends:

Reporter: What do you think the status of crime is in Chicago?

Democrat Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley: “Crime trends are going down. It’s good news.”

At least 52 people were shot (7 fatally) over the weekend. pic.twitter.com/FcetpSWl63
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 1, 2025

But when you've lost MSNBC... (soon to be MS-NOW):

🚨HOLY SH*T: Joe Scarborough BLASTS democrats for Chicago's CRIME-riddled Labor Day Weekend.

"I think JB Pritzker should do something radical; he should pick up the phone and call the President because the 'nothing to see here' move isn't working."

"The Mayor talking about we… pic.twitter.com/hO6NFhRrRi
— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) September 2, 2025

Amazingly, even with the city council packed with this sort of person, the pitiful and hapless mayor still just took a giant L on a budget scheme he'd cooked up:

Actually incredible.

Chicago’s corrupt activist Mayor tried to force through a terrible $200M loan to benefit his union allies by firing the CPS CEO & forcing those board members who opposed it to resign.

Only his hand-picked replacements on the board still rejected the loan. https://t.co/xEdpgUiNLA
— AG (@AGHamilton29) September 1, 2025

I'll give you one guess how Johnson explained the loss. If 'clumsy race-baiting' was your answer, come collect your prize. So predictable. So exhausting:

The mayor’s frustration culminated in remarks at a town hall meeting last week. “You put a Black man in charge of a city and all of a sudden everybody wants to be an accountant,” he said. https://t.co/ItvUB2oqm6
— Austin Berg (@Austin__Berg) August 31, 2025

Finally, good luck to the media with this framing, for the reasons noted in the quote tweet. Much of the red state violence is largely concentrated in cities run by Democrats -- for decades, in many cases:

Embarrassingly try-hard from the NYT; EVERYBODY knows crime is a problem of Democrat governance even in Red States.

Regardless, the NYT is basically making the case GOP govs to override local Dem leaders to deal with crime, which is likely prove a popular move. https://t.co/QEeB9S6fzg
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) September 1, 2025

I'll leave you with this:

.@GuyPBenson hits "disgusting arguments" on crime crackdon "completely undermined by the mayor of Washington DC," who praised Trump's law-enforcement surge @LucyMCaldwell "The racially charged language is certainly really, really unhelpful" #Mediabuzz https://t.co/KyBM064Hcs
— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) August 31, 2025

Editor’s Note: Too many Democrat politicians prioritize opposing Trump over stopping crime.

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