Mayor rejects president’s threat to send in military
If President Donald Trump tries to make good on his threat to “deploy the United States military” to Chicago and other cities enduring continued violence and looting, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she will “see him in court.”
“It’s not gonna happen. Not in my city,” Lightfoot said.
“I’m not confident that the president has the power to do that. But we have our lawyers hard at work. And if he tries to do that and usurp the power of our governor and myself as the mayor, we will see him in court.”
Lightfoot branded Trump, with whom she has clashed repeatedly, as a “man who likes to bluster.”
“Even before I was mayor, this man indicated he was gonna ‘send in the feds.’ Whatever that means,” Lightfoot said.
“Let’s not overreact. But we’ll be prepared … if he does something that foolish. We’re not having military roam our streets. … They’re not trained in de-escalation. They haven’t built trust in authentic relationships with people in our community. And we are not gonna give over our city to the military so the president can play to his re-election. That’s not gonna happen. Period.”
The sharply worded mayoral response Tuesday exacerbates the ongoing war of words between Trump and Lightfoot. But it didn’t hold a candle to what the mayor had to say about the president last week before the rioting started in Chicago.
That’s when Lightfoot accused Trump of trying to “foment violence” and offered a vulgar response to the threat he made against Minneapolis rioters protesting the death of George Floyd.
“We see the game he’s playing because it’s so transparent and he’s not very good at it. He wants to show failures on the part of Democratic local leaders to throw red meat to his base. His goal is to polarize, to destabilize local government and inflame racist urges. And we can absolutely not let him prevail,” Lightfoot said.
“I will code what I really want to say to Donald Trump. It’s two words: It begins with F, and it ends with U.’
Lightfoot was referring to Trump’s tweet Thursday after protesters surrounded a Minneapolis police station and set fire to it.
He characterized the protesters as “THUGS” and added: “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
By Monday, Trump was calling protests that have turned violent in Chicago and other major cities “acts of domestic terror” and threatening to mobilize the military if local leaders don’t get tougher.
“I am taking immediate presidential action to stop the violence and restore security and safety in America by mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson and to protect law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights,” the president said.