Chicago violence fuels war of words between Trump, mayor
CHICAGO — The war of words between Chicago’s mayor and President Donald Trump escalated Monday after a weekend where dozens of people were injured by gunfire and 12 were killed, with the mayor rejecting any suggestion that federal troops should be dispatched as they were in Portland, Oregon, and Trump all but promising to send them.
“I have great concerns about that in particular, given the track record in the city of Portland,” Mayor
Lori Lightfoot said, even as Trump was telling reporters that federal officers could help bring order to Chicago.
“I have talked to the mayor of Portland (and) we don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the street and holding them, I think, unlawfully,” Lightfoot added.
The Trump administration sent federal officers in Portland after weeks of protests there over police brutality and racial injustice that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Oregon’s governor and Portland’s mayor have expressed anger with the presence of the federal agents, saying that the city’s protests had started to ease just as the federal agents started taking action.
However, Trump, framing such protests in the nation’s large cities as a failure by “liberal Democrats” who run them, praised the officers’ actions and said he was looking to sent agents to other cities.
He pointed to rising gun violence in the nation’s third-largest city, where more than 63 people were shot, 12 fatally, over the weekend.
“How about Chicago? Would you say they need help after this weekend?” Trump told reporters at the White House. “You know the numbers that you hear, the numbers? Many, many shot. Many, many killed.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois rejected any deployment of federal forces in Chicago, vowing to hold the “Trump administration and any such federal forces accountable for unconstitutional actions.”
None of the weekend shootings were connected to a Friday night protest where people marching against police brutality and racial injustice tried to topple a statue of Christopher Columbus, and Trump did not specifically reference that.