Lightfoot fires back after Trump rips Johnson again
Days after he came to Chicago and lobbed insults at police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Friday to continue his verbal assault on the city’s top cop.
“Chicago will never stop its crime wave with the current Superintendent of Police. It just won’t happen! Thank you to Kevin Graham and all of the GREAT Chicago Police Officers I just had the privilege to meet. Tremendous crime fighting potential if allowed to do your thing!”
Hours later, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired back, accusing the president of perpetrating a crime wave of his own from the White House.
“Superintendent Eddie Johnson is a lifelong Chicagoan who has dedicated his career to public service. You only serve yourself. The crime wave you should be concerned about is the one you are perpetrating against the American people from the White House,” Lightfoot tweeted.
Trump came to Chicago on Monday for a high-dollar fundraiser at Trump Tower, and for a speech at an international police chiefs conference at McCormick Place. During his speech, Trump criticized Johnson, who had boycotted the remarks but attended other portions of the convention saying the president’s address was not in line with his or the city’s values.
Johnson’s absence prompted the president to go on a highly personal attack against the police superintendent.
“There is one person who is not here today. We’re in Chicago. I said, ‘Where is he? I want to talk to him.’ In fact, more than anyone else, he should be here, because maybe he could learn something,” Trump said of Johnson before several hundred applauding convention attendees.
Trump on Monday called Johnson’s rationale for avoiding his speech “a very insulting statement after all I’ve done for the police. And I’ve done more than any other president has ever done for the police.”
“Here’s a man who could not bother to show up for a meeting of police chiefs, the most respected people in the country, in his hometown and with the president of the United States. And you know why? It’s because he’s not doing his job.”
On Friday, Johnson scoffed at Trump’s tweet when asked about it during an unrelated news conference at Chicago police headquarters.
“What’s the point?” Johnson said in an annoyed tone. “I don’t need to respond … to him.”
But in response to the tweet, Johnson also pointed to reductions in violence in Chicago over the last several years. For instance, Chicago’s 424 homicides through October have dropped by 11% from 478 during the first 10 months of last year, according to official Chicago police statistics.
Since 2016, when there were 638 during the first 10 months of that year, there’s been a 34% reduction in slayings. As for total shooting victims, the number of people shot fatally and nonfatally has dropped by 9% this year when compared with the same 10-month period in 2015.
Through October of this year, Chicago has had 2,242 people shot compared with 2,471 during the same period four years ago, the statistics show.
“I’ve been here for 31 years fighting crime in this city. I don’t worry about any external stuff. I worry about what we have in front of us,” Johnson said.
“The fact of it is that numbers do matter. Facts matter. And the facts are that we’ve steadily been bringing these numbers down … So that’s what we need to focus on.”
In his Friday morning tweet, the president also thanked Graham, the president of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police, who greeted him Monday after he landed at O’Hare International Airport.