By DOUG E. IBENDAHL • August 11, 2019
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Ivanka Trump tweeted her condolences in the wake of the deadly shootings in Chicago last weekend — the worst violence the city has experienced so far this year.
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Last weekend most of the world was of course focused on the shooting massacres in El Paso and Dayton. While that’s understandable, it’s also understandable that Ivanka would rightly say we shouldn’t forget about the many victims in Chicago either.
Ivanka was also absolutely right to suggest that media coverage of Chicago’s shootings and murders never comes close to matching the attention given to the tragedies in El Paso and Dayton.
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Yes, every Monday Chicago media reports the grim statistics detailing the latest weekend’s citywide carnage.
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But not only does the coverage of Chicago’s recurring deadly violence pale in comparison to the coverage given to any tragedy the media ludicrously believes it can attribute to President Trump, it also doesn’t come close to the coverage given to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s attacks on Ivanka for her two tweets.
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Every Chicago media outlet and most national ones sympathetically reported Lightfoot’s lashing out. This is only a sample:
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“That’s the danger of somebody with a platform and audience [who] doesn’t know what they’re talking about and getting the fundamental facts wrong, that they could easily figure out if they had the decency to actually reach out to us if they wanted to be a constructive and engaged partner.”
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Think about that. The Mayor criticizing Ivanka’s tweets was a bigger story than all the dead and wounded in Chicago.
Talk about a distraction from the real issue.
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And lest her attacks remain just a one-or-two-day story, Lightfoot took to national cable news later this past week to again gin-up her complaints about Ivanka Trump’s two tweets. She chose CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show—comfortable safe spaces for anyone with hate to share about anything Trump family related.
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But maybe we should back-up a bit. What exactly was Lightfoot’s big problem with Ivanka’s two tweets copied above? What was she so upset about?
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It turns out Lightfoot’s thin-skinned response centered entirely on some quibbling about just two mostly immaterial details.
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Ivanka referenced a shooting “near a playground”—but according to Lightfoot, the particular Chicago mass shooting Ivanka cited happened that weekend in a “park” and the victims weren’t near a playground.
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Lightfoot is totally off base on this one. Chicago media in fact used “near Chicago playground” in stories about the particular mass shooting Ivanka was talking about. See for example here and here.
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But heaven forbid if the journalists who wrote those headlines would come to Ivanka’s defense and point out she was absolutely right on that one.
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Lightfoot’s second and only other beef with the tweets was that Ivanka got the numbers wrong.
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Actually, Lightfoot can’t truthfully say Ivanka got the total body count wrong, but in hair-splitting lawyerly fashion reflective of her previous career, Lightfoot complained that Ivanka got the allocation of the carnage wrong.
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Yes, Ivanka’s tweets lead you to believe that all 7 dead and 52 wounded happened at that one mass shooting in the park, when someone in a car opened fire on a group gathered there.
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Okay Mayor, you got us. It is true that only 7 were shot in that particular mass shooting last weekend.
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To get to 52 wounded and 7 dead as Ivanka stated, we have to count all of the gun violence that happened throughout the city last weekend.
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So, Madam Mayor, while you may be right on that specific point, the truth doesn’t exactly put you or the city in a more favorable light. I think most would agree it’s more disturbing to have the deadly violence more widespread.
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In Chicago during almost any week, we’re not talking about just one shooter, we’re usually talking about several.
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Any honest person can see what’s going on here. Mayor Lightfoot, who has only been on the job for three months, is already over her head. It’s almost like she’s already given up, and instead of doing the job she told us she wanted, she’s trying to distract voter attention on “the enemy.”
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For Lori Lightfoot and her enablers, that enemy is the President of the United States—plus his offspring apparently.
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For what it’s worth, I voted for Lightfoot in the April runoff. The only other choice at that point, another Democrat, was a non-starter in my view. Lightfoot comes from a career as a respected attorney, and I had high hopes for her after the disaster that was Rahm Emanuel.
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I happily gave Lightfoot a chance.
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But from what I can see, Lightfoot has already been captured by the extreme radical left that’s also captured her Democratic Party nationally.
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As evidence I cite the great pleasure the Mayor seems to take in parroting the same divisive, hate-on-Trump rhetoric that’s so fashionable on the left these days. I won’t say that Lightfoot is trying-out for “The Squad.” However, it is very obvious she enjoys the adoration she gets from the many Trump haters in Chicago and on cable news.
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Meanwhile, the Trump economy is lifting all boats. Even Chicago is sinking more slowly these days. If you’re a degreed professional, or work in tech or the service industry, Chicago is a great place to be. Parts of the city, including downtown, are buzzing with energy, growth, and rising incomes.
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Lightfoot and her fan club will of course never give the President the credit he deserves. But that’s fine.
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What is unforgivable is the way Lightfoot and the rest of the Chicago Democrat ruling class are putting their own selfish agendas ahead of their impoverished constituents, of whom there are many.
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If there is one person who knows how to actually help Chicago’s poor, who for the most part live in the same neighborhoods where the vast majority of the shootings occur, it’s Donald Trump.
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This President WANTS to help. We’ve got a builder in charge who has frequently talked about his desire to rebuild our inner cities. But it’s not just talk. The President stands ready to bring infrastructure, empowerment zones, and jobs, jobs, jobs. And perhaps most helpful of all, Trump wants school choice. Allow struggling families to get their kids out of rotten, government run schools by letting them choose their own. Maybe fewer young men would feel hopeless, and maybe fewer will choose a gang.
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Working constructively with the President would be good for all Chicagoans, but Lightfoot obviously sees it as bad for her political ambitions. That’s why when she’s not hanging out with celebrities, she’s pushing the “Trump is a racist” false narrative, welcoming illegal immigrants to seek sanctuary here and the jobs that struggling citizens could otherwise take, and openly working to frustrate enforcement of federal immigration law.
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Chicago media will no doubt keep colluding and enabling this behavior by Lightfoot. They mostly share Lightfoot’s disdain for the President of the United States.
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That’s surely why for example there was nary a peep from the press a couple of weeks ago when ICE removed a suspected terrorist from Chicago who was wanted on charges in El Salvador. Chicago police were likely not involved given Lightfoot’s order of no assistance for ICE.
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When Lori Lightfoot says Chicago is a sanctuary for all, she clearly means it.
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It appears that literally any level of incompetence will be ignored if you hate Donald Trump enough. If you spread some loathing around to his daughter too—bonus points!
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Lori Lightfoot is a very smart person, no one can say she’s not. She’s already figured out how to survive in this town.
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Sadly, many of her constituents won’t be so lucky.
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Doug Ibendahl is a Chicago Attorney and a former General Counsel of the Illinois Republican Party.
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