On Friday, a Chicago Democratic lawmaker appeared in a Fox News interview where he torched Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) handling of crime in the city, describing her as “hypocritical” and saying she “played politics with people’s lives.”
Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez, who has served in elected office since 2012, outlined how Lightfoot previously refused help from the Trump administration to alleviate violent crime in the city. Now that President Biden is in office, Lightfoot announced that she would accept help from the federal government.
“Most Chicagoans find it very much hypocritical that the mayor, 15 months ago, told Donald Trump to get the hell out of Chicago with his assistance and basically played politics with people’s lives. And here we are, in 2021, over 812 people murdered by gun violence in the city of Chicago,” Lopez told Jesse Watters. “And now, she’s doing the great pivot, the great about face, and saying now that President Joe Biden is here, she’ll take the help. What about all those thousands of people whose lives have been impacted by gun violence or the lives that were lost last year when she could have had help from the federal government?”
In July 2020, Lightfoot penned a letter to then-President Trump asking him not to send federal agents to the city of Chicago to help crack down on gun violence. In the letter, she reportedly described his efforts as “unconstitutional” and “incendiary.” Instead, Lightfoot asked Trump to repress the proliferation of guns across the country.
However, last week, Lightfoot said in a press conference that she called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to send more federal resources to Chicago to combat the rise in crime in the city. ABC 7 Chicago reported that she made the formal request to Garland to send ATF agents to the city for six months, as well as federal prosecutors and federal marshals. ABC 7 noted that the city is facing a 25-year record high in murders.
“More children have been victimized from gun violence in the city of Chicago than have been killed by covid in the entire state of Illinois in the last year,” Lopez said in the interview. “And yet, we still talk more about covid than we do gun violence.”
To wrap up, Lopez said that former President Obama, who is building his presidential library in the city, and other Democratic politicians seem to be unaware that Chicago is perceived as one of the most violent cities in America.
“The pendulum that many Democratic politicians – and I will say, as a Democratic, I find it disgusting that we’re at this point – but they’ve pushed the pendulum so far to the left when it comes to criminal justice reform that we now favor criminals over victims,” Lopez wrapped up. “Even as the politicians are becoming victims themselves, I am more than certain they will never accept responsibility for the seeds that they’ve sown to bring us to this point.”
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