Tucker: Lori Lightfoot doesn't think much about crime
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host evaluates the Chicago mayor's priorities amid crime spike
We want to start with an insurrection — an insurrection against the rule of law, against civilization itself — that’s been going on for more than a year in the city of Chicago. Since the death of George Floyd last May, Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has embraced every part of the equity and inclusion agenda.
Lightfoot banned the police from chasing criminals, even in the case of some very serious offensives. And her D.A. refuses to prosecute many crimes. The results? Nearly 200 more people have been murdered this year than last. Many more dead people, hundreds. Yesterday, there was yet another mass killing in Chicago.
REPORTER: Denice Mathis, Ratanya Rogers, Blake Lee, and Shermetria Williams all killed in Chicago’s mass shooting. The shooting happened at 5:45 Tuesday morning in Englewood. … Of the eight people that were shot, four died. The other four victims are in the hospital. Two of them reported to be in critical condition. The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in a little more than a week.
The third mass shooting in just over a week, each one of them was a far greater human tragedy than anything that happened at the Capitol on January 6. But as the bodies in Chicago accumulate, the people who run the city barely notice. In fact, they make it possible. Four days before Christmas, a 28-year-old named Marvin Flanagan murdered a man during a home invasion. Flanagan should have been in jail at the time. He was a five-time felon with convictions for armed robbery. But officials let him out, and he promptly committed murder.
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This now common in the city of Chicago. Marvin Flanagan is just one of the dozens of criminals who’ve been let out of jail in Chicago recently, only to go on to shoot or murder someone else. Lori Lightfoot did this. But she accepts no responsibility for doing. Instead, she blames firearms, and demands more money from the federal government:
LIGHTFOOT: Cities individually cannot tackle this problem on its own. We just cannot. In Chicago, we've done absolutely everything possible and we need help from the federal government because this is a national problem.
It’s a national problem, the gun problem. Is it really? Chicago has long had some of the strictest gun control in the nation. Montana has virtually none. Who’s got a higher murder rate? This entire conversation is nonsense. Lori Lightfoot has no idea what she’s talking about, and in fact, she’s not very interested. As long as her own security detail shows up on time, Lightfoot doesn’t think much about crime. What she thinks about is radical social change — and this week, she got an assist from the U.S. Congress. Starting this Saturday, our country will get a new Independence Day, to supplant the old one, which people like Lori Lightfoot complained was racist. Not a single member of either party in the Senate opposed it.
Republicans, in fact, co-sponsored the resolution. "Happy that my bill to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday just passed the Senate," wrote John Cornyn, a supposedly conservative senator from Texas.
Lori Lightfoot is thrilled by this. Unlike John Cornyn, she understands the power of symbols. They’re immensely important, that’s why we have them. For Flag Day on Monday -- a holiday designed to honor the American flag -- Lightfoot is flying something called the "Pan African" flag. It's now up in city hall. That, and the Juneteenth flag.
LIGHTFOOT: We must also recognize that freedom has been illusory for far too many American residents, including Black people. So we must embrace all American history and today on Juneteenth, we will be raising another flag: the Juneteenth flag.
"Freedom has been illusory." Really? What’s she saying? Well, she’s saying your old Independence Day, and the nation it celebrates is a lie. This is the kind of thing Lori Lightfoot spends her time doing — that and berating her staff.
Thanks to an open record request from the Chicago Tribune, we’ve got some of Lori Lightfoot’s emails. Turns out she’s every bit the person you thought she was.
In January, for example, Lightfoot told her staff: "I need office time every day!" exclamation point. She wrote that same line sixteen times in a row: "I need office time every day!" "I need office time every day!" "I need office time every day!" And so on. Thirteen more times. Demented.
And then, for clarity: "Not just once a week or some days, every day!" Lightfoot wrote that exact same line ten more times in a row.
EMAIL REVEALS LORI LIGHTFOOT BERATING AID FOR NOT SCHEDULING MORE ‘OFFICE TIME’
She needs help. But not as much helps as her staff needs. Someone ought to stage a hostage extraction for their sake.
Lightfoot ended her email with this: "If this doesn't change immediately, I will just start unilaterally canceling things every day. Have I made myself clear, finally?!"
So, as the bodies piled up, hundreds more under her tenure as mayor, you have to wonder, how long did it take Lightfoot to write all of that? Was she shaking, spitting, and screaming as she did? Of course, she was. But apparently, it didn’t work. It wasn’t enough. Things did not improve in the mayor’s office, despite those missives. In May of last year, Lightfoot announced a new policy for memos that arrive late.
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Late memos won’t just be rejected -- they'd be torn by rage-filled fingers into millions of tiny little pieces, and cast into the wind, like chaff. Given the right weather conditions, memo fragments might blow over Lake Michigan and fall on Grand Rapids. In an email to her staff, Lightfoot attached a picture of a ripped-up document, for emphasis. Lori Lightfoot, human shredding machine.
And yet still, somehow, this person remains mayor of America’s third-largest city. How long can that continue?
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the June 16, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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