Chicago mayor slams Ivanka Trump’s ‘nonsense tweets’ about city’s gun violence
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) lit into White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump on Tuesday for a pair of tweets she shared about gun violence in the city earlier in the day.
{mosads}While talking with the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday afternoon, Lightfoot blasted the remarks from the president’s eldest daughter as “nonsense” and accused her of “misleading” her followers with a lack of information.
In a pair of widely shared tweets, Trump wrote, “As we grieve over the evil mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, let us not overlook that Chicago experienced its deadliest weekend of the year.”
“With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City- and little national outrage or media coverage- we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day,” she added.
With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City- and little national outrage or media coverage- we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day.
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 6, 2019
When pressed about the comments in an interview with the Tribune, Lightfoot sounded off on Trump.
“It wasn’t a playground, it was a park,” she said. “It wasn’t seven dead. It wasn’t 52 wounded in one incident, which is what this suggests. It’s misleading.”
“It’s important when we’re talking about people’s lives to actually get the facts correct which one can easily do if you actually cared about getting it right,” she continued.
“That’s the danger of somebody with a platform and audience … that doesn’t know what they’re talking about and getting the fundamental facts wrong that they can easily figure out if they had the decency to actually reach out to us if they wanted to be a constructive and engaged partner,” she added.
“What I’m focused on is actually helping run the city of Chicago and working hard every day with the superintendent and his leadership team to keep people in our city safe,” she said. “I’m not going to be distracted by nonsense tweets from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”
The White House later said in a statement reported by the Tribune that Ivanka Trump “has appreciated getting to know Mayor Lightfoot, respects her commitment to addressing this issue and looks forward to continuing the conversation around this issue, workforce development and economic opportunity for all.”
The statement emphasized that seven people died and 52 were wounded “across the city,” saying it resulted “in one of the deadliest weekends in the city this year.” It added that officials “cannot ignore the gun violence that happens in cities across this country on a daily basis.”
The White House has released a statement noting Ivanka Trump “has appreciated getting to know Mayor Lightfoot, respects her commitment to addressing this issue and looks forward to continuing the conversation around this issue, workforce development and economic opportunity… pic.twitter.com/1t0sGuuBFB
— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt) August 6, 2019
The mayor’s comments came the day after she captured headlines for slamming President Trump’s rhetoric in the wake of two deadly mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left at least 31 people dead in total over the weekend.
“What he’s been doing is blowing every racist, xenophobic dog whistle, and when you do that, when you blow that kind of dog whistle, animals come out,” Lightfoot said earlier this week.
She called on the president to use “his weight in Congress to move forward on common sense gun reform” in remarks on Monday, saying, “If the president weighs in, if he shows these Republicans that they can actually have courage, we can get this done.”
“But if he stands back and continues to do what he’s been doing and he just tweets and he demonizes and he skims the surface, it matters not,” she added.
Updated: 7:39 p.m.
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