Chicago mayor slams Ivanka Trump over "nonsense tweet" about city's violence
Chicago — Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired back Tuesday after Ivanka Trump issued a factually incorrect tweet about gun violence this weekend in Chicago. "She got the numbers wrong. She got the location wrong," Lightfoot said, CBS Chicago reports. "That's the danger of trying to govern via tweet."
Ivanka Trump's tweet read: "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," she tweeted Tuesday morning. "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."
This was not the deadliest weekend of the year in Chicago. On the first weekend of June, eight people were shot and killed, and two more people were killed in stabbings. Eight people also were shot and killed the last weekend of July. Further, there were no shootings that happened on a playground.
While there was one shooting where seven people were wounded in an attack near a playground in Douglas Park, that was only one of several shootings in many neighborhoods of the city, and no one died in that particular shooting. In addition, the shooting happened around 1:20 a.m., when it's extremely unlikely any children would be on the playground.
In all, there were at least 29 shooting incidents in Chicago from Friday afternoon through early Monday morning, none of which included more than one fatality.
Lightfoot noted that neither Ivanka Trump nor anyone else from the White House contacted the city before the tweet was issued.
"If they want to help, they should actually call us and ask for specifics, which we'd be happy to share, and we would offer them specific ways in which the federal government could actually partner with us to help address the issues on the ground," Lightfoot said. "But by sending out something like that – having zero contact with anybody in an official capacity in the city of Chicago – and then getting it wrong? That's not helpful."
As of Tuesday afternoon, Ivanka Trump's tweet had received about 11,500 likes and 2,800 retweets – a fact that Lightfoot called "the danger of somebody with a platform and audience that time that 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."
The city has reached out to Ivanka Trump, Lightfoot said.
"Yes, we reached out once we knew and saw that tweet to say, 'What are you doing? Why don't you actually reach out to us ahead of time and spend a moment to get the facts right?'" the mayor said.
There had been no response as of Tuesday afternoon, Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot met with Ivanka Trump shortly after taking office. The First Daughter tweeted at the time that they discussed topics such as economic revitalization, workforce development, vocational education, criminal justice reform, and crime prevention.
Following two deadly mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left dozens dead this past weekend, Lightfoot also took Ivanka Trump's father, President Donald trump, to task. She said Mr. Trump needs to put an end to his recent rhetoric that many have called racist.
"As the leader of our country, I implore the president to set a better, clearer moral tone, because 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 on Monday.
On Tuesday, Lightfoot was asked she thought if Ivanka Trump's tweet about Chicago violence was an attempt to push back against comments Lightfoot had made. Lightfoot said she didn't know and didn't especially care.
"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," Lightfoot said. "I'm not going to be distracted by nonsense tweets from people who don't know what they're talking about."
