Trump Shares Latest Useless Opinion On Chicago's Gun Violence On Twitter

By aaroncynic in News on Jan 2, 2017 6:50PM

President-elect Donald Trump took to his favorite platform to communicate with Americans Tuesday morning to once again decry the gun violence epidemic in a city he knows very little about.





Chicago murder rate is record setting - 4,331 shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016. If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal help! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017





This isn’t the first time the President-elect has taken a verbal jab at Chicago and the overwhelming gun violence the city has seen in 2016. In July, he Tweeted “Crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse. Look what is going on in Chicago and our inner cities. Not good!” About a month later , despite not having spent much time in the city and definitely none of it in our neighborhoods, Trump told Fox News Host Bill O’Reilly he could solve the problem in a week.

“I know police in Chicago," Trump said on the show. "If they were given the authority to do it, they would get it done."

Chicago has seen more violence and homicides this year than it has in two decades, with 3,500 shooting incidents that claimed at least 762 lives.

It’s unclear what Trump means by “federal help.” It is however, unsurprising the “law and order” President-to-be, who’s fawned over by fascists and has surrounded himself with generals, would Tweet something cryptic enough that could mean anything from government dollars to the national guard patrolling the city streets.

Trump isn't the first politician to call for or hint at federal help to combat Chicago violence by any means. Two days after the funeral for his 15-year old grandson, Rep Danny Davis called for officials at every level of government to implement the 10-20-30 plan. That measure calls for 10 percent of investment funds to be allocated to poor neighborhoods—those where 20 percent of people have lived below the poverty line for 30 years or more.

Chicago however, has long been a favorite target for hard right conservatives who believe that the only way to solve violence is with iron-fisted policing rather than policies that actually address core issues like poverty, racism and lack of resources in struggling neighborhoods. As we've pointed out before however, ignoring those issues in favor of things like stop-and-frisk policing or tougher sentencing tends to have the opposite effect.

Adam Collins, spokesperson for Emanuel, said in response to Trump's tweet:



"As the president-elect knows from his conversation with the mayor, we agree the federal government has a strong role to play in public safety by funding summer jobs and prevention programming for at-risk youth, by holding the criminals who break our gun laws accountable for their crimes, by passing meaningful gun laws, and by building on the partnerships our police have with federal law enforcement. We are heartened he is taking this issue seriously and look forward to working with the new administration on these important efforts."