“What Trump is doing now, and I think this is part of his motivation, is to portray cities as dystopian centers of lawlessness and crime. And there is a strong racial component to that, ”said David Axelrod, a veteran Chicago resident and senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “I think it is a strategy to try to scare particularly suburban voters back in this column.”
Trump’s views on Chicago were fueled in part by the right-wing focus on Obama, who during his administration sought to reduce gun violence by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“There is no doubt that when Obama became president, the right wanted to use Chicago against him. It was his hometown, ”said Axelrod. “The fact that Chicago was his hometown was something that intrigued Trump, even though he built the Trump Tower here and had a little respect for the city, or he wouldn’t have built it here.”
Trump also rummaged through Chicago during the administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, probably, Axelrod said, because Emanuel worked as Obama’s chief of staff. “Rahm was associated with Obama. They were an impetus for him. “
The fact that three Chicago mayors, Richard M. Daley, Emanuel, and now Lori Lightfoot, sometimes criticized Trump regarding his inaction on weapons may also have upset Trump, who criticizes any criticism.
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a gun control advocate whose Catholic parish is located in the heart of the south side of the city, where gun violence has been widespread, said the NRA has fueled rhetoric about violence in Chicago.
“They don’t deal with statistics or data,” he said. “Chicago is not even the most violent city in the country. The NRA deals with fear. He loves to glorify crime and violence in the black community. More recently, she has received help from the President who has created a greater racial division than I have seen in a long time. “
Although Chicago’s crime statistics are lower than those of other major cities, no one doubts that the city has a problem with gang violence. One reason is that the weapons are so readily available that, according to a City of Chicago study, they primarily come from Indiana. And in recent weeks, Chicago has seen an increase in the shooting and murder of children, a fact that has drawn repeated attention from Trump and his aides.
Lightfoot, the current mayor, said she appreciates federal support to help agencies like ATF, DEA and FBI, all of which have offices in Chicago. “We don’t need or want troops,” he said in a recent statement, referring to the type of federal involvement that occurs in Portland.
Conservatives have wanted the federal government to take control of crime in Chicago for decades, long before Trump got into politics.
In the 1960s, the city was a center of unrest, and that reputation remained after violence erupted during the 1968 Democratic Convention.
But it wasn’t until the 1980s that the right, especially the NRA, began to focus on Chicago, which had instituted a ban on pistols. In the 1990s, under the direction of then-Mayor Daley, the city filed a lawsuit with the families of murder victims, alleging that the gun industry was to blame for the Chicago violence. The lawsuit accused gun manufacturers of covering the city and its suburbs with weapons.
It took him six years to bring the case to the state Supreme Court, which in 2004 ruled against Daley. In 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case against the Chicago firearm ban. During the many years of court battles, the ANR and the right perpetuated the idea of ”black crime against black”, a racist trope that has been used to instill fear, especially in suburban white communities.
“It became a political struggle, a distraction,” said Gary Slutkin, CEO and founder of Cure Violence Global, a Chicago-based group that trains residents to stop violence in their own communities. “Each side blamed the other and neither side stepped forward to find a solution.”
Slutkin sees a similar political battle being fought amid trying to control the Covid-19 pandemic. “The political struggle is a distraction to solve the problem,” he said.
