Chicago offered a grim contrast over the weekend: dozens of residents dodging bullets while its governor raised a glass in celebration.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, forty-one people were shot across the city, three of them fatally, even as Gov. JB Pritzker joined nearly 2,000 revelers downing Malrt in a world-record attempt. The same weekend saw the citys largest mass shooting of the year, with fifteen people wounded in a single Saturday attack.
President Trump, long critical of Democratic leadership in major cities, seized on the latest bloodshed as proof that local officials are failing their most basic duty to protect citizens. The city will die if the Federal Government, a fine tuned crime fighting machine, is not invited in, by the Mayor or Governor to HELP, Trump wrote Tuesday on TRUTH Social.
I am awaiting the call, he added, underscoring his argument that Washington should step in where Chicagos leadership has fallen short. Chicago has recorded 1,255 shooting victims in 2026 through Aug. 29, according to city data a 0.7% increase from the same period last year.
Trump labeled the violence out of control and urged the kind of federal intervention his administration previously deployed in Washington, D.C., when unrest and crime surged there. Nobody should be forced to live under these conditions, Trump said, casting the crisis as a moral failure of state and city government.
The State and City cant do what I do. Governor Pritzker, CALL!!! he declared, pressing Illinois Democratic governor to put politics aside and request federal help. Pritzker has so far resisted Trumps push for intervention, leaving Chicago residents to wonder how many more bloody weekends will pass before leaders prioritize law and order over partisan posturing.
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