On Aug. 22, Donald Trump made his latest move to expand many consider a hostile federal takeover of an American city that he believes is overrun with crime, targeting Chicago and its Black mayor, Brandon Johnson for his next experiment in authoritarianism.
According to People Magazine, Trump inexplicably asserted to reporters inside the Oval Office that Black people in Chicago, in particular, Black women, are begging for his help. “After we do this, we will go to another location and make it safe also. Chicago is a mess, you have an incompetent mayor, grossly incompetent. We’ll straighten that one out. That will probably be our next one after this,” Trump told reporters.
He continued, “It won’t even be tough. The people of Chicago… are screaming for us to come. They’re wearing red hats, just like this one,” a statement referring to his refreshed red hat design that reads “Trump Was Right About Everything,” Trump kept spinning his tale. “African-American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying, ‘Please President Trump, come to Chicago, please.’ I did great with the Black vote, as you know. They want something to happen.”
Trump did not actually “do great” with the Black vote, according to an analysis from Pew Research, he only captured around 15% of the Black vote nationally, and in other, more targeted breakdowns, he performed terribly among Black women specifically, approximately 90% of Black women supported then vice president Kamala Harris in her bid to become the first Black female president of the United States.
In addition, as Sydney Carr-Glenn, a political scientist at the College of the Holy Cross, told The 19th News, Black women are the electoral group that have both reached new levels of political power and currently provides the staunchest resistance to Trump and his agenda. It stands to reason that his use of these seemingly random Black women is an attempt to subvert these developments.
According to Wendy Via, the co-founder and CEO of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, Trump’s moves against Black mayors stand out to her as “part of the authoritarian playbook” in order to create an “enemy” that can be conjured up in an effort to justify more extreme military action and policies that take away the rights of Americans in those cities.
“I do not think it is an accident that the mayors he’s gone after have been Black women, because another trait of authoritarianism is demonizing communities that have a history of being marginalized,” Via told The 19th. “When you can send in the troops and it’s a Black woman leader on the receiving end, then it’s not such a big deal to send in the troops — because they’re already the enemy, and they must not be capable of managing their city.”
Though Chicago is run by a Black man, not a Black woman, the tactics that Via ascribed to Trump and his administration are largely the same, and much like his push to take over Washington D.C., his focus on crime is an age-old dog whistle that Black people in America are in need of monitoring.
According to Block Club Chicago, Johnson responded to Trump’s threat with his own statement, calling Trump’s crime strategy “uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound.”
He continued, hinting at the progress Chicago has made regarding crime during his tenure. “Unlawfully deploying the National Guard to Chicago has the potential to inflame tensions between residents and law enforcement when we know that trust between police and residents is foundational to building safer communities. An unlawful deployment would be unsustainable and would threaten to undermine the historic progress we have.”
Mayor Johnson concluded, “We know that our communities are safest when we fully invest in housing, community safety, and education. The National Guard will not alleviate the housing crisis. It will not put food in the stomachs of the 1 in 4 children that go to bed hungry every night in Chicago…There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them.”
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