A Democratic Chicago alderman called out Mayor Lori Lightfoot after video surfaced of her dancing in the streets during a Lunar New Year celebration.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, who briefly mounted a mayoral run against Lightfoot — who faces the voters on Feb. 28 — said the mayor is essentially ignoring the crime crisis burgeoning under her watch and going so far as to publicly party as if there is nothing wrong in the city.
“[S]he would make Nero jealous of the way she’s able to ignore the reality on the streets while her citizenry are struggling, are in pain, and are under the gun of gang and gun violence on a daily basis,” Lopez told Fox News.
“The fact that she is so disconnected from reality that she thinks it’s apropos to dance and sing — even badly — at a joyous event while so many of my neighbors and fellow residents of Chicago are struggling, shows that she does not know or does not care about what people go through on a daily basis,” he added.
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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot dances
(Lori Lightfoot/Facebook)
Nero, a 1st-century Roman emperor, infamously was said to have played his fiddle while the Great Fire engulfed the city around him in the year 64. Nero later reportedly blamed the blaze on the then-fledgling Christian religious sect, taking no responsibility himself.
On “America Reports,” Lopez said Chicago has seen thousands of crime victims in every neighborhood, from the infamous precincts on the south side, to the seemingly safer Lincoln Park area north of downtown.
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot
(Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Lopez, who endorsed candidate Willie Wilson after dropping out, added Lightfoot believes, amid the chaos, it is “her right to enjoy the occasion and celebrate her mediocrity as mayor.”
The alderman also blamed Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx for similarly embracing progressive criminal justice polices blamed for the rise in Chicago crime.
Foxx joins Lightfoot in “turn[ing] a blind eye routinely to the victims of violence in our city only to prop up and embolden criminals who think it is their birthright now to be on the offensive in every neighborhood,” the alderman alleged.
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Lopez concluded his party, the Democrats, seems to have an “infatuation with criminality” that is being borne out by the governance of politicians like Lightfoot.
Fox News political analyst Gianno Caldwell, whose brother was killed in Chicago in 2022, also condemned Lightfoot on Tuesday for her parade performance, telling “The Faulkner Focus” that the only solace he can take in the situation is the chance Lightfoot will be ousted in the city’s upcoming mayoral election.
“I take great offense to this,” he said. “My brother, my baby brother Christian, was murdered on June 24 last year in Chicago, and what I just witnessed in that video with that mayor right there was her dancing on my brother’s grave.”