Rahm Emanuel: Trump Is ‘Doing Performative Violence on a City’ and Its Residents

BLITZER: “You know, Rahm, the White House tells CNN that Immigration and Border Patrol agents are now trickling into Chicago to make arrests.”
EMANUEL: “Mm-hmm.”
BLITZER: “This comes as CNN has learned that Trump officials have privately discussed targeting Chicago for weeks over its so-called sanctuary city policies. The mayor of Chicago has ordered Chicago police to not collaborate with federal authorities. Is that the right move?”
EMANUEL: “Well, yeah, look, one of the reasons you have a good crime strategy is you build tighter relationships between the police and the residents. Any participation or any way in fracturing that would actually harm the efforts of reducing crime. Now, you know, the president in his own budget cut the funding for sustained efforts with hiring and training police officers, cut the funding to deal with actually license plate readers to deal with carjackings. So he’s doing one thing and he’s actually trying to get the goods through customs by calling it immigration when it’s really about what he wants to do is on crime. But his actual budget cut the sustained effort. This is a flash in the past that will not be sustained. Every police department across the country, big cities, medium cities, and small cities have a sustained effort putting more cops on the beat, getting kids, drugs and gangs off the street. And look, there’s no mayor of any city that does not want a day where their kids are going to school thinking of their studies, not their safety, who isn’t tired of driving by a tree from a weekend with a yellow ribbon around it from somebody who’s been a victim of senseless gun violence. Work with the cities. Every mayor would die for that. But this is a president who’s doing performative violence on a city, violence on its residents, driving a wedge without the effort to actually stop this senseless gun violence. And he — he would have a welcome hand from every city, of every mayor, of every political stripe, of every size city if he would partner rather than cut the funding for police, rather than cut the funding that helps us dealing with carjacking. So I just think that you see it what it is. It’s performative. It’s a distraction from the failed economic policies of Donald Trump.”