Following the Las Vegas massacre in October, Donald Trump’s White House put together a list of talking points to help its surrogates argue it wasn’t a gun that allowed Stephen Paddock to shoot 58 people to death in 15 minutes. Among them: “[S]ome of America’s cities with the strictest gun laws have the highest rates of gun violence. Examples include: Chicago last year had over 4,300 shooting victim [sic]”
Even Hollywood conservatives have gotten into the Chicago-hating act. The original Death Wish movies were set in 1970s New York, a special time and place in the annals of urban anarchy. But with New York’s homicide rate at a historic low, the reboot of the franchise—about a man who exacts vigilante justice on the thugs who’ve made his city uninhabitable—needed a new setting. How about . . . Chicago?! It’s the nation’s murder capital! (It’s not.) When the feckless CPD can’t solve his wife’s murder, surgeon Paul Keysey (played by Bruce Willis) buys a gun and goes on a killing spree, smirking every time he dispatches another victim. To make things worse, the movie features voice-over work by Chicago’s worst radio personality, Mancow Muller.
• Chicago sent Trump into retreat. In March 2016, the city’s well-developed protest culture, which dates back to Saul Alinsky, mobilized against Trump, forcing him to cancel a rally at UIC Pavilion.
